Ohio Academy Structural Racism in the United States Food System Essay This is a writing essay revision. Need to add more 300 words, and here is the comment

Ohio Academy Structural Racism in the United States Food System Essay This is a writing essay revision. Need to add more 300 words, and here is the comment from my professor :

“Overall, this essay provides a lot of excellent information; it’s clear that you did a lot of research when developing this draft. However, since there’s so much information, it was difficult for me to parse through and understand what YOU were trying to argue. Much of this draft feels more like a synthesis or summary of the research you’ve done than the development of an argument. Since there was so many references to your research and your sources, I had a hard time finding YOUR voice and YOUR ideas.

I don’t think you need to take out the information that you’ve presented in this draft; I just think it needs to be reorganized, and your own argument needs to take a more central position within the essay, whatever you decide you want that argument to be. One thing that may help bring out your own voice and argument in more depth is to identify some specific problem, situation, or issue within a local community, whether that community is the U of O, in your own home town, or somewhere else entirely. If you wanted, you could even use an example from our assigned readings to assess whether or not it presents an example of systemic racism within the food system.

For example, you could take Winona LaDuke’s example of the wild rice and examine whether or not the University of Minnesota’s use of that rice to develop a genetically-engineered strain of paddy rice could be considered an example of structural racism within the food system. That way, you could use the information that you’ve presented in this draft as a critical framework by which you examine and assess LaDuke’s example.

Or, you could even use that opportunity to determine whether or not genetic engineering of foods can be seen as racist. Whatever you decide, I think you’d do well to frame the specific context and conversation that you’re addressing much, much earlier in the essay and then use the information you’ve included in this draft to act as a critical framework by which you analyze and assess the various aspects of genetic engineering. In other words, you could focus on the major parts of genetic engineering (or, more accurately, the distribution of genetically-engineered foods within the food system), and select the ideas that are most crucial to assessing and understanding each respective aspect of this topic.”

Here is the writing instruction requirement:

Meets the 1,500 word minimum (excluding the Works Cited page); there’s no maximum page limit, but please try to keep your essay around 2,000 words or less if possible.
Uses formal academic prose
Adheres to the requirements of Standard Edited American English, MLA documentation style, and formatting guidelines stated in the syllabus
Includes parenthetical citations and a Works Cited page that lists the texts you cite in your essay Clay Chen
WR 122
Essay 2.2
Structural Racism in the United States Food System
The question of access to food – particularly within the context of food systems – is not merely
about having “something” to eat. Rather, it goes further to having the right to choose what to eat
(when one decides to eat) and it what state. It is about being able to produce one’s food and/or
being able to access it at the right time in the market. It is in these respects that there emerges
injustice in the United States food system, particularly what could be termed “white privilege”,
the flipside of which is that the other (minority) races are disadvantaged. This is, indeed, a
controversial subject, the bone of contention being who is to blame for the evident racial
disproportion in the US food system. To some, it is attributable to individual failures, and to
others it is a biological issue (Reinhardt 81-106). However, the said racial disproportion can
reasonably linkable to the same longstanding structural racism in the country, particularly
manifested in white individuals and institutions to have complete control over the means of and
tools for food production, food markets and, therefore, food affordability.
How to attain food justice is a question that scholars, observers and activists have always
grappled with. In any case, central to the search for food justice is the notion that food supply
and demand should be localized (Guthman 387). In other words, food should be produced locally
and sold to the local demand, and this proximity of supply and demand enables not just access to
food, but access to organic and fresh foods. However, the fact is that such localization has not
been attained – at least not adequately – so that it can be said that many have not yet attained
“food justice”. The question is why this is so.
It is first important to understand that food justice is about control over the production,
distribution, and purchase of food. It is about the ability to farm, produce, and sell agricultural
produce (Billing and Cabbil 105). In turn, food justice is more than just about having a full belly,
but also about identity and freedom. This is why it is important for minority groups to also have
control over the production, distribution, and purchase of foods. It is not just about economic
power, but also having the power of choice over what to eat (i.e. one’s diet) and one’s health.
When food – generally and also specific types of foods – is limited, the situation becomes a crisis
and a source of oppression. The role of food as a tool for freedom then emerges as an important
theme (Reinhardt 83). Ultimately, the said control becomes a means to enable the “localization”
of the food system, hence food justice. However, many lack such control. The lack of knowledge
is highlighted as the primary barrier to the transformation of food system, towards localization
and inclusivity (Guthman 387). Maybe it is true that availing such knowledge could help to
bridge the gap in food justice. However, knowledge may be of little impact where certain racial
groups are predisposed to benefit at the expense of others.
It is perhaps understandable that the link cited between racism and the food system is a
controversial one, but to understand it one needs to understand the nature of racism. For Billings
and Cabbil (104), racism is a perverse and inevitable phenomenon in the US, touching on every
aspect of life. Maybe that is to simplify the problem too much. Still, racism does not always
show in “explicit” ways. Rather, it also often manifests in subtle – even “invisible” – ways, and
still with major consequences. For example, McKinney (11) argues that a white man who is
nominally nonracist can still be contribute to a racial/racist system, and Sullivan (8) refers to the
unconscious white privilege habits, which at times can be more harmful than even explicit
racism. This forms the basis of “structural” racism, characterized by a blindness to the plight of
the “other”. Essentially, structural racism hereby refers to the prevailing patterns of racial
relations in the US’s food system to external and systemic factors. In other words, the corporate
food regime is designed in ways that favor white population at the expense of racial minorities
(Holt-Gimenez & Wang 83). In this case, the discriminate nature of that system manifests in the
form of disproportionate ownership of land, production resources, and the produce market.
Indeed, there is ample evidence pointing to white privilege in food production and market
in the US, and increasingly at the disadvantage of minority groups. For instance, whereas
African-Americans had about 16 million acres of US farmland in 1910, by 1997 only 20,000 of
them shared a maximum of 2 million acres, and by 2017 African-Americans owned just a total of
1 million of the country’s farmland. Moreover, according to the 2012 USDA Census of
Agriculture, only 2.1 million farmers in the country (at the time) belonged to the minority group,
and just about 50% of them owned the lands they farmed. Ultimately, by 2017, AfricanAmericans and Latinos farmed just 2.8% of the country’s farm acreage; produced a meager 3%
of the country’s agricultural value; and on average earned below $10,000 in annual agricultural
sales (Holt-Gimenez n.p.). These patterns means that minorities are increasingly losing their
control over the production and distribution of food, and their minority population markets are in
turn losing control over what to purchase, where, and for how much.
As already noted above, however, many do not agree that these disproportions stand in
the way of food justice, particularly where food justice is understood as a matter of “localization”
of one’s diet. Reinhardt (81-106) launches two valid arguments, citing “individual” and
“biological” factors. In terms of “individual”, Reinhardt (90-92) concerns himself with what role
one can play towards their access to food (and indeed certain types of foods) and in turn their
diet and health. He researches the ways in which the indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes
Regions find indigenous foods in its natural environment through hunting, fishing, and foraging,
among others. The response of the body to the food one eats extends the “individual” perspective
to the “biological” perspective. In this regard, Reinhardt (97) find that the subjects who ate
indigenous foods exhibited significant reductions in weight, girth, and body mass index, as well
as reductions of adverse health traits like blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose levels, among
others. Without question, these are valid points, but it all still returns to one’s control over food
access. Hunting, fishing, and foraging are perhaps easier decisions in indigenous settings, but
much harder in urban areas, especially the US where people highly conscious of private property
and very litigious. In fact, it is this psyche of entitlement that sustains such structural systems,
thereby impacting on what the individual can do, and in turn their diet and health.
The question of food security is a complex one. It is the result of several factors.
However, it comes down to choice, and in this case collective choice. That choice should stem
from the power of control over food production, distribution, and purchase. As evidence shows,
whether intending it or not white individuals and institutions have continued to dominate over
the production and sales of agricultural produce, and in that time minority groups have only
continued to lose power. At the base of this displacement is a subtle – structural or systemic –
racism that has historically denied minorities the freedom and right of choice, and it is too bad
that in this case is stands in the way of food justice.
Works Cited
Billings, David, & Cabbil, Lila. “Food justice: What’s race got to do with it?” Race/Ethnicity:
Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, 5.1 (2011): 103–112. Web. 28 May 2019.
Guthman, Julie. ““If They Only Knew”: Color Blindness and Universalism in California
Alternative Food Institutions.” The Professional Geography, 60.3(2008): 387-397. Web.
28 May 2019.
Holt-Gimenez, Eric & Wang, Yi. “Reform or Transformation? The Pivotal Role of Food Justice
in the U.S. Food Movement.” Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts,
5.1(2011): 83-102. Web. 28 May 2019.
Holt-Gimenez, Eric. A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism: Understanding the Political Economy of
What We Eat. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017. Web. 28 May 2019.
McKinney, Karyn D. Being White: Stories of Race and Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Print.
Reinhardt, Martin. Spirit Food: A Multidimensional Overview of the Decolonizing Diet Project.
In Elizabeth S. Huaman & Bharath Sriraman (Eds.), Indigenous Innovation:
Universalities and Peculiarities, 81–106. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers,
2015. Print.
Sullivan, Shannon. Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege.
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. Print.

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