Part I in a three part series penned by a 29-year executive level veteran of the USDA that exposes the flawed underbelly of an Agency that is corrupted to the core by reverse racism and political correctness of the worst kind.
I grew up in a small sugar cane town on the Island of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth Territory of the United States. Proudly, I was born a U.S. Citizen as are all Puerto Ricans since the beginning of the 20th century. I grew up among a population of whites, blacks, browns and other people from the United States who came to the Island to work. I was called a “negrito” by my mom, which is translated as “little black one”.
Yes, my skin is very dark and there were folks darker and lighter than me in my town. The point is that no one was offended by being called black (Negro), white (Jincho) or brown (Trigeno). Jobs were abundant but low paying and you were hired by your reputation or that of your family. I attended a Catholic school through K-12 and had the opportunity to learn English. I also played sports like American football, swimming, tennis and basketball.
In 1985 I enlisted in the U.S. Army. I arrived at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and began my eight year career in military intelligence as a Russian linguist. I worked hard and also granted a Top Secret Clearance.
I did notice for the first time that people in the U.S. were sort of obsessed about the color of their skin. In the Army, Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians would hang out with their own kind but they mixed adequately to do their jobs and there were interracial friendships. On Puerto Rico there was never any separation so this was a little unsettling for me. But we all did our jobs and people were promoted based on a rigorous system of requirements: time in grade; testing; and class completion.
Black and white. Or so I thought.
But in 1990 I joined the Civil Service in the Federal Government working for the “People’s Department”: the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That was a very proud moment for me because earlier a White soldier from North Carolina pinched my arm and said “Look at your skin. You’re not White and you won’t make it in America!” I grinned because I thought he was wrong. But now he is one of my friends 30 years later. I didn’t complain or sue the Army or thought he was racist. He was just kind of a rebel and that’s why we are still good friends today.
But I soon realized that the USDA was different than the Military. I noticed there was a lot of emphasis on racial issues. My story is about one of the most inconsistent, unfair, racist and offensive cultures of any Federal Agency.
A baptism in Equal Employment Opportunity and Civil Rights….Government style.
My first encounter with the racist USDA system came when I transferred to the Soil Conservation Service (NRCS). I did not clear a few months of working for that organization before I was told that I was “special” and would be assisted and be promoted ahead of the White majority because I was Hispanic. My Regional Director had an altercation with my supervisor because the latter challenged the notion that NRCS drags folks from one end of the country to add minorities to each office and achieve what they call “representation”: all races must be represented in the NRCS workforce as they appear in the civilian labor force.
That means it doesn’t actually matter that most minorities don’t study agronomy. What matters is that the USDA needed to canvass the country recruiting minorities and forcing them to leave their states and families so that “representation” could be achieved. For example, Hispanics from the Southwest were forced to move to New England to attain “proper representation”. And that means that at some point, most hires are minorities so that we comply with “workforce diversity”. Quotas? They say no quotas; just affirmative action.
So I am trying to do my job that I love: teaching and helping farmers conserve their natural resources while producing food and fiber despite numerous distractions. I was required to be the “Hispanic Emphasis Program Manager” for my State NRCS and attend countless meetings. That included attending huge national meetings for hundreds of employees to talk about increasing “representation” of Hispanics. I also chaired State Civil Rights Committees and was a member in the National Civil Rights Committee. That is how I gained direct knowledge about the racist elements of USDA.
Most attendees were minorities and this was during the Clinton Administration. Every year each race had a special gathering paid by taxpayers where minorities were exalted and plans were made to overcome “underrepresentation”. Democratic Administrations would promote minorities (mostly Black male employees) to key senior executive positions and they would spend a lot of time trying to promote and recruit them. So each year there were Black, Hispanic, Asian, Women, Native American and Pacific Islander conferences that featured large banquets and appearances by top leadership to the tune of millions and millions of taxpayer dollars.
This system evolved into a hierarchy of minority cliques that were led by very powerful Black males. The pecking order would be followed by women and other minorities. So the most powerful liberal Black people saturated leadership positions by hiring and promoting other liberal Blacks and they became the de facto leadership power of NRCS.
As we all know, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
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Part II of my story will expose how the Obama Administration and the Secretary of Agriculture condone running the most racist, discriminatory and unfair human resources systems I have ever experienced in 29 years of civilian service. I will expose what I know as an insider who experienced retaliation and false allegations of miscount as soon as people learned I was a Conservative. I will reveal my identity in my third essay.
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