Food apartheid

By: Jenny Contreras

Food apartheid, more commonly referred to as a “food desert”, is a growing issue for Black, brown, indigenous, and poor communities living in the United States.

Food deserts, as defined by the USDA, are: “areas where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food.”

Lauren Ornelas, executive director of the Food Empowerment Project, explains the difference between the terms food desert and food apartheid: “for the Food Empowerment Project we use the word food apartheid because this is not happening by accident, this is a deliberate attempt to harm the health of Black, brown, and indigenous communities in the United States. So we feel like it’s more important to call out racism and discrimination as it exists.”

According to the USDA, 19.1% of Black households and 15.6% of Hispanic households experienced food insecurity in 2019, while only 7.9% of white Americans experienced food insecurity.

The term “food desert” implies that these communities are completely barren, when in reality, fast food restaurants and liquor stores are abundant in these areas and oftentime are the only options, leaving people to rely on unhealthy food.

According to Ingrid Wright in her article “Those with inadequate access to food likely to suffer from obesity” from usta.edu , “study results also showed that the individuals who live in food deserts are at an elevated risk for obesity. Together, these findings suggest that Americans who either do not have enough to eat or live in areas without access to stores that sell affordable nutritious foods are at greater risk for obesity.”

If part of the issue is that these communities lack access to stores, why not build more? While it may seem like an obvious solution, building more grocery stores would not inherently solve food apartheid, especially since many corporations are the ones doing the harm.

The Food Empowerment Project found that a Safeway grocery store in a predominantly POC neighborhood in Vallejo, had relocated miles away and left a restrictive deed that prohibited any other grocery store from occupying the property for fifteen years. Other stores throughout the country have also been purposely preventing grocery stores from moving in for 15-30 years plus. “They’re deliberately impacting the health of communities by preventing grocery stores from being in these communities, so that’s one example of why this is happening,” says Lauren.

Deserts are natural, food apartheid is a direct result of environmental racism and it is not natural or coincidential. These issues stem from this country’s deeply rooted racial discrimination and date back as far as housing segregation and redlining.

Environmental racism refers to how minority groups have been disproportionately burdened with hazardous living conditions including being exposed to toxic waste facilities, greater air pollution, sewage plants, contaminated water and soil, and food apartheid.

There are several layers to this issue, and it’s important to note that we cannot promote environmental solutions without acknowledging environmental injustices. So then, how do we combat this intersection between environmental issues and social issues? The very first step is addressing racism.

Lauren Ornelas explains the Food Empowerment Project’s efforts to mitigate the issue, “One of the things that we really encourage people to do is help fight for living wages, the more we can get everybody on an equitable basis… then it's gonna be easier for people to access healthy food. We would also need to be looking at solutions where the community is empowered, where the community has a say, where the community is looking out for each other versus looking for corporations to go into these areas when they’re really looking out for profit.”

BIPOC and low-income communities have endured systemic environmental racism and have been in the frontlines for far too long. It is extremely important that these communities are part of the conversation when discussing environmental issues.