Not too long ago, I posted a request seeking black- and Latino/Hispanic- identified persons who practice a locavore philosophy on a number of listservs and forums to which I subscribe. I was attempting to identify those who were not engaged in food justice work, but ascribed to the taste/pleasure/principle aspect of sustainable food. In my work I meet a lot of people across racial and economic backgrounds, and wanted to confront the perception that blacks and Latinos/Hispanics saw the local foods movement as middle class, exclusive, and white.
For some, sustaining a local and organic dietary philosophy can be cost- and time-prohibitive. But for others, finding the time to make ethical and sustainable food choices are just as important as deciding where to live, work, and play.
In the neighborhood I do the majority of my sustainable food work in, many of the residents travel outside of the predominately black neighborhood to access sustainably and locally grown foods, despite having a supermarket that carries organic produce and packaged foods, four farmer’s markets, a host of community gardens, and a CSA. They commute a minimum of 30 minutes to shop at a food co-op in a middle- to upper-middle class neighborhood, Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s, or other more diversified farmer’s markets in predominately white areas.
Part of my work involves bringing awareness to sustainable food issues on the neighborhood level, engaging and encouraging residents to see value in what the neighborhood has to offer as opposed to what might be “better” in other neighborhoods. In an area that has experienced more than its share of redlining and other discriminatory practices between grocery store owners (many of whom live outside of the neighborhood) and residents, it is understandable why they feel the need to travel to and support businesses that treat them well.
Given this, I didn’t put too much stock into the nature of my request, keeping it simple and to the point.
But apparently, others did.
And their responses were very telling.
Not what the forum is dedicated to do
A moderator on one listserv rejected my post on the grounds that
We need to understand a little more about your request. Why would you only want to talk to certain groups of people?
As you represent a line of products, we were concerned that you may be using this as an opportunity to push your line, which is not what the forum is dedicated to do.
Let me know a little more information and I will review your request.
My post bothered him so much that he sent an email to the entire listserv, requesting that the moderators get in touch with him to discuss this further.
To back up a little, when I sent out my request, I made it clear that I was writing for a blog, so I’m not quite sure where he got that I was representing a line of products, because the links in my signature don’t allude to the selling of any “line of products”.
First, the world is made up of many different types of people – are we all one homogenous group able to speak for each other?
Second, the listserv is for “ anyone interested in growing, processing, distributing, selling or promoting New York foods to New York consumers,” (as stated on the home page) so even if I were representing a line of products, I should have been allowed to post. Did the moderator not know which listserv he was in charge of moderating?
I replied, attempting to clarify the reasons for my post.
He never responded.
My post did not reach the list.
Not holistic and disingenuous
I am on so many listservs that I had to create a separate email account just to catch them all and separate them from work and personal emails. I don’t read through all of them, and I don’t try to. Most of the time, I just scan subject lines for topics I’m interested in and delete others. I rarely respond to posts that I cannot make a valid contribution to, and when I do decide to respond, it’s simply for clarification. I recognize that others may not share this value and I’m OK with that. The “Delete” button is my best friend in the email interface.
Who gets to define what is real and relevant in the human experience? How does one determine that another is wrong simply because their experiences doesn’t fit neatly or comfortable into their own?
When I received the following email, I saw just how easy it is for one to feel this way.
Melissa,
I think that is NOT holistic and disingenuous to try to make a false distinction between food justice and local food issues, and by doing so, you would be perpetuating many of the stereotypes which are continuing to handicap the sustainable food movement.
I suggest you do some more research to understood [sic] the nuances of the movement, before embarking on your interview.Respectfully,
name withheld by me
I have to admit that I can be rather excitable at times. And let me tell you – this email got me going.
The Internet affords us a level of anonymity that gives us the courage to speak our truths in ways that we may not speak in real time, face to face situations. But on the flip side, it has also created an all-access pass into our personal and professional lives. You have to be careful – when you send your words through email, blogs, or social media, it NEVER goes away. It can be shared, printed, and saved for reasons, well, like this.
Why did the author of this e-mail feel comfortable sending this to me? Did my request upset her or make her uncomfortable? Is it because she didn’t know me and my work? Did this not knowing allow her to assume that I was new and uninformed? Did she believe that she was doing me a service by “enlightening” me on this subject? Was she suggesting that I wasn’t “qualified” to make such a request? What were her “qualifications” that made her feel comfortable in writing to me?
I didn’t respond to her right away, wanting to pull back and to see her response from all sides. When I asked a dear friend and colleague about it, she suggested that perhaps the author thought I was trying to create a distinct binary between food justice and local food issues when there wasn’t one.
Umm, okay. But, a binary does in fact exist and was created long before I brought myself into the conversation.
So I decided to ask her to clarify, and responded with this:
Dear (name withheld),
Would you mind pointing me to specific resources that can help me?
Because, my research has led me here, and here.
These are two resources that make clear the factual distinction between food justice and local food issues.
Would it have made you more comfortable if I had listed the reasons why I was looking for a specific demographic?
There are plenty of self-identified locavores who do not participate in the food justice aspect of sustainable food/community food security. I think it is disingenuous to assume that everyone is fighting the good fight for the same reasons.
Of which nuances are you referring to? The ones where the “faces” of the local and sustainable food movement, on the national and local level, are predominately white, able-bodied, and middle-class? The one where being white and talking about food issues is a disqualifier in a black neighborhood? The one where my CSA’s demographics are over 90% white in a neighborhood whose demographics are over 90% black? Or maybe the ones where when I to talk about local food to black people, they tell me that things like farmer’s markets, organic foods, composting, and 100-mile diets are all things that “white people do”.
Because, those are the nuances of the movement that I am privy to every day.
It’s disappointing that you didn’t first attempt to ask me who I was in relation to the sustainable food movement and what the purpose of the request was for, but instead assumed that I had not done enough “research” to understand the “nuances”.
If you had bothered to ask, you would have discovered that I indeed work from an holistic framework, one that attempts to be both inclusive to all and seeks to understand how some can be excluded.
While I didn’t bother to ask about her own background, I did do the very thing that damns us all: I Googled her.
Guess what I found? She contributes to a blog that explores sustainable food issues within a specific ethnic group’s experiences, but it was NOT holistic and disingenuous for me to seek out a specific group of people to explore the same issues.
How interesting.
If anything is “handicapping” the sustainable food movement, it is those individuals who believe that they are qualified to define others’ experiences, speak for everyone, and tell them what to do.
That neither of these authors felt inclined to write me back, that individuals of other ethnic groups wrote to me asking to be included, is testament to that.
To learn more about these nuances, click here.
Tags: food justice, sustainable food
