Anthropology 102: Race and Food, Guided by Octavia and Ursula
Issue No. 6: Food, Nutrition, and Access in Our Communities
Words - kiah gibian
Illustration - Jeremie Rose Wimbrow
The year is 3411. In schools across the former United States, Racism is studied as anthropological history and is divided into categories so that students might grasp the now foreign concept. Society made drastic changes to the conditions experienced between the 1600s and 2600s. It is believed today that keeping track of humanity’s progress is vitally important, and emotional and human sciences are now revered on par with technology and environmental care.
Transcript from Anthropology 102: Race and Food at Howard University, November 10, 3411, guided by Octavia and Ursula.
Octavia and Ursula step into the center of the classroom. Students are waiting eagerly and the class grows silent. Ursula begins.
Guide Ursula: The American Cookery was recorded as the first American cookbook in 1796. Written by a white woman, there is very little known about its history. What is obvious to us now is that white writers had more access to publishers because of the United States’ long history of systemic racial oppression born out of slavery, allowing the author, Amelia Simmons, to be recognized as the earliest contributor to American culinary traditions.
Guide Octavia: Black women, when enslaved and brought to the Americas from Africa, carried nutritional and medicinal knowledge, seeds, farming technology, and recipes with them. White people recorded the recipes they acquired from the long standing traditions and oral histories passed down and shared by the resilient Black women they enslaved. It is now understood that many of the recipes in America’s first cookbooks were actually developed and perfected by Black women, only later scribed and titled by white people. The House Servant’s Directory, published in 1827, was the first cooking guide written by and credited to a Black person, giving it a mistaken place in the contrived time capsule that was once white history during the era of Racism.
Ursula: In the 21st century, there was mass, worldwide ignorance, especially in the West, about where food came from. The exploitation of Black and Brown labor had been going on for so long; people forgot that this was how their favorite foods were grown. Capitalism was practiced as a religion and held as a set of values in many western cultures during the era of Racism, leading to continued colonization of majority Black and Brown countries. Chocolate and sugar are two examples of goods for which the abusive means of production were largely hidden from consumers.
Octavia: Chocolate and sugar are among the labor-intensive crops that were almost entirely grown and harvested by Black and Brown people living in countries that provided few social supports and rarely enforced human rights laws or environmental protections. The grueling, inhumane labor and environmental destruction of these industries caused generational trauma that would take centuries to unpack and heal. With the help of legislative activism from the Provost Family and Soul Fire Farm, “a BIPOC-centered community farm committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system,” healing started in pockets throughout America providing a vision for a future and eventually spreading to other parts of the world.
Ursula: In 1971, Alice Waters, a white woman, opened a restaurant called Chez Panisse. She was credited with shaping “the slow food movement” in the United States in the 1980s. The slow food movement was focused on promoting local foods and a slower, smaller footprint for how food traveled to people’s plates. This concept was revered for its environmental and creative impact on the food industry, as narrated by and for white people. Local and slow foods started trending, and white chefs were lauded as celebrities. They, however, were not the creators of local or slow food.
Octavia: Hundreds of years earlier, Black and Brown people created permaculture and environmental stewardship around the globe. They had perfected the unity of growing food slowly, locally, and with care for the land. Their communities were then uprooted with many forced into slavery. From slavery through the capitalist exploitation of the 21st century, Black and Brown people grew the majority of the world’s food. While enslaved, their instincts for survival led them to rely on local food. They created much of what is later tokenized and claimed as slow food mere centuries later.
Ursula: White people colonize the cuisine of Black and Brown cultures, interchanging them and twisting them together with shallow understanding. This is coined “fusion.”
Octavia: Black and Brown people continue, against all odds, to maintain the narrative around their cuisine, passing it down to their children so they can stay connected to their history.
Ursula: Karens, a term you will remember from Anthropology 101, is used to refer to racist white females who occasionally masquerade under the air of “liberalism.” Karens refer to the labor of owning small businesses bought by generational wealth as their “struggle,” equating these experiences to the systematic oppression that Black and Brown women had been surviving for centuries. They refused to collaborate or build community, which eventually led to their isolation and businesses’ failures.
Octavia: Black women formed collectives to strengthen their wealth and shared assets. Just Call Me Chef was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 2018 by Chef Catina Smith to bring diversity and inclusion into every kitchen. The strength and sisterhood built in Baltimore long outlives the walls of exclusion built by Karens.
Ursula: 21st century TV Show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” with host Guy Fieri, confuses anthropologists to this day. We will cover this in a later class, because we do not yet have the tools to unpack the capitalistic and racist narrative of the Food Network.
Octavia: Between 2010s and 2030s, Black and Brown narratives around food began to flourish. Rather than looking to the Food Network or Bon Appétit for food narratives, people turned to sources like the podcast “Racist Sandwich,” Tunde Wey, Christina Martinez of South Philly Barbacoa, and Resistance Served facilitator Ashtin Berry.
Ursula: At the time, white farmers owned most of the land as a direct result of colonization, corruption, slavery, generational wealth, property exploitation, red-lining, and other racist legislative actions.
Octavia: It was known by the Black community that, as stated by Malcom X, “Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice and equality.” The Baltimore institution Black Yield worked to address food apartheid through collaborative efforts with Black people, entities, and other institutions. Black Yield shaped Baltimore as a center for Black liberation through Black food, land sovereignty, and a long-term vision for multi-generational change.
Ursula There was a swing towards co-operative ownership and asset building after the COVID-19 Pandemic in the early 2000s. It was seen in many industries, not just food. Groups like Black Yield and Just Call Me Chef that were already growing their collaborative strengths thrived long after the virus and food halls died off.
Octavia and Ursula sit back after charting for their students the unequal contribution to food in the era of Race. Though well versed in the history of that era, the students are dumbfounded at how something as false and idiotic as the white narrative in the evolution of food could have held such power for centuries.
Octavia: Next week we will dive into food trends, Mammy-ism, and the exploitation of Black Girl Magic in the food industry. Remember, take care to unpack your emotions after this class and to sustain your self-care. Be well. Class dismissed.
