Anti-racist practice and the work of community food organizations

______________________ _____________________________
Anti-racist Practice and the Work of
Community Food Organizations
Rachel Slocum
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Saint Cloud State University,
St Cloud, MN, USA;
rachel_slocum@hotmail.com
Whiteness enables the coherence of an alliance organized to promote community food security
and sustainable farming. This unnamed presence shapes a discourse identifying the focus of
struggle as well as resource allocation, conference form and content, list serv discussions, staffing
and programming. Unacknowledged white privilege gives the lie to the movement’s rhetoric of
justice, good intentions and sustainability. And yet it is clear that racism is an organizing process
in the food system: people of color disproportionately experience food insecurity, lose their farms
and face the dangerous work of food processing and agricultural labor. Critical analyses of social
movements argue that a failure to confront difference undermines progressive change efforts. The
paper provides evidence of how the community food movement reproduces white privilege and
proposes ways it might engage with anti-racism.
Introduction
The urgency and intricacy of negotiating racialized difference in social
justice alliances is a compelling question for scholars of cultural politics
(eg Bystydzienski and Schacht 2001; Grossman 2003; Narayan 1988;
Pulido 2002; Reagon 1983; Twine and Blee 2001). The article contributes
to this literature by exploring anti-racist practice as a framework for
meaningful alliance across difference in the context of nonprofit work
to promote community food systems. By focusing on race, I add to work
on other aspects of difference in community food politics (see P Allen
2004; Guthman 2004; Qazi and Scholten 2005; Trauger 2004).
Community food work promotes fair prices and sustainable prac-
tices in farming as well as accessible, affordable, culturally appropri-
ate nutritious food for all. Practicing anti-racism requires an analysis
that recognizes intersecting forms of power, privilege cognizance and
specific ways of working in alliance. Ruth Wilson Gilmore has pointed
out that ‘‘we are trying to understand racism here’’ because it ‘‘gives us
the foothold we desire’’ to show that one of the critical aspects of
difference is the fatalities it produces. Researchers need to ask ‘‘what
is the rationality or integument that keeps this insanity intact?’’
(Gilmore 2005). The paper attempts to reveal parts of this rationality
in community food work.
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I draw on my experience attempting to organize a community food
coalition in Central New York, which involved participant observation
at a variety of meetings as well as 26 interviews. I also rely on
participant observation from the standpoint of being a member of
the Outreach and Diversity Committee (ODC), a committee formed
within the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) to promote
anti-racist analysis and practice in the movement. I use threads from
the comfood list serv, to which many CFSC coalition members sub-
scribe, and my attendance at two CFSC conferences. The article is
also based on 10 interviews in New York and Massachusetts that I
conducted to test an interview instrument used in research that con-
siders the negotiation of difference in community food work (Slocum
2004). The respondents I cite throughout the paper are long time
community food advocates who serve or served as directors (EDs) or
program leaders (PLs) within community food organizations. I use
pseudonyms of first names to refer to these respondents.
First I introduce the community food movement. I then use three
examples to illustrate the work of white privilege, a form of racism, in
community food efforts. Finally, I explore how anti-racism might be
practiced in this context.
Community Food Work: Definitions and Programs
The Community Food Security Coalition is a non-profit umbrella
organization that facilitates community food efforts across the US.
The organization dedicates itself to food security, food self-reliance
and a food system that is ‘‘regionally based and grounded in the
principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability’’.1 The community
food movement exists through the CFSC, its list serv, conferences,
and other networks of which its members are a part (eg the National
Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture). I use the term community
food broadly to indicate both the food security and sustainable farm-
ing elements of this network.
Food security exists when people have access to affordable, nutri-
tious, culturally appropriate and personally acceptable food without
the need to resort to emergency food or other coping strategies
(Anderson and Cook 1999; Toronto Food Policy Council 1994).
Food insecurity is present when people cannot obtain foods in suffi-
cient quantity and quality to sustain health, well being and culture, yet
they have easier access to foods that promote obesity and related
illnesses (see also Poppendieck 1998).
Community food advocates critique the modern food system as a
force destructive of local, sustainable and smaller-scale farming, local
economies and ecological, public and animal health (Allen et al 1991,
1993; Allen et al 2003; Clancy 1997). The movement seeks to connect
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people to the land and to food through urban gardening, farmers’
markets, youth gardening, new immigrant farming projects and com-
munity-supported agriculture (Cone and Myhre 2000; Feenstra and
Campbell 1998; Witt 2004).
The phenomenon of obesity and poor nutrition co-existing dispro-
portionately among low-income children and adults in American
Indian, Latino and African American communities is now widely
acknowledged (Pothukuchi and Kaufman 1999). Research supports
the thesis that race and class inequality play a significant role in who
becomes obese (Drewnowski and Specter 2004). Community food
organizations tend to respond to this phenomenon through nutrition
education via cooking classes and recipe distribution. Other responses
include eliminating vending machines from schools, changing lunch
menus, establishing farmers markets in low-income areas and
enabling the use of food stamps, WIC and senior coupons at farmers’
markets (Winne 1998).
Some organizations address the widespread availability of pro-
cessed foods that contain high levels of fat, refined sugar and salt
and the relative lack of access to fresh, culturally appropriate and
affordable food. One study found that predominantly black neighbor-
hoods have 2.4 fast food restaurants per square mile compared with
1.5 in mainly white neighborhoods (Block, Scribner and DeSalvo
2004). Nonprofits do price, store location and transit analyses to
show that there are ‘‘food deserts’’ in economically oppressed and/or
of color neighborhoods (Sustainable Food Center 1995). In response,
The X Main Street funds a shuttle to the grocery store in its
Springfield, MA neighborhood because the mass transit system does
not provide direct access for residents to area grocery stores. The
Food Trust secured state funding for the development of grocery
stores in under-served areas and Farm to City and East New York
Farms, among others, work to establish farmers’ markets in low-
income areas of Philadelphia and Brooklyn, respectively.
Community food organizations also use urban and rural agriculture
as a means to promote community economic development, cultural
pride, health, and survival. Urban gardens are a means to provide
employment, build job skills, generate income, educate youth and
adults about nutritious food, and in some cases, bring people together
across difference (Evans 2002). For one Massachusetts organization,
Fertile Ground, the aim of coming together across difference is the
goal whereas food is the means (C Sands, ED, interview, 15
November 2004). Building pride and strengthening the capacity of
youth and adults in communities of color is an important part of some
community food projects such as Nuestras Raices, Cultivating
Community, Lots to Gardens, Revision House, Added Value and
East New York Farms. Finally, members of the Ma’O community
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and the Tohono O’odham,2 Hopi and Wisconsin Oneida3 Nations are
working to preserve culture, generate economic power and improve
the well being of communities through their community food projects
(Ma’O Initiative 2003; Nahaonhoya and the Natwani Coalition 2004;
Tiller 2005; ver Voort 2004).
The movement extends a promise that social and economic justice
is part of its work (H Herrera, facilitated discussion, Milwaukee, WI,
16 October 2004). It is not unreasonable to expect anti-racist practice
in a movement that did not form specifically around racism and that
involves program-oriented nonprofits (see Scott 2000). The next sec-
tion shows how community food organizations do not connect the
dots among white privilege, institutionalized racism, their community
food work and the larger food system.
Why are all the White Kids Sitting Together? Privilege in
the Movement
Many community food organizations remain unaware or closed to the
ways that racism works in the food system and the community food
movement. For instance, privilege factors in the whiteness of staff and
particularly leadership. Of the 13 organizations in the North East with
a staff of 10–35, the leadership positions are 84% white to 16%
people of color4 and their board members are 11% people of color
and 89% white.5 Those who experience food insecurity—American
Indians, Latinas and African Americans, disproportionate to their
numbers in the population, single women heads of households and
people working for unlivable wages—tend to be ‘‘on the table rather
than at it’’6—the objects of the work but not the leaders of it. This is
an argument against objectification and for building power rather
than one that claims whites should not provide leadership in a
Latino or black organization (Winant 1997). Further, many commu-
nity food organizations act as service providers that answer to funders
rather than as organizations that are truly accountable to and directly
involved in building leadership and shifting power in the communities
with which they work (see Newman and Lake 2004). Additionally,
these groups extol the virtues of community and self-sufficiency in a
manner that obscures the racist, classist and gendered features of the
food system, past and present. Preliminary findings reveal that
community food strategizing, priority making and alliance building
do not recognize or act on the intersections of race, class and gender
relations in the context of the food system. Though the above ele-
ments of racism’s story may be, in a sense, old news, they are relevant
to community food work. Both the way in which community food
discourse constitutes difference, and the material exclusions that
privilege enables are important.
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Community food, a predominantly liberal, white, middle class
social change effort, is part of the larger story of whiteness that ‘‘ . . .
never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an
organizing principle in social and cultural relations’’ (Lipsitz 1995:369
in Pulido 2000:13). Writes Laura Pulido, ‘‘[w]hite privilege thrives in
highly racialized societies that espouse racial equality, but in which
whites will not tolerate either being inconvenienced in order to
achieve racial equality or denied the full benefits of their whiteness’’
(2000:15). Whites’ conviction that racism exists but is not associated
with them is part of the power and tenacity of privilege (2000:15).
What follows are three illustrations of how white privilege works in
the community food movement.
Negotiating an Anti-racism Training for the CFSC
At the 2003 annual conference of the Community Food Security
Coalition, several conference plenary speakers remarked on the per-
sistent whiteness of the movement. The plenary moderator stated that
in an attempt to diversify attendance, low-income youth of color had
been given scholarships to attend the conference. The youth had not
realized they were serving a purpose and were hurt and angered by
the remark. The white author of these comments did not realize the
damage of those words. However, the community food movement is
cognizant of its ‘‘white, middle class face’’ (Field 2003). It is possible,
even, that some community food advocates wish they could be less
white. Outreach and Diversity Committee (ODC) co-chair Jim Hanna
notes that the movement’s whiteness has been brought up at every
annual conference (email, 25 August 2004). Indeed, the need to
address racism has been recognized since the founding of the orga-
nization 11 years ago (H Joseph, conversation, 18 October 2004).
However, the white face of the movement is perceived as a diversity
problem rather than as a relational process embedded in society that
constitutes community food.
Privilege and power are currently on the agenda of the CFSC staff
and board through the persistence of members of the ODC. This
committee has one yearly face-to-face meeting at the annual CFSC
conference. In contrast to the whiteness of the conference, these
meetings are predominantly attended by people of color. The com-
mittee does its work via monthly conference calls of 6–12 volunteers.
People of color and women comprise the majority of active members.
The ODC advocates for greater diversity in community food and a
shift in its balance of power (resources, leadership, priorities) toward
disenfranchised groups.
Over 2003–4, the ODC worked with the CFSC staff and board to
organize an anti-racism training in which all three groups would
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participate. Committee members researched a number of trainers and
proposed Crossroads Ministry. We planned to hold the training in
June 2004 at the annual retreat of the CFSC staff and board. In the
late spring, the CFSC experienced funding difficulties and cancelled
the retreat and the training. The news was an unexpected blow to the
ODC, which learned quite suddenly in April of the turn of events.
Several ODC members interpreted this change as a direct reflection
of the intentions of the board and staff, that is, to avoid discussing
racism. Just prior to this news we learned that several board members
had expressed concern over the term ‘‘anti-racism’’—finding that it
was too negative a term. Others said that they had agreed to do a
diversity training,7 not an anti-racism training and were worried that
an anti-racism training would not cover important issues like class.
We learned that a few board members felt that our request for an
anti-racist training held the implicit message that some on the board
were personally racist.
To resolve this conflict, the CFSC staff and board and the ODC
asked Crossroads Ministry, an anti-racism training organization, to
facilitate a day-long discussion in Milwaukee (just prior to the annual
conference) to find common ground and to determine how to move
forward. Discussion proceeded with equanimity until the trainers left.
Then, board and staff participants voiced concerns that gender and
particularly class relations would not be adequately dealt with in an
anti-racism training. Others felt that a diversity training would reflect
more closely what was needed. Some cautioned against moving too
quickly, using the somewhat hyperbolic metaphor of the US rushing
to war against Iraq. A few pointed out the need for more time before
undertaking an expensive process of changing institutional practice.
People of color and whites on the board raised uncertainties. After
much discussion, the assembled group agreed to use the term anti-
racism and to have an anti-racism training that would result in a
longer term process to institutionalize what we had learned.
The assembled group asked the ODC to research more trainers
over the course of a month and to produce a final recommendation.
A few days prior to that deadline, a high level CFSC staff person
recommended an organization called Visions that carries out multi-
cultural training focusing on all the ‘‘isms’’. The same staff person
noted his greater comfort with this organization and remarked that
they would ‘‘get the job done’’ although Visions costs were the highest
of the trainers under consideration. From informal interviews with
people who have attended Visions trainings, it appears that the group
takes a gentler approach that avoids confrontation. To some obser-
vers, the Visions training does not go far enough. For instance,
Visions has worked with one North East community food organiza-
tion for four years. This organization recently raised the ire of the
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members (largely people of color) of the neighborhood in which its
urban branch is located for installing security cameras outside the
office due to a nearby, unrelated killing. Its constituency of suburban
mothers had been in favor of the cameras but the urban community
(also a constituency) had not attended the meeting about camera
installation. After 4 years of training, the organization might be
expected to understand that surveillance apparatus has a different
meaning for and racializing effect upon people of color. The cameras
normalize a social violence linking blacks and crime and invite further
state violence against those surveilled because of skin color.
‘‘Let’s not Forget the Big Picture’’
The community food list serv is another forum in which white privi-
lege in the movement reveals itself. One post to the list discussed
research showing that African American women in Roxbury, MA
would have difficulty purchasing culturally appropriate, heart-healthy
food on food stamps. Discussion centered on the term ‘‘culturally
appropriate’’, considered the loss of food knowledge and appealed
to the ideal of self-reliance—a strong theme within community food
work.
ODC member Hank Herrera, wrote in response to a point made
about self reliance that ‘‘Among all of the possible solutions . . . the
one that continually eludes us is the solution based on individual and
family self-sufficiency. That solution requires access to the means to
earn adequate income through employment or business ownership
and thus strategies to overcome systemic barriers to full participation
in the economic life of the community, barriers that still exclude
groups of people based on race and ethnicity’’ (H Herrera, email to
comfood listserv 5 November 2004). Peter, another list member
responded, ‘‘My view is such people won’t ever have food security
until they take the trouble to learn and grow their own as much as
possible—or move where they can. Their grandparents did it but
they’ve lost it. When you grow your own you don’t have to have ‘full
participation in the economic life of the community’. When you grow
your own, the plants don’t care what ethnic group you belong to’’
(Peter, email to comfood-l, 16 November 2004). ODC member
Tiffany Golden responded to another part of Peter’s email in which
he said, ‘‘ . . . the biggest problem is some ethnic groups don’t have any
‘culturally appropriate’ foods that are healthy’’. She wrote, ‘‘Not only
is this not true, but [it does not include] the context of 1) how
unhealthy foods were introduced to these communities, when and
why—mainly due to colonialism, or indigenous farming practices/
foods used stripped away by traumatic imperialist/industrialist
movements; and 2) how violently changing a culture from a land-
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based self-sustainable model to corporate dependency through force
and economics is an undertone that is conveniently omitted, yet it is
encouraged that African-American and Latino communities embrace
a land-based self-sustainable model as if it were never a pre-existing
reality. Once again, the Missionary Complex is unfolding—the ideal
that there is no innate Wisdom within the culture, that it must all
come from outside the group—THROUGH EDUCATION no less’’.
(T Golden, email to comfood listserv, 17 November 2004, her caps).
The emphasis on access and education in community food rather than
rights and power has been noted elsewhere (see Allen et al 2003).
The discussion continued without further reference to either
Tiffany’s or Hank’s points. After 24 total posts on the subject, this
thread announced that the following advertisement for a Harvard
agribusiness seminar had caught the author’s eye: ‘‘ . . . In 20 or 30
years from now, we may drive by supermarkets and wonder, Do
people still buy raw food? . . . Eventually, people are not going to
look at the kitchen as a source of food, and kitchens will start
disappearing. That would be a radical change for the food distribution
system . . . ’’. The author continued, ‘‘One man’s vision of the future
and it’s being taught at the Harvard Business School. We have a lot to
do. I appreciate this listserv as a place for public discussion, debate, and
dissent among subscribers, but let’s not forget the big picture out there’’
(Andrea, email to comfood-l, 18 November 2004, my italics).
The message from this email, the debate around the anti-racism
training for the CFSC and preliminary conclusions from interview
data, indicate that the ‘‘big picture’’ to many involved in community
food work is, as Andrea implies, corporate control of the food system.
Andrea’s thread neatly and innocuously discounts the previous emails
as debate and dissent outside of that big picture. Institutionalized
racism is quiet, mundane and so quick that ‘‘if you blink your eyes,
you miss it’’ (E Allen, facilitated discussion, Milwaukee, WI, 16
October 2004).
Good Intentions: Wiping Anti-racism off the Community
Food Table in Central New York
As part of my participant observation of the community food move-
ment, I attempted to organize a Central New York community food
coalition. I succeeded in getting several key actors together: two
members of the Onondaga Food Policy Council (1984–1994), the
CNY Food Bank, Urban Delights/Jubilee Homes, the former director
of New York Farms and Cornell Cooperative Extension. We agreed
to build a larger coalition with roots in the various communities of
the area—urban, suburban, farming, white, new immigrants and
communities of color.
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Anti-racism must be actively practiced or racism in an organiza-
tion’s work context may remain unacknowledged (see Scott 2001).
Discomfort with the concept and a focus on intentionality obscures a
view into staff members’ own privilege and the means by which racism
is institutionalized in the setting of nonprofit food work. It may be
spoken as in this instance from one of the Central New York organiz-
ing committee members, but then not acted upon: ‘‘all that is encom-
passed within the food system is related to poverty and all is related to
racism . . . there is an overlay of racism everywhere in this area
[Syracuse and Onondaga County, NY] and across the country’’
(Lisa, ED, 6 January 2004). Or it may be avoided. For example, in
an interview with another organizing committee member, all my
questions concerning the role of racism in food insecurity were struck
from the discussion by the respondent’s reply to the first question:
‘‘I’m not comfortable talking about that—let’s move on’’ (Margaret,
PL, interview, 29 March 2004). Referring to Margaret’s organization,
another respondent noted, ‘‘everything in this world on some level
comes back to a matter of leadership, power and decision making—ie
Organization X is so white that you could call the place snow. Are the
employees there racist? No. Intentionally oppressive? No (mostly).
It’s just a matter of the manner in which they socially and culturally
frame problems, responses, and solutions. Even their best laid plans
to incorporate and solicit ‘‘minority’’ involvement [are] hindered by
their skin color and social/cultural framing’’ (Sam, PL, email, 12
March 2004).
As a member of the coalition’s planning committee, I had written a
temporary statement of intent for the coalition. It and the letter of
invitation to attend the first coalition meeting contained the follow-
ing: ‘‘The organizers recognize that many forces shape the food
system. These include the difficult economics of farming, the loss of
jobs in the area, racism, class structure and gender discrimination,
among others. These forces need to be carefully considered and
addressed through the coalition’s work’’. I had wanted to use the
statement to signal to potential coalition members that we recognized
the relevance of these processes. Yet in a rewriting of the invitation
letter, Jim, another committee member, removed those two sen-
tences. In a conversation after the letter had gone out, I asked him
about the missing words and explained why I had written them in the
first place. Jim replied:
I wanted to lie about changing it (pleading ignorance) but [I] realized
that gets us nowhere and gives me an ulcer . . . Still after [an anti-
racism] workshop, I don’t always feel the need to address issues in
terms of racism, or power and privilege. Maybe it is a cop out but
where does the learning happen most? Sometimes I think it happens
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simply through experience with others without defining these issues.
We know they exist. What people really need is to try and trust each
other when they have to work together and defining these things puts
pressure on both parties. But I do know it is exhausting for the
oppressed party to always concede to the point where they would
probably slug me for suggesting the above.
He noted further, ‘‘ . . . Dismantling racism . . . is not what you go to
our organization for. And if you wanted us to be cognizant of that
when planning, you needed [to educate] us first’’ (Jim, PL, email
communication, 23–24 March 2004). One way to read his words is
to see the ease with which people sidestep engagement with their own
privilege and organizations fail to confront their role in institutiona-
lized racism.
Jim also articulates ideas useful to anti-racist practice. He acknowl-
edges how exhausting it is for people of color to endlessly explain the
intricacies of racism to whites. His sentiment concerning trust echoes
others’ desire that ‘‘first and foremost we must begin to talk more with
one another’’ (Alcoff 2003:5). The civil rights struggle has displaced
and refigured white identities such that they are now contradictory,
confused and anxiety ridden, to an unprecedented extent (Alcoff
1998; Winant 1997:74). Jim obviously agonizes over his own privi-
lege—not, perhaps, in an unproductive guilty way but in a manner
that may suggest hope for alliance. But the answer to white anxiety is
neither to castigate whites nor to help them feel good—both tenden-
cies bring whites back to the center in unhelpful ways. And like the
ODC assumption of negative intent on the part of the board in the
first example, the focus on whiteness as solely oppressive ignores its
other dimensions.
In my (‘‘well intentioned’’) efforts to ‘‘do something useful’’ with my
time and energy, I began a process with the CNY coalition that
concentrated power in established organizations rather than shifted
it toward or nurtured it in marginalized communities in Syracuse.
I wrote the aborted statement of intent, trying to signal from a
position that could not be seen as trustworthy. I did not stop that
enabling white, middle class, educated privilege from moving me to
front and center because I wanted to be there. Furthermore, the form
of meeting that would later launch the coalition repeated the mistakes
of many white majority efforts to reach out to people of color—‘‘we
invited them but (almost) none came’’. As Jim notes (above), I should
have spent more time talking with him and others, yet it is equally
true that all whites need to do the heavy lifting of thinking through
privilege (Bailey 1998). However, whites should not imagine that they
can simply learn enough anti-racist practice to do it well or to shed
responsibility (see Thompson 2003).
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Summary
Whiteness is one element that enables the community food network
to cohere. Its potency is in the ability to find so many ways to avoid
addressing an issue staring it in the face. My respondents told me, ‘‘of
course racism is a problem, but . . . ’’ the sentence usually ends some-
where else. In the productive spaces of ‘‘yes, but . . . ’’ or ‘‘I/we tried . . .
’’ and all the other well-meaning material discursive effort that
follows, is an extreme resourcefulness for creating difference and
reinforcing racism.
The examples suggest that racism is understood in personal rather
than relational terms, sometimes by both whites and people of color.
Aside from an unwillingness to consider an uncomfortable subject,
some whites may rebel against the feeling that, in a focus on race/
racism, their other identities are not recognized as part of who they
are. Other whites may find it more palatable to think that racism is
inherent to them and their society and therefore, that there is not
much that can be done (hooks 1995:266). Whites are also able to
avoid action because they think that the struggle is not theirs. Finally,
what Cherrı´e Moraga and Gloria Anzaldu´a wrote within the context
of feminist struggle is true for this example as well: ‘‘racism affects all
of our lives, but it is only white women [and men] who can ‘afford’ to
remain oblivious to these effects’’ (1981:62).
Whites may notice racism—it may even be cool to do so.8 They may
be anxious about it or actively work against it, but ultimately holding
onto the right to things that privilege enables and not recognizing that
this is what we do means whites avoid an honest reckoning.
Acknowledging desire for the material and social benefits that
white, middle class privilege brings is necessary to productive meet-
ings across difference (Adams 2002). The next section suggests what
might be done in light of the above examples.
Toward Practicing Anti-racism in Community Food Work
It may be useful for community food advocates to actively consider
that the US food system was built on a foundation of genocide,
slavery and layers of racist institutions that have dispossessed racia-
lized groups of cultural pride, land and wealth, in gender- and class-
specific ways. It survives, for instance, through the work of people of
color who serve, disproportionately, in the hazardous work of farm
labor and food processing. Institutionalized racism intersecting with
processes of colonialism, welfare ideology and gender and class
oppression is also visible in the areas of food insecurity, disease and
excess death.
A few statistics suffice to illustrate. In the 1980s, the number of
black and white farmers declined by 30% and 6.6%, respectively. In
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1999 black farmers owned less than a quarter of the land they owned
a decade earlier (Flanagan and Inoyue nd). Further, American Indian
nations’ survival is threatened by high rates of diabetes. Fifteen
percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives have diabetes.9
Between 1990 and 1998, the total number of young American
Indians and Alaska Natives with diagnosed diabetes (most of which
are type 2) increased by 71% (Acton et al 2002) and these two groups
are 2.6 times more likely than the Euro-American population to have
diabetes.10 Additionally, in 2003, African American and Hispanic
households experienced food insecurity at double the national aver-
age (Weil 2004; see also Shields 1995). Finally, a study found that
Spanish-speaking immigrants in California, Texas and Illinois were
more likely to suffer from food insecurity than immigrants from other
language groups (Kasper et al 2000, cited in Lee 2004:1). This land
loss, food insecurity and vulnerability to excess death must be under-
stood relative to whites’ land ownership, greater food security and
lesser vulnerability (see Pulido 2000). Of critical importance is that
white members of the movement recognize how they benefit person-
ally and organizationally from the work of racism in the food system,
in the community food movement and in society more generally.
While I present the dire side of the food/race story, I am aware that
the way social problems have been racialized has presented people of
color communities as fixed and uncomplicated (Harrison 1995).
These statistics risk speaking to our assumptions and adding unwit-
tingly to the sediment holding races ‘‘in their place’’ in society. For
instance, in nonprofit programming, a focus on poor blacks’ consump-
tion of ‘‘bad’’ food and their subsequent obesity may inadvertently
support bootstrap ideology. In any event, the figures cited previously
are only part of the picture. Equally, I do not want to reduce all
aspects of the modern food system and states of food insecurity to
white privilege because to do so would ignore the agency of diverse
peoples of color as well as the role of class exploitation and gendered
relations of power in the mix (Alcoff 2003).
Feminist and critical race theory underscores the strength, extent,
persistence and perversity of racism and its manner of working dif-
ferently on people who are simultaneously and differently racialized,
classed and gendered (Anzaldu´a 1987, 1990; Lorde 1984; Mohanty
1991; Omi and Winant 1994; see also Nash 2003 on work in
geography). This theoretical framework incorporates multiple axes
of difference and avoids succumbing to a hierarchy of oppression
that fixes power relations and identities (Collins 1998) as any location
may be a site of both oppression and privilege (Collins 2000). The
power of whiteness, for instance, is not spread equally across all white
people (Alcoff 2003:10; see also Gallaher 2002; Jarosz and Lawson
2002). And white identity is becoming more visible and so more
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susceptible to challenge (Winant 1997:74). To claim whiteness is
solely destructive is not a positive enough basis for refiguring white
identity or for meeting in alliance (Alcoff 1998). To judge white
attachment to privilege solely on its contemptibility will not bring
change: ‘‘it is possible to approach desire and attachment as inevita-
ble, and yet not immutable if recognized in conjunction with the
companion interests in justice and alliance’’ (Adams 2002:19).
Dismantling racism requires exposing power within all groups and
recognizing differences among groups of color (Alcoff 2003). But
anti-racism may require a temporary strategic focus on dismantling
institutionalized systems of racializing oppression. For instance, his-
torically marginalized groups often have to build strength in different
ways (eg economic, see Grossman 2001) to meet more privileged
groups on more equal terms (Collins 1990). Strategic interventions
that rely on an analysis of needs within a particular context are not
necessarily reducible to an essentialism that rests on monolithic, non-
relational formulations of identity and difference (Larner 1995). In
Larner’s case, an effective site of resistance reflecting localized con-
cerns was the decision of Maori women to articulate a Maori identity
and to focus on Maori sovereignty rather than sisterhood with white
women against patriarchy. However, for some community food orga-
nizations, their context, which involves working with youth positioned
differently by race, nationality, sexuality, gender and class, requires
them to adopt a more embracing form of anti-racist practice that
acknowledges the connections among many relations of power (eg
Regional Environmental Council’s YouthGROW, B-Healthy, Lots to
Gardens). A definition that considers these multiple intersections
claims, ‘‘[a]nti racist practice involves a process of changes introduced
into a wide range of social relationships within multiple hierarchical
axes. [It includes] [s]truggles for maternal and child health care,
religious freedom, immigrant women’s rights and better working
conditions for women and men in ongoing social transformations’’
(Romero 2001:xv).
Anti-racist practice notes how race, class and gender relations
intertwine in the food system in different places that have different
histories of racialization, gender relations and class struggle. These
analyses might focus on land tenure, sovereignty, farm worker, food
processor and food server exploitation, and/or the political economy
and cultural politics of hunger and obesity. Carole Morison, ED of
the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance, a cross race and class alliance,
tells a story of increasing numbers of young Latinas employed in
chicken processing and the dehumanizing techniques of the proces-
sing companies. She describes an aging population of African
Americans struggling to make ends meet after becoming disabled
through this work and the attempts of corporate poultry producers
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to pit blacks against whites. Meetings of the alliance pull open issues
of power and difference (C Morison, ED, interview, 16 September
2004). Analyses of oppression in the food system might lead to
different answers to the perennial questions community food asks:
How should we best promote food security? How can we keep small
to mid-sized farmers in business? What is a community food system
and how do we build it? Additionally, once privilege and oppression
are considered, new questions might be in order as might different
strategies that work from an acknowledgement of privilege and of the
fatality of difference (Gilmore 2002).
This practice further involves changing organizational internal
culture and the manner in which organizations establish relationships
and work with disenfranchised communities. The foundation of anti-
racist training is that ‘‘if an [organization] is anti-racist, it will be
different in the world’’ and being different in the world can shift
society (R A Dı´as, ODC conference call, 4 August 2004). Being
‘‘different in the world’’ means that organizations with staff privileged
by gender, class and/or whiteness learn how to be allies across differ-
ence in their work. Anti-racist practice would require nonprofits to
know what issues are of concern to communities and then to evaluate
whether these concerns are being addressed by their work.
Organizations would then attempt through resource allocation, rheto-
rical practices, policy advocacy and so on to shift the balance of power
toward historically oppressed groups in order to enable problem
identification, leadership and solutions to develop within these com-
munities. Differences in organizational operating style are shaped by
race, sexuality, gender and class (Quintero 2001). Thus anti-racist
practice necessitates long-term scrutiny of the organization’s internal
culture. It requires different forms of decision making, perhaps
through caucusing by race if people are more willing to identify first
by race rather than other markers of identity. And within people of
color organizations, anti-racist practice recognizes the need for lea-
dership by youth, women and the working class and for representa-
tion of different groups of color including those who may appear
white, such as members of American Indian nations, but who have
been racialized nonetheless.11
Last year’s co-chair of the Outreach and Diversity Committee
articulated some of these points in an email sent to the comfood list
serv in 2002. She challenged community food organizations to ‘‘look
at our work to see if the projects and policy solutions we are
developing truly challenge the racist policies and practices which
have been central to the development of the industrial food system’’
(Mascarenhas 2002) and asked the list serv members a series of
questions that remain useful and unanswered:
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If we are talking about building power and taking control of the food
system but the vast majority of people looked to as ‘‘leaders’’ in the
community food security movement are white, middle-class, highly
educated folks, we need to ask ‘‘WHO will take control?’’ and
‘‘WHO is building power?’’ Do the solutions we are developing
speak to the issues that low-income communities and communities
of color have identified as crucial (ie living wage jobs, housing, child-
care, even supermarket development, etc)? What are we doing to
provide people with the resources and information they need to
identify their own solutions? What kinds of ‘‘leadership’’ are we
trying to foster? . . . (Mascarenhas 2002).
Nuestras Raices, a Holyoke, MA organization that runs a business
incubator and gardening projects with youth and adults addresses
racism ‘‘quietly and organically’’ through the confidence and pride
that comes when community members turn a vacant lot into a garden,
are elected to positions on the board, become staff of the organization
and create businesses. Its anti-racist practice is evident in the
organization’s habit of responding to community interests and the
role of this community in setting the organization’s direction. For
instance, when a group of women in the community wanted to
answer questions they had about personal health, the director con-
vinced grantors that health was within the organization’s mandate.
The organization’s presence in the community means it steps forward
to address the imbalance of political, social and economic power
through the positions it takes at town meetings on, for instance,
environmental justice issues. Anti-racist practice is clear in the
questions the organizations asks of itself—is it building pride in the
Latino/a community with which it works and is it directly
accountable to them? Daniel, the Executive Director, pointed out
that ‘‘food and agriculture lends itself to addressing [racism and
power imbalances] because food is so central to communities and, if
you had working communities, you’d have justice and equality . . . At
the heart is the element of justice’’. He noted, further, that food
security, as a school of thought, is problematic because ‘‘you can’t
do just that. People are concerned about their communities, schools,
about globalization and saving their farms. Food security cannot be
divorced from the issues of concern to communities’’ (Ross, ED,
interview, 2 April 2004).
Conclusions
Barriers to anti-racist cross-difference alliance persist in the failure of
the white left to appreciate racism’s power and the growing complex-
ity of US race and class identities (Kuumba 2003; Pulido 2002:
762–763). In anti-racism trainings, white progressives tend to have
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