What happens when discrimination isn’t simply the action of an individual—but becomes embedded in the practices of an institution?

On this edition of Seeking Truth & Justice, host Lawrence Lucas sits down with agricultural leader, author and former USDA official K. Rashid Nuri for an important conversation about his years inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the treatment of Black farmers, and the government policies and practices that contributed to generations of lost land, lost opportunity and lost wealth.

Nuri served in senior positions at USDA during the Clinton administration, when Mike Espy became the first African American to serve as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Nuri’s responsibilities placed him inside one of the federal government’s largest and most consequential departments—and gave him a firsthand view of how its policies and bureaucracy affected farmers across America. The Nuri Group

A major focus of Lawrence’s conversation with Nuri is the D.J. Miller disparity study, commissioned by USDA in 1994 to examine the treatment of minorities and women in Farm Service Agency programs.

Its findings were striking.

The study found that minority participation in key USDA programs was extremely low; minorities received disproportionately small shares of crop payments, disaster assistance and loans; loans to Black male farmers averaged less than those to white male farmers; and 97% of disaster payments examined went to white farmers, while less than 1% went to Black farmers. The report also identified serious deficiencies in USDA’s handling of discrimination complaints and its collection of data needed to evaluate unequal treatment. EveryCRSReport

Nuri has described his role in commissioning what became known as the Miller Report and has said that the report was subsequently buried and that his departure from USDA followed. His account connects that experience to the larger struggle that eventually culminated in Pigford v. Glickman, the landmark class-action case brought by Black farmers against USDA. The Nuri Group

In 1999, a federal court approved the Pigford consent decree covering Black farmers who alleged racial discrimination in USDA farm credit and benefit programs and failures by the department to properly address their discrimination complaints. The litigation became one of the most consequential chapters in the long struggle between Black farmers and the federal agricultural system. EveryCRSReport

Lawrence Lucas takes the conversation beyond statistics and lawsuits to ask a deeper question:

What happens when the people charged with administering government programs confront evidence that the system itself may be producing unequal outcomes?

Nuri reflects on what he witnessed from inside USDA, the resistance to institutional change, the historic decline of Black-owned farms and farmland, and what the Miller Report revealed about the relationship between race, agriculture, government policy and economic power.

This is a conversation about more than farming.

It’s about discrimination.
It’s about land and generational wealth.
It’s about government accountability.
It’s about what happens when people challenge powerful institutions.
And it’s about the continuing pursuit of truth and justice for America’s Black farmers.

Host: Lawrence Lucas
Guest: K. Rashid Nuri
Program: Seeking Truth & Justice
Producer/Moderator: Gary Johnson

Learn more about K. Rashid Nuri and The Nuri Group