How Can There Be 86,000 Racial Discrimination Claims In The Pigford vs Glickman Case When There Are Only 39,697 total Black farmers?

I wonder if Breitbart knew what a can of worms he was opening when he posted that edited Shirley Sherrod video? Because the more we look at her and her husband,  that 13 million settlement she got just prior to being hired by the USDA, and the multi-billion Pigford vs Glickman class action settlement, the more disgusted and suspicious we get. The settlement is starting to look more like a boondoggle, or worse yet, reparations.

Zombie, did a little  snooping and found more questions than answers:

Pigford v. Glickman

…on February 23 of this year, the USDA finally consented to pay $1.25 billion to those farmers whose claims had earlier been denied:

In the 1999 case Pigford v. Glickman, the USDA agreed to pay 16,000 black farmers $1 billion after a judge held the federal government responsible for the decline in black farmers. Critics argued that more than 70,000 farmers were shut out of the lawsuit. In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley got a law passed to reopen the case, and the settlement talks moved forward.

The $1.25 billion settlement, announced Thursday, comes on top of the money paid out a decade ago. The new agreement would provide cash payments and debt relief to farmers who applied too late to participate in the earlier settlement, The Washington Post reported. Authorities say they are not certain how many farmers might apply this time, but analysts say the number could be higher than 70,000.

Seventy-thousand+ applicants in addition to the 16,000 already compensated now means that over 86,000 people are slated to be paid.

What I want to know is: How can there be 86,000 legitimate
claimants?

The Census pinpoints the precise number of African-American
farmers

I ask this question because it didn’t take me very long to find the
latest census statistics released by the Department of Agriculture,
which can be found linked to from this official USDA page. There, you will find this direct link to a text version of the Census report,
and this recommended pdf version.

In the pdf version of the government’s official 2007 Agricultural
Census, Table 53 on page 646 shows that there are exactly 39,697
African-American farmers grand total in the entire nation.

Moreover, another Dept. of Agriculture census report gives the total number of black farmers in 1992, the time of the Pigford vs Glickman lawsuit:

and it reveals that there were far fewer back then than there were in 2007. According to the chart on page 20 of the USDA’s pdf 1998 “Status Report, Minority & Women Farmers In the U.S.”, there were only 18,816 black farmers in 1992.

Zombie has the full report at Pajamas Media, complete with charts and whatnot…

So what the bleep is going on, here? Inquiring minds want to know.

Related:

Dick Morris: RACIAL POLITICS BLOWS UP IN OBAMA’S FACE