Tag Archives: systemic racism

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

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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.

Systemic Thinking with Slow Food Washington

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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

Racism in the Food System

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Systematic racism is the basis of every aspect of the USA and the food system has no exception. In the 1600s, the first enslaved people were brought from Africa to America and were forced into labor. This included working on sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco plantations. This brought on a sense of superiority to the white Americans, seeing anyone who is different from them as less than. The exploitation of many people of color were used to keep the social hierarchy going and it kept money in the white man’s pocket. This past of the United States has helped create the racist laws, actions, and institutions that are here today.

Now that forced labor is seen as immoral, even though it is still happening in the present, people have found a more covert way of keeping people of color oppressed. This is shown through wage gaps, the job market, the housing market, and so much more. A majority of minorities cannot find good-paying jobs with the only reason being simply that they are not white. Because of that, they find themselves working in factories, farms, and other jobs seen as undesirable and underpaying. This means that all the food being put on people’s tables are most likely being harvested or packed by people of color. While they are doing all of the hard labor, it is usually the white people that are in charge, gaining massive amounts of wealth.

Because of the unjust treatment of minorities, it makes it more difficult for them to support their families. It is harder to buy basic necessities, which can lead to a multitude of problems. This cycle continues on through generations because nothing is there to pass on to their children. However, most white people have the privilege and wealth to live healthy and have opportunities to pass onto generations of their families.

These disparities have magnified during the pandemic. For example, the wealthy have enough money to stop working while the poor continue to work in factories, farms or other underpaid jobs to keep food on America’s table and to keep their families afloat. Along with that, the systematic racism in the health care system keeps a lot of people of color from getting access to testing for COVID or getting treatment. 

Racism and oppression are at the very base of what America was built upon. With that, the food system cannot be ignored in this equation. It is often looked upon as a basic process of the way it gets to your fridges and pantries, but it is not that simple.

Using Systems Thinking to Break Down Racial Disparities

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With the outcry against police brutality and the long fight to break down systemic racism, it has been made clear that the issues of race have not been solved in America. It is my opinion, and I’m sure many others would agree, that even if there was no racist person and the systems of today remained, systemic racism would still be real. In this class we’ve learned about systemic racism in the food system, articulated most clearly during the Race, Class and Gender in the Food System unit. We learned that “racial disparity in wages and representation can be found in most occupations along the food chain” (color of food reading). We were reminded in class that inequalities against black people are magnified over time due to the foundation of most systems in this country, and that 80% of wealth accumulation depends upon intergenerational transfers. But because of slavery, and the systems that ensued once it was “abolished”, that intergenerational wealth was stolen from black people. Understanding systemic racism is to use systems thinking to trace all the way back to the way black people were forced into this country. It is to trace back to slavery, to the 13th amendment and its loopholes, to prison camps and prison labor, to Jim Crowe laws, to the Civil Rights movement, the War on Drugs, modern slavery and private prisons, and so much more. Systemic racism is not just seen in policing. It can probably be seen in every aspect of society including the prison system, military system, the world food system, education, housing, employment, wealth, government surveillance, immigration policy, the list goes on. America, the “land of the free” has 2.3 million people imprisoned, of which are disproportionately black and non-black people of color, who have no liberty.

To understand systemic racism is for everyone to realize the racial trauma of black people in America, to use systems thinking to understand the history that led to this moment and to current systems, to reflect on how we (white people and/or non-black people of color) have perpetuated systemic racism, and how we have benefited from systemic racism. Our goal must be to recognize the ancestral DNA within us that directly links us to the problem and build reparations, among many other things. What is happening right now and will continue to happen until racist systems are changed, is collective karma for the brutality and inequities placed upon black people not only in this country, but the world. It is time for a change.

Capitol Hill Protests – Businesses standing in solidarity