September 11, 2024 • 34 mins
We are talking about food apartheid. The fact that some people in some places have more food choices that they need, while others have no good food choices at all. And it’s not an accident. Decisions are being made that keep healthy foods in some neighborhoods and keeps them out of other neighborhoods. It’s not right.
So let’s get into it on this episode of the Environmental Justice Lab.
Resources:
Food Apartheid: Racialized Access to Healthy Affordable Food
Food Swamps Predict Obesity Rates Better Than Food Deserts in the United States
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
YouTube: @envjusticelab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen!
So let’s get into it on this episode of the Environmental Justice Lab.
Resources:
Food Apartheid: Racialized Access to Healthy Affordable Food
Food Swamps Predict Obesity Rates Better Than Food Deserts in the United States
Connect with our Environmental Justice Lab community:
Instagram: @envjusticelab
YouTube: @envjusticelab
Email: theenvironmentaljusticelab@gmail.com
Support our work by joining the Supporters Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-environmental-justice-lab--5583745/support
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you listen!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab. I am your host,
doctor Leslie Joseph. Thank you so much for joining me,
and thank you for your patience. It's been a long time.
I think the last episode was in July, and so
the month of August I needed a break and we
had to get ready for school. So school's back in session,
students are going back to their classes, and it's a
(00:23):
good feeling to know that we're back on campus with
that youthful energy, ready for another fall semester. And so
I took a little pause from the podcast, but we're
back and better than ever, and so I'm so glad
you're listening. Thank you for tuning in. I am doctor
Leslie Joseph. This is the Environmental Justice Lab. And when
(00:46):
we last spoke, when we were last on the podcast,
we were talking about climate apartheid. It's part of our
broader series looking at environmental apartheid. This idea that the inequities,
the inequality that we see in the environment is not
(01:07):
by chance, it is not just an unfortunate circumstance that
people are enduring living conditions that are so bad, so awful,
and oh, it's just unfortunate that these things happen or oh, well,
you just happen to live on the wrong side of town,
and so once you start doing better, you can move
(01:30):
to the areas where it's more prosperous and affluent. That's
not what's happening. That is not what's going on. Environmental
apartheid is real. It is deliberate, and it is structured
and systematized to keep certain people in certain places and
(01:52):
to relegate certain resources to certain groups. It's not a coincidence.
It is not by chance. And so we started off
a few months ago at this point talking about environmental apartheid,
and then what I said was, there's different layers to
this environmental apartheid system. It's happening all over the world.
(02:16):
There's climate apartheid, there's food apartheid, and there's infrastructure apartheid.
And I'm saying it goes under this umbrella of environmental
apartheide that we see and that we have experienced to
some degree, depending on who you are and where you
are at some point in your life. And so the
(02:38):
last episode was on climate apartheid. I would encourage you
to listen to it, go back and refresh your memory,
refresh your mental energy. To think about this topic because
today we are talking about food apartheid. I don't know
where you are in the world. I don't know where
(03:00):
you get your food. I don't know how you prepare
your food and how you feed yourself and your family
and your friends. But there are parts of the United States,
parts around the world where food is just not accessible.
It is not available, and if it is, it's the
(03:22):
high sugar junk food variety that will only cause health
problems if you continue to eat it. And so many
people are dealing with the reality that they cannot get
fresh food, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, They can't prepare the
food that they know is good for them and good
(03:43):
for their families. And there's a reason for that, and
I'm going to argue on the episode today that the
reason is food apartheid. Food apartheid is that reason, and
so please stay tuned. This is the Environmental Justice Lab.
(04:26):
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab. I am your host,
doctor Leslie Joseph. Thank you so much for joining me,
and we are talking about food apartheid on this episode.
We're talking about the fact that many of us do
not have access to the healthy food that we need
we cannot have healthy diets, we cannot get what's needed
(04:47):
for ourselves and our families because of food apartheid. That's
why you may have thought you just lived in a
bad part of town. You may have thought, Oh, I
just need to get a little bit more money and
move over there to that other side of town where
they have the grocery stores, they have all the fresh markets,
they have all of the amenities that can help me
(05:09):
live a healthier life. Let me just tell you right
now two things about that. One, you shouldn't have to move. Everyone,
no matter where they are, no matter who they are,
should have access to healthy food, to fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs,
(05:34):
and spices, all the great things that allow you to
make an amazing meal to feed your family. You should
be able to get that where you are. You shouldn't
have to go and move your family to another part
of town, another part of the city to have that access.
That's number one. Number two, the reason that certain parts
(05:56):
of town don't have that kind of access is not
simply because it's that part of town. It's of who
lives there. It's because of the fact that we have
a system in place that benefits certain groups over and
above others. And if certain groups live in certain areas,
(06:21):
those areas will be left behind, they will be abandoned,
and they will not have access to what they need.
That is the essence of environmental injustice, the essence of
environmental racism, the essence of why there is a movement
(06:43):
to change that, because it's not a coincidence. It is
not by happenstance that you are living in the place
where there is nothing available to you. It is not
by chance. And so today we're talking about the food
(07:04):
aspects of this environmental injustice, this environmental apartheid that exists.
And so for a long time, when we talk about
food and lack of access, people will talk about food deserts, right.
They will talk about this idea that you're living in
an area, but it's just nothing around, it's deserted, it's
(07:26):
barren when it comes to food, and that's carried the
day for a long time. People would say things like, hey,
we need to bring restaurants, we need to bring stores,
supermarkets into this deserted area because people need to have
(07:48):
these foods available to them when they need them. And
it was a good sentiment, right, It was a good
idea to have that kind of framing because if you
just look out, you might feel as though that's where
you live. It's a food desert, and we need better options,
(08:10):
or we need some options when it comes to food.
But here's the problem with the idea of a food desert. One,
when you say desert, you kind of assume that it
happened on its own, that it occurred naturally, right, right,
Like a real desert is this dry, barren place where
(08:31):
it doesn't rain, and it gets hot during the day
and cold at night, and it's just the way it is,
and it's just a part of the environment. And so
you can go into a desert and try to make
it something, but if you don't, it's merely because that's
just the way that area is, and that's how it's
always been. Well, we know that these food deserts don't
(08:58):
occur on their own, they're naturally occurring the way of
real desert occurs. We have food deserts because people, companies,
policymakers have intentionally deliberately abandoned these areas and moved out
(09:19):
and away from these areas and make conscious decisions to
not have stores there, to not have supermarkets there, to
not have farmers' markets there. That was an intentional decision,
right based on zoning practices and zoning codes, and how
you lend money to companies and corporations to build their businesses,
(09:45):
and how you decide which part of town is worth
investing in and making vibrant and making it an exciting
place to be. These are decisions that are made by
policymakers on city councils and offices, in governor's offices, in
white houses. These are decisions that are made intentionally to
(10:10):
leave some areas with nothing and other areas with an overabundance.
So let's not talk about food deserts because it's not
a desert. People live there, their homes, their schools, their
community centers, there's some parks in some instances. There's life
(10:36):
in these areas. These areas are not these barren, desolate
wastelands that people are begging to have revived, which is
my second point. My second point is these food deserts
are not just empty spaces with nothing. It's not. There's
(10:59):
people there, there's homes there, there's life there. People are
living their lives, raising their families in these areas. We
need to put practices in place that recognize that there
are people here who deserve, who are worthy of having
(11:23):
good food options, good retail stores, places to go where
they can get what they need to provide for themselves
and their families. We need to think about things that way.
Let's not talk about food deserts. I don't want any
(11:44):
of you listening to come to me or anyone else
and talk about how somebody lives in the food desert.
They don't. They live in a part of town that
has been abandoned. They live in a part of a
city or a territory that has been deliberately excluded from
being developed and being invested in. That's where they live.
(12:07):
They don't live in the food desert. And so let's
think about that for one second. There are no food deserts.
There are only places where people have decided not to
put healthy food stores. That's what we have. And so
to combat this idea of a food desert or a
(12:30):
low access food area, which is what the USDA would
call it, the USDA being the United States Department of Agriculture,
they have maps that show you where there are low
access food areas well. That's true, they are low access,
but there's a reason why there's a reason why. It's
(12:53):
not by chance, it's not simply because we forgot to
put a store there. It's because we've made decisions not
to specifically and deliberately. And so back in the eighties
or I think the nineties, a food leader of food
justice activists advocate. Her name is Karen Washington. She developed
(13:17):
the term food apartheid, and what she says is that
food apartheid is how we can describe the structural inequalities
that limit access to healthy food for low income communities
and communities of color. Right, So, her point, and I
(13:39):
agree with her point, is that the limits on access
to affordable food is driven by systemic racism and discrimination
and oppression, and because of that, we have higher rates
(14:01):
of disease, chronic disease in these communities. Right, You've seen
the statistics, higher rates of cardiovascular disease, heart disease, asthma,
lung disease, all of these things, and it seems as
though they simply occur on racial and ethnic lines. Oh,
(14:22):
it seems like, you know, African Americans are more susceptible
to this. It seems like Hispanic Americans are more dealing
with this, and it seems like. But part of it
is this reality of food apartheid. The fact, and it's
a fact that we are not providing options that are
(14:45):
healthy and that give people the opportunity, just the opportunity
to eat healthy and to live healthy lives. We don't
do that. And so this food apartheid system, this food
apartheid apparatus, is directly harming black communities, directly harming Brown communities,
(15:16):
directly harming indigenous communities, directly harming immigrant communities. There's no
way around it. That is what is happening. That is
what we're experiencing, and that is what we see not
only in America but all around the world. Food apartheid
(15:39):
is running rampant in our food systems. Why can't we
get the food that we need when we need it?
Why is it When I go teach at Benedict College,
and historically black college in the Capital City, and I
look around the campus, I only see dollar stores and
(16:02):
fast food places and convenience stores. I don't have a supermarket,
I don't have a farmer's market. I don't have any
access to healthy food. And then we get upset with
the students for eating the way that they eat well,
what's their option. They don't have any options. There's no
(16:24):
place to go. They don't have a vehicle. They can't
just drive two, three four miles to the nearest grocery store,
even though we live in the heart of the city. Meanwhile,
if I go to the University of South Carolina, a large,
predominantly white college in the same city, about a mile
(16:47):
away from Bend At College, if I go there, there's
a nice public supermarket that's in the vicinity. There's a
food Lion, large supermarket in the vicinity. There's a farmer's
market that comes on campus every Wednesday. In our vicinity.
(17:07):
We have salad bars and healthy food places, restaurants on campus.
There's no problems. There, plenty of food, plenty of access.
There's no reason to say that you can't get what
you need when you are on the campus like the
University of South Carolina and all of that is around you.
(17:30):
Why the difference, Why is such a disparity in the
two universities in the same city a mile apart. The
answer is easy. It's food apartheid. And you can blame
whoever you want to blame. But the reality is decisions
were made that we're going to build up and invest
(17:52):
in this part of the city where this university is,
and we're not going to invest in this part of
town where this other university is. And I'm working on
research now that shows the difference across this state of
South Carolina, how the food environment is different around the
(18:16):
black colleges and universities versus the predominantly white universities. It's
very clear, the data is very clear. I'm going to
try to get that paper published by the end of
the year. It's maddening that that's the reality that these
students have to deal with no fault of their own.
(18:38):
You can talk about, oh, you should live here, live there,
live somewhere nicer. They can't. They're just going to college,
trying to get a degree, trying to prepare themselves for
a future. But the university and the area around it
is outside their control and they're forced to deal with
what's available. And so that's a big problem. And so
(19:03):
when you start talking to people about food and you
start discussing these systems, you might hear some terms. I
want you to be aware of these terms. Some of
these terms are helpful, some of them just aren't. And
so I want to kind of provide these food related
terms to you, just to make you aware of how
(19:23):
the discussion could or couldn't go, depending on who you
talk to. So the first one obviously food desert. I'm saying,
get rid of that term. Right. The definition, the official
definition is an area in which it is difficult to
buy affordable or good quality fresh food. That's the definition
(19:44):
of food desert. I'm here to say that phrase, that
term is not useful. Get rid of it. Here's another term,
food swamps. I learned this term maybe about a month
ago while I was doing the research. A food swamp
is an area with a high density of places that
(20:07):
sell high calorie fast food, junk food, and other unhealthy items.
Now that term could be useful because what people might
want to tell you is that, no, there are places
to get food around here. There are places to go
and buy healthy foods. Look, I see that grocery store there,
I see that store over there. What's the problem. Well,
(20:29):
the problem might be that there may be places to
get food, but that food just isn't healthy and it
just isn't good for you nutrition wise. There's no value
in it. So if you live somewhere and there's a
dollar store, and there's a couple of fast food places,
and there's a pancake restaurant, and a bunch of gas
(20:52):
stations with convenience stores that claim they sell groceries at
the top of their building and they call themselves markets. Well,
those aren't healthy places to get your food. And so
sure we can say that we have food around us,
(21:12):
but it's not good food for us. And so food
swamp is that term. You should use that term when
you can, because I think it's a very good description
of what we currently see now. We don't usually see
what we used to call deserts. Deserts for places where
there's just nothing, there's nothing at all. That's rare. If
you go out into a more rural area you might
(21:34):
see that, but now it's pretty rare. What you see
more often now are food swamps. Multiple dollar stores, multiple pharmacies,
multiple multiple gas stations, multiple convenience stores. That kind of stuff.
That's what you might see more of than anything else.
(21:55):
So a food swamp, it's a good term. So I'm
saying food desert, get rid of it, food swamp, we
can keep it. Food mirage. Mirage is pretty good. So
a food mirage is an area where there are lots
of grocery stores and supermarkets, but the food is too
(22:16):
expensive for the people that live there. So this happens
a lot more in the larger urban areas, you know,
big cities, where they'll bring in a fancy whole foods
market or really high end grocery store to try to
revitalize the area and try to bring in more affluence.
(22:37):
And so what you'll see is people saying, hey, we
are investing in your part of town. We just put
this particular store there. Well, we appreciate it. However, the
food that you sell is at a price point that
we cannot afford, and so essentially we are still in
the same situation because you're bringing in options that we
(22:59):
can't truly engage because it's too expensive. So it's a mirage.
It's not real. It's there, but it's not available to
us who don't have the resources to go to that
store and purchase what we need for our family to
eat well. And so it's a food mirage. And so
in many cases you might see that you might be
(23:20):
made aware of food mirages. You know, I haven't lived
in any most of the times I've seen the swamps
and some deserts, some just empty places, but no mirage
is yet maybe you have, maybe you've lived in a
place where you see that really big, fancy grocery store
(23:42):
that just came into town, and you wish you could
shop there, but it's just too expensive. It's just too much,
and you know, if you try to buy food for
four people, a family of four, you won't make it
through the week. It's a food mirage. And so as
a result of all those different things, our government, the USDA,
(24:04):
the United States Department of Agriculture, has these definitions of
food insecurity, and so that's the more academic term that
we've kind of latched onto. When we talk about food,
we talk about food insecurity. And so there's high food security,
and it is very high food in security. And so
(24:24):
if you're food insecure but it's low, then you are
able to get food, but it's not the best, but
you're able to manage, but you wish you had something
different and more and something that's healthier. And so we
will say you have low food security. You know, you're
(24:49):
not reducing the amount of food that you eat. It's
just not very healthy food, but you're still making it
through from day to day. Now, if you have high
food insecurity or very low food security, basically you don't
have the food you need and you can't get it.
(25:11):
And so what they'll say is you report multiple situations
where you're eating has been disrupted and you've had to
reduce the amount of food you eat because it's just
not available. You don't have either the resources to get
it or there's no place to go to purchase it.
And so food insecurity is a problem, and so in
the academic space, we're trying to understand it more clearly,
(25:33):
what's causing it, how to deal with it, who's susceptible
to it, all those things, And so food insecurity is
a term you'll read about and that people will report
on in the news, But it doesn't really tell a
whole story, does it. It really doesn't, because we don't
know why any particular person is food insecurity. You will
(25:57):
say that you are. You answer the questions, and we
can see that you are, But why what's behind it? Are?
Is it because you're poor? That's why you don't have
any money. You need to get a better job, get
more education, and then you won't be food insecure. It's
not likely the more likely scenario is that you live
(26:20):
in a place that's been cut off from investment, and
as a result, there's nothing there for you except the
worst types of food imaginable to purchase and eat. And
so because of this, people have been fighting Karen Washington,
all these different justice organizations. They're pushing and fighting for
(26:44):
a couple of things that I want to bring to
your attention. One is food sovereignty. Food sovereignty. So food
sovereignty is defined as the right of communities to control
the production and distribution of their food and to define
(27:06):
their own food systems. So they're in control. They have
the ability to dictate and determine what kind of food
they eat, where it comes from, and how they'll get it.
Because they have food sovereignty, most affluent areas, most majority
(27:27):
white areas, they have food sovereignty. They can go get
whatever they want, whenever they want, from whoever they want
to get it from. It's not a problem. If I
want to go to grocery, I go to grocery store.
I want to go to a farmer's market, I go
to a farmer's market. I want to go to a
farm and pick it myself. I can do that because
I have sovereignty. I have control, complete control over how
(27:48):
I get my food. Unlike many Black communities and many
Brown communities who literally have to scrounge whatever is near
them and hope that there's something there they can eat
that they can feed to their families. They don't have
(28:09):
food sovereignty. They don't have the ability to just get
what they want, when they want it, how they want it.
But that's the fight, right, that's the fight we're pushing
for food sovereignty. Food sovereignty. The other concept that's being
fought for is food justice. Food justice. It's not the
(28:35):
exact same thing as sovereignty, but it's very close. The
idea is that when there's food justice, there is universal
access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food for everyone,
while also advocating for the well being and safety of
(28:58):
those who are involved in the food production process. So
think about that. So the justice is not just that
we all have food to eat, but it's also that
we're able to treat the people who produce that food
with fairness, with justice, and equity, as opposed to how
we often do them, which is making them sweat. Twelve
(29:25):
fourteen sixteen hour days in a factory form to create
what we want to eat, or slaving like literally slaving
in the fields, picking all day, all night to get
us the food that we need with no rights, no
(29:45):
living wages, no health benefits, no protection, no adherence to
any safety protocols. Food justice won't allow that. So it's
not just about getting the food that we can eat,
but it's how it gets to us and treating those
workers with the respect and dignity that they deserve because
they're providing food for us to eat and for us
(30:08):
to sustain our families. So that's what the fight is about.
Food sovereignty and food justice. Now that fight is a
direct fight against food apartheid. Let's be very clear. We're
not trying to simply reduce food insecurity. It sounds nice,
(30:31):
and when I write a proposal, i'll write that in there.
But the fight is against food apartheid. It's about changing
the policy. It's about recognizing people as people and treating
them as you should treat any person, with dignity and respect.
It is not about simply trying our best to help
(30:53):
food insecure families get whatever we can get for them.
We need two that's part of the fight. But the
fight's much bigger because there are ways to help individual
families make it through different difficult seasons, but without changing
(31:14):
the way the system works, and without dismantling the racist
and discriminatory practices that a lot of planning committees and
a lot of councils take. Will always see these levels
of food and security. We'll always see these levels of
poor health outcomes as a result of not having the
(31:35):
food that you need. We'll always see it. And so
to avoid that, we need to dismantle this system of
food apartheid. Right, it's a system, it's not by chance.
I'll give you an example. We'll talk so I'm getting
(31:58):
ahead of myself. In part two, we're going to talk
about specific ways that we see food apartheid. But I'll
give you just a teaser, just a teaser. In America,
we give out billions of dollars in farm subsidies to
assist farmers to help them develop their land produce crops
(32:22):
for our food systems. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of
those subsidies go to white farmers. The vast majority black farmers.
They're out here too, doing their best on their land,
trying to produce for their communities, for their cities, for
(32:44):
the country, and they do not have the same access
to these subsidies, to these government programs that these white
farmers have. That's not a coincidence. That's not just a
matter of not understanding the system of being shut out
of the system completely. Because it's an apartheid system that
(33:06):
it's keeping certain people in certain places without the requisite
resources to do what's needed to provide. It's food apartheid.
There's so many more examples of it that we'll get
into next time, but for now, just know that food
(33:26):
apartheid is a real thing that happens all around the world,
and that for those of us. If you know anyone
who is struggling to feed their families, who is struggling
to consistently put food on the table for their children,
who are struggling to have what they need, take another
(33:48):
look at this system that they're in and ask yourself,
what's the true root cause of that inability to provide
that food. I would argue it's food apartheid. Overall, it's
environmental apartheid, but here in this instance, it's food apartheid,
(34:10):
and it needs to stop. We need to confront it,
call it out and change the system so that everybody
can have what they need whenever they need it, so
we can have food justice for all. And that's our episode.
Thank you so much for listening to the Environmental Justice
(34:32):
Lab where we are for the people and for the planet.
I will see you next time.
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab. I am your host,
doctor Leslie Joseph. Thank you so much for joining me,
and thank you for your patience. It's been a long time.
I think the last episode was in July, and so
the month of August I needed a break and we
had to get ready for school. So school's back in session,
students are going back to their classes, and it's a
(00:23):
good feeling to know that we're back on campus with
that youthful energy, ready for another fall semester. And so
I took a little pause from the podcast, but we're
back and better than ever, and so I'm so glad
you're listening. Thank you for tuning in. I am doctor
Leslie Joseph. This is the Environmental Justice Lab. And when
(00:46):
we last spoke, when we were last on the podcast,
we were talking about climate apartheid. It's part of our
broader series looking at environmental apartheid. This idea that the inequities,
the inequality that we see in the environment is not
(01:07):
by chance, it is not just an unfortunate circumstance that
people are enduring living conditions that are so bad, so awful,
and oh, it's just unfortunate that these things happen or oh, well,
you just happen to live on the wrong side of town,
and so once you start doing better, you can move
(01:30):
to the areas where it's more prosperous and affluent. That's
not what's happening. That is not what's going on. Environmental
apartheid is real. It is deliberate, and it is structured
and systematized to keep certain people in certain places and
(01:52):
to relegate certain resources to certain groups. It's not a coincidence.
It is not by chance. And so we started off
a few months ago at this point talking about environmental apartheid,
and then what I said was, there's different layers to
this environmental apartheid system. It's happening all over the world.
(02:16):
There's climate apartheid, there's food apartheid, and there's infrastructure apartheid.
And I'm saying it goes under this umbrella of environmental
apartheide that we see and that we have experienced to
some degree, depending on who you are and where you
are at some point in your life. And so the
(02:38):
last episode was on climate apartheid. I would encourage you
to listen to it, go back and refresh your memory,
refresh your mental energy. To think about this topic because
today we are talking about food apartheid. I don't know
where you are in the world. I don't know where
(03:00):
you get your food. I don't know how you prepare
your food and how you feed yourself and your family
and your friends. But there are parts of the United States,
parts around the world where food is just not accessible.
It is not available, and if it is, it's the
(03:22):
high sugar junk food variety that will only cause health
problems if you continue to eat it. And so many
people are dealing with the reality that they cannot get
fresh food, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, They can't prepare the
food that they know is good for them and good
(03:43):
for their families. And there's a reason for that, and
I'm going to argue on the episode today that the
reason is food apartheid. Food apartheid is that reason, and
so please stay tuned. This is the Environmental Justice Lab.
(04:26):
Welcome to the Environmental Justice Lab. I am your host,
doctor Leslie Joseph. Thank you so much for joining me,
and we are talking about food apartheid on this episode.
We're talking about the fact that many of us do
not have access to the healthy food that we need
we cannot have healthy diets, we cannot get what's needed
(04:47):
for ourselves and our families because of food apartheid. That's
why you may have thought you just lived in a
bad part of town. You may have thought, Oh, I
just need to get a little bit more money and
move over there to that other side of town where
they have the grocery stores, they have all the fresh markets,
they have all of the amenities that can help me
(05:09):
live a healthier life. Let me just tell you right
now two things about that. One, you shouldn't have to move. Everyone,
no matter where they are, no matter who they are,
should have access to healthy food, to fresh fruit, vegetables, herbs,
(05:34):
and spices, all the great things that allow you to
make an amazing meal to feed your family. You should
be able to get that where you are. You shouldn't
have to go and move your family to another part
of town, another part of the city to have that access.
That's number one. Number two, the reason that certain parts
(05:56):
of town don't have that kind of access is not
simply because it's that part of town. It's of who
lives there. It's because of the fact that we have
a system in place that benefits certain groups over and
above others. And if certain groups live in certain areas,
(06:21):
those areas will be left behind, they will be abandoned,
and they will not have access to what they need.
That is the essence of environmental injustice, the essence of
environmental racism, the essence of why there is a movement
(06:43):
to change that, because it's not a coincidence. It is
not by happenstance that you are living in the place
where there is nothing available to you. It is not
by chance. And so today we're talking about the food
(07:04):
aspects of this environmental injustice, this environmental apartheid that exists.
And so for a long time, when we talk about
food and lack of access, people will talk about food deserts, right.
They will talk about this idea that you're living in
an area, but it's just nothing around, it's deserted, it's
(07:26):
barren when it comes to food, and that's carried the
day for a long time. People would say things like, hey,
we need to bring restaurants, we need to bring stores,
supermarkets into this deserted area because people need to have
(07:48):
these foods available to them when they need them. And
it was a good sentiment, right, It was a good
idea to have that kind of framing because if you
just look out, you might feel as though that's where
you live. It's a food desert, and we need better options,
(08:10):
or we need some options when it comes to food.
But here's the problem with the idea of a food desert. One,
when you say desert, you kind of assume that it
happened on its own, that it occurred naturally, right, right,
Like a real desert is this dry, barren place where
(08:31):
it doesn't rain, and it gets hot during the day
and cold at night, and it's just the way it is,
and it's just a part of the environment. And so
you can go into a desert and try to make
it something, but if you don't, it's merely because that's
just the way that area is, and that's how it's
always been. Well, we know that these food deserts don't
(08:58):
occur on their own, they're naturally occurring the way of
real desert occurs. We have food deserts because people, companies,
policymakers have intentionally deliberately abandoned these areas and moved out
(09:19):
and away from these areas and make conscious decisions to
not have stores there, to not have supermarkets there, to
not have farmers' markets there. That was an intentional decision,
right based on zoning practices and zoning codes, and how
you lend money to companies and corporations to build their businesses,
(09:45):
and how you decide which part of town is worth
investing in and making vibrant and making it an exciting
place to be. These are decisions that are made by
policymakers on city councils and offices, in governor's offices, in
white houses. These are decisions that are made intentionally to
(10:10):
leave some areas with nothing and other areas with an overabundance.
So let's not talk about food deserts because it's not
a desert. People live there, their homes, their schools, their
community centers, there's some parks in some instances. There's life
(10:36):
in these areas. These areas are not these barren, desolate
wastelands that people are begging to have revived, which is
my second point. My second point is these food deserts
are not just empty spaces with nothing. It's not. There's
(10:59):
people there, there's homes there, there's life there. People are
living their lives, raising their families in these areas. We
need to put practices in place that recognize that there
are people here who deserve, who are worthy of having
(11:23):
good food options, good retail stores, places to go where
they can get what they need to provide for themselves
and their families. We need to think about things that way.
Let's not talk about food deserts. I don't want any
(11:44):
of you listening to come to me or anyone else
and talk about how somebody lives in the food desert.
They don't. They live in a part of town that
has been abandoned. They live in a part of a
city or a territory that has been deliberately excluded from
being developed and being invested in. That's where they live.
(12:07):
They don't live in the food desert. And so let's
think about that for one second. There are no food deserts.
There are only places where people have decided not to
put healthy food stores. That's what we have. And so
to combat this idea of a food desert or a
(12:30):
low access food area, which is what the USDA would
call it, the USDA being the United States Department of Agriculture,
they have maps that show you where there are low
access food areas well. That's true, they are low access,
but there's a reason why there's a reason why. It's
(12:53):
not by chance, it's not simply because we forgot to
put a store there. It's because we've made decisions not
to specifically and deliberately. And so back in the eighties
or I think the nineties, a food leader of food
justice activists advocate. Her name is Karen Washington. She developed
(13:17):
the term food apartheid, and what she says is that
food apartheid is how we can describe the structural inequalities
that limit access to healthy food for low income communities
and communities of color. Right, So, her point, and I
(13:39):
agree with her point, is that the limits on access
to affordable food is driven by systemic racism and discrimination
and oppression, and because of that, we have higher rates
(14:01):
of disease, chronic disease in these communities. Right, You've seen
the statistics, higher rates of cardiovascular disease, heart disease, asthma,
lung disease, all of these things, and it seems as
though they simply occur on racial and ethnic lines. Oh,
(14:22):
it seems like, you know, African Americans are more susceptible
to this. It seems like Hispanic Americans are more dealing
with this, and it seems like. But part of it
is this reality of food apartheid. The fact, and it's
a fact that we are not providing options that are
(14:45):
healthy and that give people the opportunity, just the opportunity
to eat healthy and to live healthy lives. We don't
do that. And so this food apartheid system, this food
apartheid apparatus, is directly harming black communities, directly harming Brown communities,
(15:16):
directly harming indigenous communities, directly harming immigrant communities. There's no
way around it. That is what is happening. That is
what we're experiencing, and that is what we see not
only in America but all around the world. Food apartheid
(15:39):
is running rampant in our food systems. Why can't we
get the food that we need when we need it?
Why is it When I go teach at Benedict College,
and historically black college in the Capital City, and I
look around the campus, I only see dollar stores and
(16:02):
fast food places and convenience stores. I don't have a supermarket,
I don't have a farmer's market. I don't have any
access to healthy food. And then we get upset with
the students for eating the way that they eat well,
what's their option. They don't have any options. There's no
(16:24):
place to go. They don't have a vehicle. They can't
just drive two, three four miles to the nearest grocery store,
even though we live in the heart of the city. Meanwhile,
if I go to the University of South Carolina, a large,
predominantly white college in the same city, about a mile
(16:47):
away from Bend At College, if I go there, there's
a nice public supermarket that's in the vicinity. There's a
food Lion, large supermarket in the vicinity. There's a farmer's
market that comes on campus every Wednesday. In our vicinity.
(17:07):
We have salad bars and healthy food places, restaurants on campus.
There's no problems. There, plenty of food, plenty of access.
There's no reason to say that you can't get what
you need when you are on the campus like the
University of South Carolina and all of that is around you.
(17:30):
Why the difference, Why is such a disparity in the
two universities in the same city a mile apart. The
answer is easy. It's food apartheid. And you can blame
whoever you want to blame. But the reality is decisions
were made that we're going to build up and invest
(17:52):
in this part of the city where this university is,
and we're not going to invest in this part of
town where this other university is. And I'm working on
research now that shows the difference across this state of
South Carolina, how the food environment is different around the
(18:16):
black colleges and universities versus the predominantly white universities. It's
very clear, the data is very clear. I'm going to
try to get that paper published by the end of
the year. It's maddening that that's the reality that these
students have to deal with no fault of their own.
(18:38):
You can talk about, oh, you should live here, live there,
live somewhere nicer. They can't. They're just going to college,
trying to get a degree, trying to prepare themselves for
a future. But the university and the area around it
is outside their control and they're forced to deal with
what's available. And so that's a big problem. And so
(19:03):
when you start talking to people about food and you
start discussing these systems, you might hear some terms. I
want you to be aware of these terms. Some of
these terms are helpful, some of them just aren't. And
so I want to kind of provide these food related
terms to you, just to make you aware of how
(19:23):
the discussion could or couldn't go, depending on who you
talk to. So the first one obviously food desert. I'm saying,
get rid of that term. Right. The definition, the official
definition is an area in which it is difficult to
buy affordable or good quality fresh food. That's the definition
(19:44):
of food desert. I'm here to say that phrase, that
term is not useful. Get rid of it. Here's another term,
food swamps. I learned this term maybe about a month
ago while I was doing the research. A food swamp
is an area with a high density of places that
(20:07):
sell high calorie fast food, junk food, and other unhealthy items.
Now that term could be useful because what people might
want to tell you is that, no, there are places
to get food around here. There are places to go
and buy healthy foods. Look, I see that grocery store there,
I see that store over there. What's the problem. Well,
(20:29):
the problem might be that there may be places to
get food, but that food just isn't healthy and it
just isn't good for you nutrition wise. There's no value
in it. So if you live somewhere and there's a
dollar store, and there's a couple of fast food places,
and there's a pancake restaurant, and a bunch of gas
(20:52):
stations with convenience stores that claim they sell groceries at
the top of their building and they call themselves markets. Well,
those aren't healthy places to get your food. And so
sure we can say that we have food around us,
(21:12):
but it's not good food for us. And so food
swamp is that term. You should use that term when
you can, because I think it's a very good description
of what we currently see now. We don't usually see
what we used to call deserts. Deserts for places where
there's just nothing, there's nothing at all. That's rare. If
you go out into a more rural area you might
(21:34):
see that, but now it's pretty rare. What you see
more often now are food swamps. Multiple dollar stores, multiple pharmacies,
multiple multiple gas stations, multiple convenience stores. That kind of stuff.
That's what you might see more of than anything else.
(21:55):
So a food swamp, it's a good term. So I'm
saying food desert, get rid of it, food swamp, we
can keep it. Food mirage. Mirage is pretty good. So
a food mirage is an area where there are lots
of grocery stores and supermarkets, but the food is too
(22:16):
expensive for the people that live there. So this happens
a lot more in the larger urban areas, you know,
big cities, where they'll bring in a fancy whole foods
market or really high end grocery store to try to
revitalize the area and try to bring in more affluence.
(22:37):
And so what you'll see is people saying, hey, we
are investing in your part of town. We just put
this particular store there. Well, we appreciate it. However, the
food that you sell is at a price point that
we cannot afford, and so essentially we are still in
the same situation because you're bringing in options that we
(22:59):
can't truly engage because it's too expensive. So it's a mirage.
It's not real. It's there, but it's not available to
us who don't have the resources to go to that
store and purchase what we need for our family to
eat well. And so it's a food mirage. And so
in many cases you might see that you might be
(23:20):
made aware of food mirages. You know, I haven't lived
in any most of the times I've seen the swamps
and some deserts, some just empty places, but no mirage
is yet maybe you have, maybe you've lived in a
place where you see that really big, fancy grocery store
(23:42):
that just came into town, and you wish you could
shop there, but it's just too expensive. It's just too much,
and you know, if you try to buy food for
four people, a family of four, you won't make it
through the week. It's a food mirage. And so as
a result of all those different things, our government, the USDA,
(24:04):
the United States Department of Agriculture, has these definitions of
food insecurity, and so that's the more academic term that
we've kind of latched onto. When we talk about food,
we talk about food insecurity. And so there's high food security,
and it is very high food in security. And so
(24:24):
if you're food insecure but it's low, then you are
able to get food, but it's not the best, but
you're able to manage, but you wish you had something
different and more and something that's healthier. And so we
will say you have low food security. You know, you're
(24:49):
not reducing the amount of food that you eat. It's
just not very healthy food, but you're still making it
through from day to day. Now, if you have high
food insecurity or very low food security, basically you don't
have the food you need and you can't get it.
(25:11):
And so what they'll say is you report multiple situations
where you're eating has been disrupted and you've had to
reduce the amount of food you eat because it's just
not available. You don't have either the resources to get
it or there's no place to go to purchase it.
And so food insecurity is a problem, and so in
the academic space, we're trying to understand it more clearly,
(25:33):
what's causing it, how to deal with it, who's susceptible
to it, all those things, And so food insecurity is
a term you'll read about and that people will report
on in the news, But it doesn't really tell a
whole story, does it. It really doesn't, because we don't
know why any particular person is food insecurity. You will
(25:57):
say that you are. You answer the questions, and we
can see that you are, But why what's behind it? Are?
Is it because you're poor? That's why you don't have
any money. You need to get a better job, get
more education, and then you won't be food insecure. It's
not likely the more likely scenario is that you live
(26:20):
in a place that's been cut off from investment, and
as a result, there's nothing there for you except the
worst types of food imaginable to purchase and eat. And
so because of this, people have been fighting Karen Washington,
all these different justice organizations. They're pushing and fighting for
(26:44):
a couple of things that I want to bring to
your attention. One is food sovereignty. Food sovereignty. So food
sovereignty is defined as the right of communities to control
the production and distribution of their food and to define
(27:06):
their own food systems. So they're in control. They have
the ability to dictate and determine what kind of food
they eat, where it comes from, and how they'll get it.
Because they have food sovereignty, most affluent areas, most majority
(27:27):
white areas, they have food sovereignty. They can go get
whatever they want, whenever they want, from whoever they want
to get it from. It's not a problem. If I
want to go to grocery, I go to grocery store.
I want to go to a farmer's market, I go
to a farmer's market. I want to go to a
farm and pick it myself. I can do that because
I have sovereignty. I have control, complete control over how
(27:48):
I get my food. Unlike many Black communities and many
Brown communities who literally have to scrounge whatever is near
them and hope that there's something there they can eat
that they can feed to their families. They don't have
(28:09):
food sovereignty. They don't have the ability to just get
what they want, when they want it, how they want it.
But that's the fight, right, that's the fight we're pushing
for food sovereignty. Food sovereignty. The other concept that's being
fought for is food justice. Food justice. It's not the
(28:35):
exact same thing as sovereignty, but it's very close. The
idea is that when there's food justice, there is universal
access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food for everyone,
while also advocating for the well being and safety of
(28:58):
those who are involved in the food production process. So
think about that. So the justice is not just that
we all have food to eat, but it's also that
we're able to treat the people who produce that food
with fairness, with justice, and equity, as opposed to how
we often do them, which is making them sweat. Twelve
(29:25):
fourteen sixteen hour days in a factory form to create
what we want to eat, or slaving like literally slaving
in the fields, picking all day, all night to get
us the food that we need with no rights, no
(29:45):
living wages, no health benefits, no protection, no adherence to
any safety protocols. Food justice won't allow that. So it's
not just about getting the food that we can eat,
but it's how it gets to us and treating those
workers with the respect and dignity that they deserve because
they're providing food for us to eat and for us
(30:08):
to sustain our families. So that's what the fight is about.
Food sovereignty and food justice. Now that fight is a
direct fight against food apartheid. Let's be very clear. We're
not trying to simply reduce food insecurity. It sounds nice,
(30:31):
and when I write a proposal, i'll write that in there.
But the fight is against food apartheid. It's about changing
the policy. It's about recognizing people as people and treating
them as you should treat any person, with dignity and respect.
It is not about simply trying our best to help
(30:53):
food insecure families get whatever we can get for them.
We need two that's part of the fight. But the
fight's much bigger because there are ways to help individual
families make it through different difficult seasons, but without changing
(31:14):
the way the system works, and without dismantling the racist
and discriminatory practices that a lot of planning committees and
a lot of councils take. Will always see these levels
of food and security. We'll always see these levels of
poor health outcomes as a result of not having the
(31:35):
food that you need. We'll always see it. And so
to avoid that, we need to dismantle this system of
food apartheid. Right, it's a system, it's not by chance.
I'll give you an example. We'll talk so I'm getting
(31:58):
ahead of myself. In part two, we're going to talk
about specific ways that we see food apartheid. But I'll
give you just a teaser, just a teaser. In America,
we give out billions of dollars in farm subsidies to
assist farmers to help them develop their land produce crops
(32:22):
for our food systems. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of
those subsidies go to white farmers. The vast majority black farmers.
They're out here too, doing their best on their land,
trying to produce for their communities, for their cities, for
(32:44):
the country, and they do not have the same access
to these subsidies, to these government programs that these white
farmers have. That's not a coincidence. That's not just a
matter of not understanding the system of being shut out
of the system completely. Because it's an apartheid system that
(33:06):
it's keeping certain people in certain places without the requisite
resources to do what's needed to provide. It's food apartheid.
There's so many more examples of it that we'll get
into next time, but for now, just know that food
(33:26):
apartheid is a real thing that happens all around the world,
and that for those of us. If you know anyone
who is struggling to feed their families, who is struggling
to consistently put food on the table for their children,
who are struggling to have what they need, take another
(33:48):
look at this system that they're in and ask yourself,
what's the true root cause of that inability to provide
that food. I would argue it's food apartheid. Overall, it's
environmental apartheid, but here in this instance, it's food apartheid,
(34:10):
and it needs to stop. We need to confront it,
call it out and change the system so that everybody
can have what they need whenever they need it, so
we can have food justice for all. And that's our episode.
Thank you so much for listening to the Environmental Justice
(34:32):
Lab where we are for the people and for the planet.
I will see you next time.
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