Point of Origin Episode 30
Food Apartheid
(And Why We Don’t Call it Food Desert)
“By saying Food Apartheid, it brings in all social elements that people don’t want to talk about, but that we need to talk about, in order to move the food system more close to being just and inclusive, which it’s not. And talk about the racism that continues to infiltrate our food system.”
Karen Washington
This is our last episode of the season and a very special one to capstone what we’ve been discussing all season, which is food justice. And today’s episode is specifically about food apartheid, which you may have more commonly heard describe as, a food desert. But there are nuanced issues with that term, and the language we use to describe a community as an outsider is itself problematic. So we turn to our guests today to school us on what a food apartheid is and why we don’t call it a food desert.
And no better person to ask is Bronx resident and activist Karen Washington. We then chat with chef and educator, among many other notable things, Bryant Terry. Finally we go to Cuba with Dr. Hanna Garth whom you heard from earlier this season. Dr. Garth compares and contrasts Cuban and the US’s food distribution and access, the things that Cuba does better, but the systemic racist issues that persist just the same.
Today on Point of Origin, it’s Food Apartheid.
Available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, & iHeartRadio
Highlights
( 00:00 ) Introduction
( 01:30 ) Karen Washington and the History of the Bronx
( 04:13 ) Food Apartheid vs Food Desert
( 07:30 ) Racism in our Food Systems
( 09:40 ) Reclaiming the Land
( 15:20 ) Demanding Change
( 17:30 ) Introducing Bryant Terry
( 19:15 ) Black Health
( 22:27 ) Maternal Mortality Crisis amongst Black and Native Women
( 25:00 ) The Harm of Outside Organizations
( 27:40 ) Reframing Everyday Actions as Political
( 29:15 ) Dr Hanna Garth on Basic Food Rations in Cuba
( 32:05 ) Downsides to Cuba’s Rationing
( 34:20 ) Racism in a Socialist Food System
( 36:57 ) Reclamation in Cuba
( 39:30 ) Closing Remarks from Stephen Satterfield
What is Food Apartheid?
‘Food Desert’ is a term that is defined as an urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food. However, as Karen Washington says, “Food Desert was an outsider term designating the fact that these are places who have limited access to food or grocery stores.” This description and nomenclature doesn’t fully encapsulate all of the social issues and injustices that form these areas.
To more accurately replace it, Karen Washington coined the term ‘Food Apartheid’.
“I coined the term ‘Food Apartheid’ because I wanted to shake up the terms. When you’re talking about food desert or food swamp, you’re talking about a location, you’re not talking about the social impact that food is having in low income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color.”
“When I coined the term, ‘Food Apartheid’, all of the sudden eyes opened, ears opened. Because we need to have those difficult conversations about race, wealth and economics and where people live. By saying ‘Food Apartheid’, it brings in all social elements that people don’t want to talk about, but that we need to talk about, in order to move the food system more close to being just and inclusive, which it’s not. And talk about the racism that continues to infiltrate our food system.”
Food Access in the United States
“There are 7.5 billion people on this planet right now, and only a handful of people control our food system, which is predominantly white men.”
Issues of Food Access and Food Insecurity in the United States:
Causes, Effects, and Implications Associated with Minority Populations
By Elizabeth Roderick | May 4, 2020
People of color suffer from food insecurity at a much higher rate in the U.S. than do whites, and most food deserts in the U.S. are found in areas that are predominantly nonwhite (Dutko, Ver Ploeg, & Farrigan, 2012).
The proportion of minorities in urban food deserts is 53 percent higher than in urban nonfood deserts; in rural areas, the minority population is 65 percent higher in food desert tracts than in nonfood deserts tracts (Dutko, Ver Ploeg, & Farrigan, 2012).
Those in Hispanic and black households experience food insecurity at a rate that is much higher than the national average and more than double that of white households (ColemanJensen, et al., 2018). In fact, more than one out of four black households in the U.S. was foodinsecure at some point in 2018 (Coleman-Jensen, et al., 2018).
A 2013 study determined that neighborhoods in the U.S. that are predominantly African American, regardless of income, suffer from the most limited access to venues that sell fresh, healthy food (Bower, Thorpe, Rohde, & Gaskin, 2014).
In other words, when comparing census tracts of equal poverty levels and considering economically similar neighborhoods, those that are predominately black have more limited access to healthy food than those that are predominantly white or Hispanic; black neighborhoods had the fewest supermarkets and white neighborhoods had the most (Bower, et al., 2014; Dutko, Ver Ploeg, & Farrigan, 2012).
The authors conclude that poverty level and race are independent indicators of supermarket availability, and that poor African American neighborhoods face a “double jeopardy” (Bower, et al., 2014).
Looking towards activist inspiration:
Black Panther Free Breakfast Program
[ Sourced from BlackPast.org and History.com ]
Free Breakfast For School Children was one of the Black Panther’s most effective social programs. It began in January 1969 at an Episcopal church in Oakland, and within weeks it went from feeding a handful of kids to hundreds. The program was simple: party members and volunteers went to local grocery stores to solicit donations, consulted with nutritionists on healthful breakfast options for children, and prepared and served the food free of charge.
School officials immediately reported results in kids who had free breakfast before school. “The school principal came down and told us how different the children were,” Ruth Beckford, a parishioner who helped with the program, said later. “They weren’t falling asleep in class, they weren’t crying with stomach cramps.”
Soon, the program had been embraced by party outposts nationwide. At its peak, the Black Panther Party fed thousands of children per day in at least 45 programs. (Food wasn’t the only part of the BPP’s social programs; they expanded to cover everything from free medical clinics to community ambulance services and legal clinics.)
Cuba’s Food Rationing Program
“Cuba has a food rationing system. Everyone is guaranteed a basic amount of food to be able to survive. That food rationing has been around for over 50 years, and every single Cuban is eligible for the ration.”
Cuba’s food rationing program originally provided more food than it does today, but it has slowly been reducing the food available from the ration. While Cubans received the minimum amount of food for survival, they still experience food scarcity in getting food they want that goes above the basic amount provided. Over the years they’ve become more tied to global-capitalist systems, with about 60-80% of the food consumer being imported. As Dr. Hanna Garth says, “The break basket of Cuba is really coming from the global industrial food system.”
While the food rationing program, coupled with free socialized health care is a great baseline, many Cubans aspire to eat more fresh fruits and herbs, reclaiming the way that Cuban people used to eat. In a strange way, COVID-19 has pushed people towards this reality. With the economic problems of the pandemic, the Cuban government has been encouraging people to grow create their own gardens and grow their own food. Some people are grasping on to this as a way to move towards sustainability as a nation, and moving away from a global food systems.
Support the Black Farmer Fund
Image Credit: https://www.blackfarmerfund.org/
The mission of Black Farmer Fund is to create a thriving, resilient, and equitable food system by investing in black food systems entrepreneurs and communities in New York.
The Black Farmer Fund will also serve as a bridge for black communities to participate in creating a food system that benefits those within and outside of black communities.
They are defining wealth beyond financial and intellectual capital to include social capital and ancestral wisdom, to mitigate against climate change, exercise governance, strengthen solidarity, and preserve cultural and ancestral ways of being.
Meet our Guests
About Karen Washington
Image Credit :www.karenthefarmer.com
Karen Washington is a farmer and food justice advocate who has been working to make New York a better place to live and grow since 1985.
As a longtime member and former board president of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, she has fought for justice and fostered resilience in her borough and beyond through the power of organized community.
As a community gardener and board member of the New York Botanical Gardens, she works with Bronx neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens. As an advocate and former president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, she stands up and speaks out for garden protection and preservation. And as a co-founder of the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, she helped launch a City Farms Market, bringing fresh vegetables to the Bronx community.
In 2010, she co-founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS), an organization supporting Black growers in both urban and rural settings. She is a board member of Why Hunger, a grassroots support organization, and Farm School NYC, which leads workshops on growing food and food justice across the country. She is also the board president of Greenworker Cooperatives, which builds and sustains worker-owned green businesses to create a strong, local, and democratic economy rooted in racial and gender equity. Additionally, she is on the Board of Directors of Soul Fire Farm.
In 2012, Ebony magazine voted Karen one of their 100 most influential African-Americans in the country. And in 2014, she was the recipient of the James Beard Leadership Award.
Since retiring from physical therapy in 2014, she has been a co-owner and organic grower at Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York.
About Bryant terry
Image Credit: www.bryant-terry.com
Bryant Terry is a James Beard Award-Winning chef, educator, and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. Since 2015 he has been the Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco where he creates public programming at the intersection of food, farming, health, activism, art, culture, and the African Diaspora. In regard to his work, Bryant’s mentor Alice Waters says, “Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege.” San Francisco Magazine included Bryant among 11 Smartest People in the Bay Area Food Scene, and Fast Company named him one of 9 People Who Are Changing the Future of Food.
Bryant graduated from the Chef’s Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. He is a Ph.D. dropout who holds an M.A. in History with an emphasis on the African Diaspora from NYU, where he studied under Historian Robin D.G. Kelly. He lives in Oakland, California with his wife and two brilliant and beautiful children.
About Dr Hanna Garth
Image Credit: https://anthropology.princeton.edu/people/faculty/hanna-garth
Dr. Garth is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She completed her BA with a triple major in Anthropology, Hispanic Studies, and Policy Studies at Rice University, an MPH in Global Health at Boston University, and a PhD in Anthropology at UCLA. She held a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California, Irvine from 2015-2016. Hanna Garth will join the Anthropology department at Princeton in September 2021 as a sociocultural and medical anthropologist.
Her work addresses issues of inequality and structural violence, with regional interests in Latin American, the Caribbean, and the United States. She currently has active research projects in Cuba and Los Angeles. In Cuba, she has conducted research on household food acquisition practices and the changing Cuban food system. In Los Angeles, she has been researching the food justice movement and the organizations that work toward increasing healthy food access in low-income areas. Both projects address issues of race and gender based inequality.
