Do What’s White (Response to Guthman)

When I first heard the term “White Privilege” I was a senior in high school, our sociology teacher was teaching us a lesson about the systematic injustices put upon people of color that continuously created burdens in their lives, specifically in zoning in cities. My immediate reaction was how am I responsible for these injustices when I did not take part in it? And how am I more privileged because of the color of my skin? It wasn’t till the end of my senior year that “White Privilege” was full visible to me. It was amazing to me how I was not aware at this entire phenomenon that was happening all around me.

Being an environmental study major, I have fully understood the issues with conventional agriculture in current times. So I saw organic farming and CSA programs as important and vital processes to creating more environmentally friendly food production systems. However, again, I was not fully aware that these programs might not be such good ideas. In reading Julie Guntham’s article it shed light on how these practices were based of “white” ideas. Guntham starts the paper off with identifying the issue, “white desire to enroll black people in a particular set of food practices”(Guntham 433). Guntham explains the dark history of the word “organic” and its ties Nazi Germany through the teachings of Rudolph Steiner (Guntham 435). Although I do not think that word still holds racist ties in this day of age, I think it is important to understand it’s history.

Even more intriguing is how Guntham presents the argument of how “localism” and CSA programs can have xenophobic ties, by not allowing a community to develop evenly, and forcing a community to stay as they are (Guntham 436). Localism can be dangerous as a community can exclude those who they don’t identify as being part of their community, and further creating racial tensions. This brings me back to the article that we previously read in the term, where local Californian farmers were given control of political processes. It seemed like a good idea; however, these farmers did not represent the community as a whole, as they failed to encapsulate the thousand of migrant workers working on these farms creating misguided and underrepresented decision-making.

The most interesting part of the article comes with Guntham comparing this eating local movement to colonialism. At the beginning of the paragraph she sets the stage for her comparison by labeling those who are trying to convert people to eat local, to missionaries. This is interesting because in colonial times missionaries would come to these foreign lands and try to force the local people to believe in Christianity, in a similar fashion this is done by the people who try to get communities of color to eat local. Guntham also explains how much of these projects are directed to newly arrived immigrants, essentially trying to assimilate these people into the dominant “white” society. Guntham explains the irony in “white” people telling people of color to try and have healthy diets. This irony comes from the fact that “white” people, through politics and systematic racism, set up the unhealthy environment that most people of color live in, and now we are asking them to try and make healthier decisions.

However, in the end of the article she makes it clear that eating locally and CSA movements are very important still, it is the way we carry out these movements that need to be changed. Whether it be having people of color leading some of these organizations, or educating youth the importance of creating local food systems.