Listen Live
Stone Soul Vendor Graphics
iPowerRichmond Featured Video
CLOSE

If the last few years has taught us anything about the United States, it’s that it’s difficult to do normal, mundane tasks when you’re a person of color.

Along with driving, playing, and going to the store, it’s almost unheard of to be a Black farmer these days. But people like Chris Newman, the owner of Sylvanaqua Farms in Albemarle County, VA, are changing stereotypes and dropping gems along the way. In a Facebook entry that has since gone viral, the farmer broke down the dangers of Farming While Black.

He posted an image of white supremacists gathered at Charlottesville, VA’s Lee Park and waving the Confederate flag in protest of the City Council’s vote to remove a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Newman said that it is so-called progressives who get nervous when they see a Black man on his knees, digging in the dirt on a property, not thinking that he may be testing soil. He added that those are the people who see him walking around an expensive property and assume that he’s trying to rob the place.

Newman wrote in the post, “Truth is, as a Black dude, I’m far less bothered by the flag wavers in this picture than this town’s progressives assuming its race problem has nothing to do with them. The former is a visual inconvenience. The latter could leave my daughters without a father.”

But the dragging didn’t stop there. The farmer also called out white businesses that claim inclusiveness when they’re really guilty of cultural theft, saying, “Second is the sheer degree of cultural appropriation going on with businesses in the city proper. It’s little things – e.g. shops and other businesses incorporating wide swaths of hip hop culture into their branding while having not a single Black owner, partner, employee, or vendor. And those businesses are KILLING IT here. This is a town where Blackness advances White-owned brands and subjects Black-owned businesses to inspection by law enforcement. It isn’t Richard Spencer calling the cops on me for farming while Black. It’s nervous White women in yoga pants with ‘I’m With Her’ and ‘Coexist’ stickers on their German SUVs.”

Facts or nah? Check out Chris Newman’s full post above.

This Black Farmer Has An Interesting Theory About White Women In Yoga Pants  was originally published on globalgrind.com