Two big New York Times stories of racial division, tension in nonmetro U.S.

The first story, from a few days ago, was out of Wausau, Wisconsin, population 39,106, and the headline is "A ‘Community for All’? Not So Fast, This Wisconsin County Says.?  Reid J. Epstein reports:  

A standing-room-only crowd packed a drab courthouse meeting room one recent night and tried to resolve a thorny, yearlong debate over whether Marathon County should declare itself “a community for all.”

The lone Black member of the county board, Supervisor William Harris, stood up and begged his colleagues who opposed the resolution to change their minds.

The story quotes Harris:   

I want to feel like I’m a part of this community.  That’s what a lot of our residents are saying. We want to contribute to our community. We want to feel like a part of this community.

And then Epstein's story continues: 

But a fellow board member was just as passionate at the meeting on Thursday in arguing that acknowledging racial disparities is itself a form of racism.

The second story features Shade Lewis, a 29-year-old black farmer who stands to benefit from a new USDA program aimed at helping farmers like him.  The story's dateline is LaGrange, Missouri, population 931, in the northeast part of the state along the Mississippi River, where Lewis is the only black farmer.  Jack Healy reports under the headline, "‘You Can Feel the Tension’: A Windfall for Minority Farmers Divides Rural America."  

Shade Lewis had just come in from feeding his cows one sunny spring afternoon when he opened a letter that could change his life: The government was offering to pay off his $200,000 farm loan, part of a new debt relief program created by Democrats to help farmers who have endured generations of racial discrimination.

* * *

But the $4 billion fund has angered conservative white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded because of their race. And it has plunged Mr. Lewis and other farmers of color into a new culture war over race, money and power in American farming.

Healy quotes Lewis:  

You can feel the tension. We’ve caught a lot of heat from the conservative Caucasian farmers.