Freeman should have kept to script
Politically, it’s just not very smart for anyone seeking office in Mississippi to alienate the farm community. Even Bennie Thompson, the most liberal Democratic member in Mississippi’s congressional delegation, has been sensitive to appeasing Delta farmers by defending their interests on Capitol Hill.
Besides, Freeman’s apparent perception of farmers and their attitudes is grossly outdated. Back in the 1950s, when there were six times as many farms and much of the labor was still done by hand, it was true that farmers resisted efforts to diversify the economy. They didn’t want the factories, looking to relocate from the North, to compete for their workers and drive up wages. The farmers preferred a work force that was cheap, uneducated, dependent and plentiful.
Mechanization and other technological improvements, though, have dramatically changed the entire agricultural landscape. The demand for farm labor today is a fraction of what it was, and the type of labor farming requires is different, too. Instead of strong backs, farmers need workers who can ably operate $150,000 tractors and $300,000 combines and cotton pickers.
Farmers today are more likely to view themselves as partners than competitors to industry. Both need a dependable, trainable and increasingly technologically literate work force. Both see troubling trends. Domestic manufacturers fret over how they can compete with foreign factories that pay dirt-cheap wages and operate free of government regulation. Farmers, with an average age of 57 and climbing, worry about whether there will be a next generation of growers.
If Freeman hasn’t recognized the changes on the farm, he’s not been doing his research.
The actor’s ill choice of words is not the first slip-up for the Luckett camp. Earlier this year, the Clarksdale attorney was quoted, again by the AP, as equating racism in the Delta with Republican affiliation.
It’s hard to win an election when you give the opposition that kind of “bulletin board” material.
Tim Kalich
Greenwood Commonwealth
10/20/9
Magnolia Tribune
