Systemic Racism and it’s Lack of Coverage in Early Education Systems

Posted on by
56

The United States education system grooms its young students to view racism as a dark part of our country’s past. Through white-washed lessons hardly covering the full scope of slavery

A scene from the film adaptation of Harper Lee’s well known book, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

and assigned readings of glorified tales like To Kill a Mockingbird, our education programs are an insult to our nation’s Black community who continues to face devastating violence and racism. Systemic racism is embedded throughout our society’s systems in healthcare, education, incarceration, and housing. Not until recently, did I discover the various avenues racism pervades throughout the world food system.

This course has responsibly educated its students how the food industry is saturated in racial inequities. Beginning with employment, Raj Patel’s research highlights how the Black community is substantially underrepresented in the food industry’s managerial positions. Many like to believe that the unlawful practice of

Raj Patel’s research presented in “The Color of Food”

employment discrimination would deter this behavior but looking at the unequal wage gap, lack of diversity in hiring, and rare job promotion opportunities reveals the contrary. Systemic racism also infiltrates chocolate, American’s favorite commodity. American mega-chocolate corporations’ successful profits are a result of abusive African child labor practices along the Ivory Coast. This is another area where the U.S. looks hypocritical for championing the values of opportunity and freedom yet doesn’t uphold that for their relationships with nations beyond its borders.

As a Palestinian American, I empathize with the black community and their fight against systemic racism. Like the Black community, Palestinians understand systemic violence under the power of an oppressive government and have shown remarkable solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement overseas. I am proud to be a part of a culture that is intolerant of

Palestinians protesting their support for Black Lives Matter overseas. Image Belongs To: https://www.dw.com/en/fatal-police-shooting-of-autistic-palestinian-sparks-outrage/a-53723002

racism and injustice and represents this through peaceful protest. The demoralizing narratives that plague Palestinians and the Black community serves to saturate false public perceptions of these communities. In order to rectify this, education needs to unlock stories like, Freedom Farmers, which disrupts the harmful narrative that Black farmers have oppressive ties to agriculture due to slavery and contradictorily focuses on how these farmers have powerfully utilized their land for activism, resilience, and survival against white supremacy and economic exploitation. Racism is clearly not a fixture in the past, but remains a problem in our present, and will continue to be a virus infecting our future if we’re not fully educated on how it pervades throughout the systems in our society.

Finding the Common Ground Between Defunding the Police and the Transition to Local & Organic Agricultural Practices

Posted on by
17

Our police system and the industrial agricultural practices we have in the US are unsustainable, both in nature and in practice. They have no place in the just, peaceful world of the future. The roots of the police system make it an inherently violent institution, as it has developed from a slave catcher system.  A LONG history of criminalizing Black people, in addition to for-profit prisons in the US, broken windows policing in neighborhoods, and over militarized police have culminated in a disturbingly unjust “justice” system. As it currently functions, our justice system results in violence being disproportionately perpetuated against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. 

Currently, I have sensed a lot of apprehension around the idea of defunding the police, a popular demand within the Black Lives Movement. Common reactions I’ve heard include the fear of anarchy and chaos, crime running rampant, and concern regarding the livelihoods of those who are currently working within the police system. I feel that these concerns mirror the concern that replacing industrial agriculture with local, organic, food-sovereignty centered agriculture would not be sufficient to feed a growing population. 

Based on what we learned in class, I would argue that yes, an immediate, complete overhaul of the industrial agricultural system we have now would not only be unsustainable, but would have some very negative repercussions for the most vulnerable populations. Lower income communities of color and Black communities currently depend on cheap, processed food that is made possible by industrial agriculture. In order to avoid disastrous consequences that a complete overhaul would pose for these communities, industrial agriculture must be dismantled while simultaneously investing into organic practices. For example, instead of having 80% of the Farm Bill go towards food stamps, what if 80% of the Farm Bill went towards conservation efforts and investing into regenerative development projects, like the Sweet Water Foundation? 

The Perry Avenue Community Farm in Englewood, Chicago. This farm is overseen by Emmanuel Pratt, the executive director and cofounder of the Sweet Water Foundation. Read more here. Sweet Water Foundation

The dismantling of the industrial agriculture system will not be sufficient without investment into critical resources. This same argument can be made for defunding, and eventually abolishing, the police. It is important for people to understand that the call to defund the police is also a demand to invest in critical community resources, like social workers, mental health resources, rehabilitation centers, housing for homelessness, and education just to name a few. The investment in these resources will lead to a decrease in violence and crime, working simultaneously to decrease the significance of a police force.

This image shows some of the thoughts behind the Defund the Police/ Abolish the Police Movements. The demands have a heavy focus on community investment. 8toabolition.com

With both of these examples it is important to understand that systemic change is a long-term goal that involves investing in the people and practices we intend to see in the future. It cannot be done overnight, but that should not stop it from being done at all. Here is to a just, sustainable, and peaceful future for all!

Fixing the Climate is NOT a One Person Job

Posted on by
16

For a lot of my life, I thought the idea of voting with your dollars was brilliant, especially when it came to the climate. Whether it was buying organic every now and then or carpooling, I lived by that idea as much as I could. Over time, I learned this method is not the best at fixing the climate, but how effective it could be was something I still wondered.

After reading Michael Maniates’ piece on individualization, I was primed to understand that working alone at the individual level is futile against the power of private corporations. These companies work under the radar and through the consumer subconscious to gain profit under the guise of going green. In doing this, they seek to pin the blame and responsibility of climate change on the people who have the least power to create lasting change (Maniates 43).

Targeting transportation and electricity were of the biggest parts of Our Climate’s Evergreen New Deal. Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-state-carbon-emissions-spiked-6-percent-in-most-recent-tally/

And when I worked with Our Climate for this course’s action project, I gained crucial, direct knowledge on the capability and power of collective action while going directly to policy. On one hand, you have corporations selling you easy activism and pocketing the same money they would have made before green movements. On the other, you have NGOs pushing for policy to the people who the most power. The former has never permeated culture to the point where it makes large or lasting change, but looking at what Our Climate has done in just the last legislative session by updating old carbon laws, impacts will affect this and future generations. Furthermore, we could use votes on previous climate policies to garner even more support for future policies like the Evergreen New Deal.

When we lobbied to Representative Tina Orwall as the final task for Our Climate, I saw how receptive she was to new ideas and policies like the Evergreen New Deal, and it emboldened me. Other fellows told us their experiences were lukewarm. Their representatives were not very approachable and rejected the climate policies. While Representative Orwall wanted to know more about the Evergreen New Deal, beyond that it was broadly for transportation and to hold corporate polluters accountable, she was very interested in learning more when the policy was more solidified, and even connected us to more people who would also want to hear what we had to say. Coming from that, I felt like coming together was more powerful than fractured efforts that end up making the same big corporations richer, confirming what Maniates taught me.

Works Cited

Maniates, Michael F. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics, vol. 1, no. 3, Aug. 2001, pp. 31–52.

Systematic Racism

Posted on by
15

Racial discrimination in the 21st century is a phenomenon that embarrassed us in the world as a democratic nation with a strong government system. with all assets, government systems, and rule of law in our country, we still have this systematic racism in both theoretical concepts and reality. Theoretically, racism is dated back to the foundation of our country (United States) which was founded as a racist nation. To look at racism through our course content we observe in the food supply chain, that systematic racism is embedded in all food supply chains, as we study only this small portion of the business, considering this as an example, and witnessing the recent event (Gorge Floyd death) which triggered the mass movement. We can say that racism is present in all structures, institutions, as well as social relations in our society which goes back to our past system and unjust history that privileged one race or another.

In our country, the word of racism has a very close connection with the antiblack practices, where the white supremacy ideology came from the unequal political and economic power of whites, which rationalized white power over black. The recent mass movement around the country pushed me to dig deeper in the racism issue and I came to know that this issue is a controversial topic even in our justice system which shows when it comes to black people cases the justice system acts partially with prejudice and tends to punish black people more.

To study racism in the field of food and agriculture we witness one way or another visible racism in both food and agricultural system, our capitalist food system is fixed but unjust and unsustainable, because the power is disproportionately concentrated in the hand of racially privileged groups. The rate of black landowners in the nation is very small percent compared to white, and the rate of losing black race farmland is twice than the losing white race farmland. Where the white farmers dominate as operator-owners from the start to the end the people of color with the poverty wages, where the resulting poverty from the low paid job is racialized. Among those portions of people who live below the poverty line in the US black people is the big chunk of it, which results in high levels of food insecurity. Poverty and food insecurity have close ties with diet-related diseases and make these people more vulnerable and unsafe in our society.

 

Systematic Racism

Posted on by
14

     Racism is a long-term product of history. The enslaved Africans have become symbolic of slavery’s roots. The Africans were sent to the western world and exploited. Under the domination of white people, they couldn’t fight against the injustice. This historical issue lasts till now that people of color often suffer low wages and exploitative conditions. But black people are not passive victims and they acted. African American communities provide crucial support for activists working for change in voting rights and fight against segregation. 

black cotton farming family

Black cotton farming family

     Racism is not an issue floating on the surface. The racism problem is imbedded in the systems. If we look at the food system, white farmers dominate as operator-owners, while farmworkers and food workers are overwhelmingly people of color. In a restaurant, it is common to see people of color working at the back kitchen and white people serving at the front desk. These people of color are hidden from people’s view, just like the systematic racism problem. At least six out of every 10 farmworkers is an undocumented immigrant (Patel, 2011). Under the pandemic, Migrant farmworkers are experiencing the hardship of low hour pay, inaccessible health care services, bad living conditions and fear of deportation. Racism is almost never mentioned in international programs for food aid and agricultural development. Undocumented farmworkers are excluded from Fair Labor Act of 1938 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1835.      

    Equity is difficult, but not impossible. To fight against racism, we have to understand that racism is not simply prejudice or individual acts, but an historical legacy that privileges one group of people over others. Recently, the Food Chain workers Alliance fought for higher wages and workin conditions. The participation of people of color in local food policy councils is changing the food system. There’s light in the path of ending the systematic racism. 

Salish Center Group Project

Posted on by
50

 

This course was a learning experience in how to deal with stress and uncertain times. Like also it shed a tremendou light on how our food system works. I was incredibly surprised how many times I would be excited to talk to my friends or family about what I am learning. The reason for that is during COVID food is on a lot of people’s minds. Whether we will have food in our grocery store the next day or month, etc. 

 

Going into the group project I was excited to see what I could do to help a food NGO and apply the knowledge I learned in class. That’s why I wanted to do the Salish center as my group project as I love seafood tremendously. I wanted to learn how a NGO can impact seafood supply chains. We had our first set of meetings and were able to get the goals from our advisor Riley Starks, The Executive Director of Salish Center. He talked about how the Salish Center goals which were the following:

  • PDO (Protected Designation of Origin)
  • Increased consumer knowledge of their seafood’s source. 
  • Long term goal of protecting the Salish Sea.
  • Promote regional food

Learning about these goals we had a set number of objectives. Riley wanted us to contact as much outside organizations such as churches, companies, restaurants etc to gain funding and lobbying towards Salish Center efforts. Also he wanted us to bolster the NGO social media. When doing the objectives I could not feel motivated. My work was to find the churches in Seattle and surrounding cities and contact them. I got zero contact back from the churches or anyone for the matter and it was demoralizing. Also felt like I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the events happening around me.

 

I learnt from the group project about my worst and what it means to deal with tremendous stress from other parts of my life. My regret is not figuring out a way to deal with that stress to help my group members in a manner that is representative of my best. I hope that this class serves as a lesson in how to deal with uncertain times and hopefully I grow from it. 

Posted on by
9

For my group project, I worked with the Salish Center for Sustainable Seafood, a NGO committed to educating the public about reef netting and other sustainable fishing methods in order to preserve the Salish Sea. Our work was particularly focused on helping the Salish Center establish a PDO (protected designation of origin) for all seafood caught in the Salish Sea. The intention behind a PDO is the center’s belief that seafood from the Salish Sea is special and better than seafood harvested elsewhere. They also hope that PDO will increase consumer knowledge and interest in the Salish Sea and encourage engagement and a desire to protect it. 

On one hand, a PDO would be great in helping people purchase locally sourced seafood and understand the origins of their food. This is the kind of action that is encouraged in readings like The Pleasure of Eating and the lecture Localism. However, you also have to wonder, would a PDO really accomplish much in encouraging sustainable fishing methods and preserving the Salish Sea? The fact is – 70% of seafood is eaten in restaurants. The average American likely does not regularly prepare seafood or can’t afford to eat it on a regular basis. Seafood is a luxury item, and locally sourced, sustainably caught seafood is even more expensive. While a PDO would help restaurants source locally caught seafood, that’s a pretty niche audience and honestly doesn’t seem like it would help broadly increase consumer knowledge about the Salish Sea. While consumer knowledge can encourage activism, I also wonder if this depends too much on the individualist consumer habits and lures people into complacency. Consumers may feel like they are doing enough by buying local seafood, but will that make them interested in protecting the Salish Sea and promoting sustainable fishing methods? 

Map of the Salish Sea

The United States has a lot more legally enforced sustainable fishing practices than other countries, but the PDO would not require that the seafood harvested in the Salish Sea be caught sustainably or at least to the levels of sustainability that the Salish Center advocates for. With this in mind, you have to wonder what exactly a PDO would accomplish and if there would be a more effective way to protect the Salish Sea. Other NGOs are also working towards similar goals and it would be nice to see more collaboration between them in the future, especially in establishing a PDO or encouraging sustainable fishing methods:  a notable one in the Puget Sound area is Long Live the Kings, an organization that works to support sustainable fishing practices and restore the wild salmon populations.

Applying course lessons and action project results to the real world

Posted on by
16

For my action project, my group developed a set of news media and social media content to engage the public with the issues of dairy CAFOs in Washington. This included Facebook and Twitter posts, which had info graphics and in the future will have political tool kits for citizens to contact their representatives and the WA Department of Ecology during the legislative session, and letters to the editor which were sent to multiple local newspapers.

Figure 1: Example post from my action projects Facebook page
In this class we have discussed the impacts of COVID on the world food system. These impacts have largely been to processing and distribution. Our project was also impacted by COVID because we had less of an opportunity to spread our message. Our social media posts did not do as well as we had hoped because there is currently a lack of interest for this kind of content currently given both world an domestic events. This is not something that only we faced. During the pandemic, I have noticed that most environmental groups have shifted their focus from traditional targets to focus on causes related to the pandemic and more recently racial justice.

Figure 2: This image, posted on Greenpeace USA’s Facebook page, is an example of the shift in focus from environmental groups
This is a unique issue that ties into the other impacts of COVID on the world food system which we discussed in class. The difference is that the impact of decreased pressure from advocacy largely affects production, and not as much processing or distribution. Production has been negatively impacted by the disruptions to processing and distribution however, unlike processing and distribution where COVID has pretty much only been a detractor, the production portion of the world food system has been avle to operate unchecked.

Figure 3: The recent increase in the rate of deforestation of the Amazon is an example of the impacts on the food system as a result of a distracted world. Source: NBC news
While advocacy from environmental groups may not play into the typical model for a world food system, a basic understanding of systems thinking, the discussions we have had in class, and my experience with my action project have allowed me to better understand the connections in our food web I didn’t know existed.

Systemic Thinking with Slow Food Washington

Posted on by
85

This quarter I had the pleasure of collaborating with five other students while working for the nonprofit organization Slow Food Washington. Slow Food Washington is this state’s chapter of the international organization Slow Food, a group dedicated to creating “Good, Clean, and Fair Food for All.” We were given a lot of autonomy on how we wanted to focus our project and ended up centering it around supporting the passage of Washington House Bill 2777/Senate Bill 6463. If passed, this legislation would allow permits for “Micro Enterprise Home Kitchens” where cooks can legally sell food out of their homes. We created a revisable digital media toolkit on how to best engage the Slow Food community in support of the bill.

First page of our digital media toolkit

My overall takeaway from this course is the importance of thinking systemically. We started the quarter off critiquing the individualistic solutions offered in Michael Pollen’s piece and learning about the pitfalls of reductionism. Systemic thinking is critical to unpacking historical legacies and understanding complex connections. Starting off with this literature set the tone for what followed. We were challenged to not just reform but reimagine what these systems could look like. A notable example is Monica White’s Freedom Farmers piece. This intersects food sovereignty with America’s racial history while advocating for community-led organizations that can bolster economic autonomy. These propositions are centered around creating new systems that transcend old, inherently inequitable ones. HB2777/SB6463 incorporates similar thinking. Rather than tackle the large and complex roadblocks to starting a food business (like income inequality, racial inequities, and gentrification), this bill focuses on creating economic opportunities for lower-income individuals through a new alternative. Legalizing home cooking in Washington will provide an abundance of opportunities for diverse ethnic or cultural dining throughout our state; I’m so thrilled I had the chance to contribute in a  small way.

Advocacy day in support of SB6434/HB 2777 at the state capitol (January 16th)

Systemic thinking is of course relevant to our current dialogue around policing — defunding the police (and reallocating funds to appropriate community organizations) creates new systems rather than perpetuating an institution built on racism. Falling back on old ways of thinking is easy but damaging. Challenging ourselves to build a society that offers direct solutions to social ills rather than punishing people for our systems’ shortcomings is difficult but imperative. I’m optimistic that we are at a turning point. I take with me the systemic thinking necessary to dismantling injustice.

 

A copy of our digital toolkit: SECONDDRAFTSLOWFOODDIGITALTOOLKIT

Reflection on Climate Change and the World Food System

Posted on by
12

My group had the opportunity to work with the Citizens Climate Lobby, the CCL is a grassroot, non-profit and nonpartisan environmental group primarily focused on the passage of the Energy, Innovation, and Carbon Dividend Act. The act aimed at reducing the use of fossil fuels and encouraging industries, companies and people within the United States to reduce their carbon footprint and find alternative methods that are cleaner for the environment and cheaper for both the companies and the American people. With climate change becoming more impactful and disruptive in our lives and the world food system that we live in, it is now, more imperative as ever, to address the problem of climate change before it truly does irreparable damage to our world food system and our livelihoods. 

The Energy, Innovation, and Carbon Dividend Act aims to drive down American carbon pollution and fossil fuel usage in order to bring climate change under control.

Climate change has already caused direct damage to the world food system and to how some people can live their lives. This experience is documented by Kirk Semple in his article “Central American Farmers Head to the U.S., Fleeing Climate Change.”. Within that article, Semple notes that climate change in Central America has led to large amounts of crop failures, especially in coffee plants, the economic lifeblood for many in these Central American farming cooperatives. With these failures, many farmers and workers in these coffee plantations fear that with nothing to sell, they cannot pay for food leading to hunger among families. This has led to many to migrate to the United States hoping to escape hunger and find better economic opportunity. 

Graph showing immigration change from Central American nations to the United States. Coincides with the increase in climate change that has occured in Central America causing harm to farming cooperatives.

These Central American farmers are not the only ones affected by climate change, as noted by Dr. Litfin in the 2nd Contemplative Practice on Systems Thinking, our food systems has developed from what was once a local endeavor, into one that is international and large in its scale and effects. We see this interconnectivity in an article by Thin Lei Win called “Climate Shocks in Just One Country Could Disrupt Global Food Supply.”. Within the article, Win notes that researchers found that if American wheat production and supply underwent a four-year drought, then the 174 countries in which America exports wheat to, would see their reserves decrease, despite not suffering from failed harvests themselves. 

How Climate Change such as global warming can effect production of agriculture and lead to food shortages, in this case: Corn.

With the interconnectivity of our world food system and with the dangers climate change poses for our future. It is time to take action whether that be joining the CCL in their June 13th virtual conference “A Community Stronger than CONVID” where you can talk to your local congressional representative about actions that need to be taken on climate change or simply reusing bags when grocery shopping. It is important to take action for the sake of ourselves and the world food system.