Washington, a Bronx farmer and activist, coined 'food apartheid' as a replacement for 'food desert'. Kim Severson had asked what conversation about food education is missing. Washington's objection is that 'desert' describes a place as naturally empty and puts the blame on the people living there, when those communities are already growing food and asking for resources nobody sends.
That was a no. That was a no because. But
let's unpack why.
Because it never felt, first of all, it's like, you know, you're in your community, you're working so hard, and then someone is telling you that you live in a food desert. And I'm saying, we're growing food. We're trying to feed our community, and we need resources, and no one cares. And then you're naming us a food desert and you're blaming, putting the blame on us without really having the hard conversation is why in this great country we have hunger and poverty. Why is it that we have diet-related diseases? And no one was talking about that. So I flipped and call it food apartheid because I wanted our conversation to be intentional. Be intentional about race and racism. Be intentional about where a person lived, geographically, be intentional about the wealth that is built, the wealth that was built on the backs of enslaved and indigenous people. And we weren't having that conversation. And food desert reminded me, you know, of just like putting a pin on a map and saying, oh, so that's where people have limited access to food without, we're human beings. I mean, that's not human when you're saying you live in a food desert. And then I went to people in the desert and I said, y'all got food? Yeah, we grow food in the desert. So again, you know, when it comes to education, let's sort of have that education on how this country was built. Because right now we have an administration that wants to take away our history, want to sanitize our history. It ain't going to happen.
All right. Well, you have my vote, so that's good. Just talk a little bit about, though, the realities of hunger, though, you know, and, you know, talk about food. I mean, the real thing is there are a lot of people who are hungry and increasingly can't get the calories that they need. You know, they can't get the food that they need. Need. And we were talking, the other thing I thought you had an amazing take on was this notion of food banks and of soup kitchens, which all seem, you know, they're just part of our community, you know, and you volunteer and you go down and you help, you know, but you're you feel like that system itself is oppressive, is that right?
It's not sustainable. I love my food pantries and soup kitchen because there's a need. Right. And the need was always for emergency purposes. It wasn't a way to feed people. And I see that it's starting to... It's become systemic, yeah. Yeah, you know, instead of giving people the tools to get off of food pantries and soup kitchens, because that's what you want to see. So some food pantries are now integrating a lot of social skills. You know, they have housing, they have jobs creation, they have entrepreneurship. So they're finding ways to help people get out of that.
So those food pantries become part of an ecosystem to help somebody move up and that they needed to be broadened out than just excellent.