Not a Food Desert — Food Apartheid
By Breann Barnes / Spring 2020
On this planet we are lucky enough to enjoy thousands of varieties of vegetables, fruits, grains, and superfoods, many of which bring us happiness, health, and the power to fuel our bodies and minds. Food is what every human looks forward to everyday, we want it, we need it, each cell in our body depends on it. Eating the right foods is what keeps our brains functioning, organs working properly, builds muscle for us to walk. As humans we act as though we don’t have an elixir to live long and prosper when in reality food is healing. The power of food is immeasurable. It cures type 2 diabetes, heart diseases, helps autoimmune disorders, can cure depression, anxiety, the list is infinite. Food can help humans do amazing things, for instance an Ironman or marathon, it fuels us as a human race to go to space, advance technologies, and to think bigger.
I have been lucky enough to have food available to me whenever I felt hungry. We always had food growing up, I feel as though I had a well rounded diet. I was picky, many of my meals I would choose Easy Mac however my mom made sure I had my vegetables. We were never wasteful, my parents both grew up quite poor so they knew what every scrap meant. As I got older I learned the power of food as it did get me through sports in high school and got me where I am today. I eat foods that make me feel good. It is for this reason that I have such a passion for learning more about food deserts. More accurately I call this societal issue food apartheid because the availability of food choices disproportionately affects communities of color. A food desert sounds as though it is the dust bowl, as though it occurred naturally. This is not the case, so for the rest of the essay I will use the term food apartheid. It should be everyone’s choice to eat healthy or not, and I believe people that are experiencing food apartheid do not have this choice. I believe this needs to change.
Food is quite possibly the best thing on earth. A fresh squeezed OJ or your morning cup of coffee maybe with some juicy strawberries on the side, perhaps with a warm loaf of bread and honey. Or a cold fruit smoothie and scrambled eggs with spinach. To some, like myself these sound like wonderful breakfasts but to most fresh ingredients are extremely difficult to find, it is a luxury when they are near. In some urban neighborhoods in America people have to travel more than 2 miles to the closest grocery store with fresh produce. This may not seem like a lot but imagine twenty fast food restaurants on your walk to the grocery store. Would you still want to travel farther, and spend more after a long eight plus hour work day or would you settle for the fast food? Access to fresh foods is vital, no one should have to defend themselves from the big fast food chain advertisement, cheap prices, and target marketing.
In America on average there are four times more supermarkets in predominantly white neighborhoods then in neighborhoods of color. If that isn’t striking enough, a federal statistical agency classifies two corner stores selling liquor and food the same as having a Safeway and Vons in the neighborhood. Let me say it louder, a FEDERAL agency counts liquor stores as a supermarket. Last time I walked into a liquor store, I don’t remember seeing more than some overripe bananas with no price tag. Between 1989 and 2005 the price of fruits and vegetables has increased by about 75% while “the price of fatty foods dropped by more than 26 percent during the same period” (FEP). Don't forget the dozens of fast food chains scattered around these neighborhoods, “black communities have twice as many fast-food restaurants as white neighborhoods”(Hyman, Pg. 226). While it is cheaper in the short run, in the long run it can cause some serious problems. Diabetes and heart diseases shorten the lifespan of people experiencing food apartheid. The food that is available in some urban neighborhoods makes its residents sick and disabled. This is an undeniable form of oppression and discrimination.
Make no mistake, the design of these neighborhoods is absolutely intentional. Decades of racial zoning, corporatism and broad systemic oppression has left African Americans and minorities in a food apartheid. Subsequently we later blame these same people for being obese, lazy and expect them to pull themselves up from their bootstraps and work their way up. Even more unfortunate is that this is nothing new. Unlivable tenements of the gilded age riddled the streets of New York. Immigrants living in these tenements often faced no running water/sewage, eight to ten people or more to a room, and they were starving. People lived in these conditions for years and at the same time built America. Although we have progressed in some ways from these tenements, oppressors still manage to keep down certain people in society. History rhymes, we just have to open our eyes to see that communities of color are still being oppressed through the use of food.
Before we discuss today’s food deserts, we must first explore how it all began. Oppression of minorities in this country has been constant from day one, but how and what type of oppression and discrimination is ever changing. In order for the country to stay in the hands of WASPS, they had to find ways of keeping the masses spiritless and unaware. Ideologies are often unknowingly embedded into our government and I see some of these ideologies as a poison. We, the masses, are slowly being poisoned by these ideologies, they are used to keep us quiet, and suppress us. Each poisonous ideology such as corporatism reinforces oppression and this prevents society from solving this issue and moving forward. I will explain why corporatism and racial zoning are the building blocks for how only some communities are disproportionately affected.
Lawmakers, mostly WASPS at the time, wanted to keep their power so they had to imagine new ways of making sure certain groups stayed in their social class. Lawmakers proposed laws such as the Sherman Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. While these were great movements forward, they were often skewed to benefit only some groups. Benjamin Harrison summed up the Sherman Act best, “An act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints.” This sounds like a reasonable law and it was however the way in which it was used as an advantage to some and not others was wrong. The Sherman Act was used by the supreme court to make sugar refinery a monopoly of manufacturing not commerce therefore could not be regulated by the government. This later becomes an issue as the same justification was used for corn syrup cases. It later prevented the breakup of Standard Oil claiming the Sherman Act only barred “unreasonable combinations in restraint of trade” (Zinn, Pg. 34). Standard Oil was clearly a king of the gilded age, had far too much control and insurmountable power.
The fourteenth amendment says that corporations are people with all the rights granted to people, so … “government administrations should stay out of people’s business. If they overstep their bounds, they deny corporations and workers their freedom” (slide 36). By law, people and corporations were from this point forward equal. Although minor success came from the fourteenth amendment in favor of farmers, it was supposed to protect blacks but it ended up helping corporations significantly more. In a timespan of twenty years, the supreme court used the Fourteenth Amendment to rule on almost three hundred cases about corporations but only nineteen that dealt with black rights. The point becomes clear by law, we care more about corporations than the people. What should have been equality between people and corporations becomes a huge contradiction in America, unfortunately we will begin to see a very long era of profit over people. Between these two laws, corporations gained power that would forever change the course of American history, making the path to equality difficult, the quality of living horrifying and the pursuit of happiness incredibly challenging.
Eventually they got more creative with integrating laws such racial zoning. While in some small towns black people were being driven out by rules such as the sun down laws and fear of safety, local governments made it easier to keep white communities only white. Racial zoning basically says black people cannot buy on a block where it is all white and vice versa, support of this segregation was widespread including among politicians. Even though the fourteenth amendment was supposed to protect freed slaves, the supreme court later ruled racial zoning okay because they cannot interfere with who the property owner wants to sell to. Some cities, such as Norfolk and Kansas City designated racial areas in city planning as late as 1987. Some cities zoning laws were actually shot down by the supreme court, so zoning ordinances had to become more complex. The main reason for zoning could not be because of race so they went around the rules and still managed to draw physical color lines. The city planning got even worse, the neighborhood zones for blacks was also zoned for “industry, even polluting industry,... taverns, liquor stores, night clubs and houses of prostituion” (Rothstein, Pg. 79), these establishments were not allowed in neighborhoods where whites lived. Since colored neighborhoods were the only place industries, and businesses could develop, corporations planted their roots and brought their pollution and bad food with them. It is incredibly easy to poison only a certain group of people because of this division. Colored neighborhoods from this point on were facing unforeseeable challenges that would alter their lives unfairly.
Currently we are in a new era, I think it is best described as the profit over people era. Corporatism has diverged and there is no longer equality between corporations and people. It is now corporations over people. We can see this very clearly with our current administration. Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that says the government is too involved, it regulates too much. Therefore owners of big corporations with the help of super PACs lobby and donate to those who follow neo-liberal policies. Super PACs help pool money from different donors to fund candidates. Once in office, tax cuts are swiftly implemented in favor of those corporations and few elite. This entanglement between corporations and government is messy because politicians then start passing laws helping corporations make more profit. The money of big corporations is deep in the pockets of powerful politicians. We can see how this negatively affects the health and well being of the nation.
Food lobbying is one of our democracy’s biggest weaknesses. Corporations such as Coke, Pepsi, Monsanto all donate millions a year to curve laws in their favor, even favor positions that undermine public health. In 2018, three and half billion dollars were spent on lobbying. Ric Keller, a republican congressman, took hundreds of thousands from McDonalds and Wendy’s. He took about 30,000 from the National Restaurant Association that represents Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts and Dominos. He has also protected fast food chains from several obesity-related lawsuits. These people are in our government. “A government watchdog group Public Citizen found that at least 133 registered lobbyists were appointed to government positions in the Trump administration's first six months”(Hyman 108). Read it again! If none of that has upset you, a bigtime sugar lobbyist was one of the main advisers on the 2020 Dietary guidelines written and distributed by USDA. This has to stop, corporatism has literally poisoned millions of citizens. There has been so much deregulation and so much support for corporations to the point that people are dying.
Now that we see the depths of the problem, we can look at some solutions. Aside from corporatism as an ideology, one that is firmly ingrained in American society is competitive individualism. This says that one's hard work itself can lead to success, that it builds character and individual achievement. This ideology works really well together with consumerism for the big corporations of the world. To take these ideologies down is a big task but what I think they’re afraid of the most is solidarity. When the masses can come together, corporations get scared and come to their knees because they are dependent on consumerism. There are more poor and disadvantaged in America then the few billionaires we do have, right now the voices of those billionaires are the loudest but the voices of the masses can be exponentially louder. We need more elites and politicians that have a less greedy mindset and understand that when we oppress people, we also oppress ourselves. I think the reason people aren’t united right now is because of this competitive individualistic ideology, no one else is helping and looking out for me, why should I try to help others? Once people understand the power of a united force, no one has to experience food apartheid. We are not alone in this world but most of the nation acts as though we are at war with one another. People in communities can change the course of their neighborhood, coming together is the strongest force to help us overcome this obstacle.
It is easy to feel hopeless when approaching such a massive issue, I find myself sometimes quick to give up, but it is vital that we do not stop until this food apartheid has ended. Anyone can start in their own community with just a couple of friends, and there is no need to build a plan from the ground up. Groups such as Black Urban Growers and Soul Fire Farm are amazing models to follow. Black Urban Growers support black and rural farms in hopes of helping black leaders in the movement for food justice. The founder, Karen Washington turned empty lots in the Bronx into community gardens, created farmers markets and provided educational opportunities for locals! Karen’s ambition and success makes me so excited for the future and all the lives she has touched already. Soul Fire Farm understands how food apartheid is rooted into our history and is determined to bring communities of color justice. Founder Leah Penniman also has a full plan to shift perspective on farming, she provides food for communities suffering food apartheid and refugees affected by incarceration. These two companies are just examples of how much of a change can be made by the care and generosity of people in any community. Doing some research in your community is the first step, is there something similar to Black Urban Growers in your community? If so, volunteer! Follow the town propositions as well, are there petitions you can sign to reduce food injustice in your community or a neighboring community?
Whether you know it or not, everyone in some way is connected to food apartheid. You could be directly affected, or maybe it is people you know. If you are close enough to the issue, you know how painful it can be. For me, I find it incredibly upsetting and just want to help the cause. But perhaps you didn’t have the knowledge before, hopefully now you have some. For those who do not care as much I urge them to understand that we really are all connected. Most of the people affected by food apartheid work in the service industry or provide some kind of necessity in your community, if they are all getting sick and can’t work this means the service or item you want will not be there. If it isn’t even this direct, then economically for people who use government assistance, some of that is your tax dollars. If people were healthier, healthcare costs wouldn’t be so detrimental to our economy. And if none of that matters, I plea to you to care about the other people on this planet. We are all here together, not by choice and not for very long, show love and kindness. Also understand that other people receiving healthier food and perhaps a better life from it, does not take anything away from you. Their pursuit of happiness and health does not mean less happiness and health for you. You cannot take anything with you, and I know for a fact it feels better to give than to be greedy!
Work Cited
“Food Deserts.” FoodEmpowermentProject.
HYMAN, MARK. FOOD FIX: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities and Our Planet - One Bite at a Time, 2019.
Brones, Anna. “Food Apartheid: the Root of the Problem with America's Groceries.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 May 2018.
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492-2001. HarperCollins, 2003.
Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Twohig, Niall. WCWP Powerpoint Slides. Slide Deck 3, 4, 9. SS2 2020p