MET UA 527

CARLOS ARDILA

Structural Racism

VOA Connect. (2019, September). Fighting racism and inequality through farming

[Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/uqQi8cIDO0w,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVZq3jITD2g,

I picked out to watch it because several food issues can be highlighted that have

been discussed in the MET UA527 class, and also is giving the audience the

opportunity to recognize the demand to reorganize agriculture and the economic

system which allows a perfect opportunity to provide better nutrition and health for

all.

Penniman’s description indicates that she built a farm, which has become an

important center for immigrants and farmers of color. Her idea was born when she

moved to Albany, NYC with her husband; in their purpose to feed well their

children, was difficult to find fresh food due to a neighborhood that had all the

features typically associated with an unhealthy food environment: liquor stores and

fast food restaurants, so she decided to established a community garden. This

case takes place in many locations where residents of low-income communities

and communities of color in urban and rural areas have suffered for too long from a

lack of access to healthy food.

Over her life story Leah Penniman reveals that food and race are intertwined and

people too often ignore that. In her childhood she experimented social exclusion

and racial bullying but passion for farming and land were her salvation. After that,

she started to help people with various agricultural ways among which stand out:

growing whole fruits, vegetables and pastured poultry mitigating the effects of

climate change; and training up the next generation of activism farmers

(indigenous and immigrants) through education.

The discussion that videos present is captivating as well as the concern of

economic inequality and systemic discrimination which permeate the food system.

Throughout this structure the expressions: food desert, redlining, zoning, and food

apartheid beginning to be debatable within the current food crisis. On one hand,

the tittle “desert” immediately conjures up a lack of things such as water, food, and

people. But deserts are never really as desolated as we imagine them to be; in fact

they are filled with life, sometimes hidden or unused. And so it is, to some extent,

with "food deserts" a recent term of for boroughs and communities, urban and

rural, that at least appear to be devoid of organic food. On the other hand, that lack

access to fresh, natural, and affordable food result from structural inequities from

public and private resource allocation decisions that exclude healthy from those

faction. That kind of inequity is “food apartheid”.

These two definitions I have mentioned keep me up to understand that the most

appropriate term to address the affair is “food apartheid” which looks at the whole

food system, along with race, geography, and economics. I think when you read
or listen “food apartheid” you get to the root cause of some of the problems around

the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty. The fact that certain people have

food opulence and others have misery is not because of personal choice, it's

because of segregation that are more appropriately called apartheid where profits

and unfair policies take precedence over any other human value.