At the Global Racism, State Violence, & Activism event on February 5th, 2021, speakers Hanna Garth and Ashanté M. Reese discussed the book they had jointly co-edited: Black Food Matters. Hanna Garth had previously written on food systems in Cuba, formulating a politics of adequacy that emphasizes food availability in terms of how communities define what an ‘adequate meal’ is, as well as emphasizing the labor of acquisition in food systems. Ashanté M. Reese had written on food systems in D.C. and their relations to race, specifically of how Black people survive within an anti-Black food system. We will trace the event’s discussion from the background behind the editing of Black Food Matters to varying interpretations of what food justice means, the ‘climate of anti-Blackness’, and the ties between relationships, ethnography, and emotion.
One major note that Garth and Reese both spoke of were the difficulties associated with editing the book Black Food Matters itself. Garth explained how academics are discouraged from taking on similar projects, which Reese elaborated on by recounting a sentiment that they had encountered, namely that “editing doesn’t advance your career” (Garth and Reese). This shows that, even in the fields of anthropology and food studies, there is a belief that the importance or usefulness of one’s work on its own is not as important as the work it can do for one’s career. Garth and Reese seek to upend this notion, with Reese highlighting how the collaborative nature of Black Food Matters “counter[ed] toxic individualism” (Garth and Reese). Instead of viewing the book as a way to advance a career individually, Black Food Matters was a collaborative work intended not only for scholars of food studies, but to also engage several other fields including Black studies and American studies (Garth and Reese).
Garth and Reese opened their discussion of food justice by explaining how this ‘justice’ takes on different forms for different groups of people. Reese spoke of how the emphasis often comes on the food and not on the justice, while Garth examined how this justice may be interpreted as providing help to others, for whom the ‘help’ may be unwanted or not what they had asked for. Reese brought up the question of “what if we thought of justice as a relation, and not a thing?” (Garth and Reese). This materialistic imagining of food justice as a ‘thing’ is shown by the example Reese gave of a typical attitude towards food justice, which may make a statement such as “if I can insert ‘thing’ [into the food system], I can improve access,” (Garth and Reese). If we thought of it as a relation instead, it would allow us to envision a food justice that would center relationships, individuals, and communities, instead of thinking of food justice as providing ‘help’ in materialistic terms.
Garth and Reese also spoke of the ‘climate of anti-Blackness’, or how deeply ingrained anti-Blackness is in institutions, movements, relationships, and the most mundane acts of life. They discussed how projects put forth in the name of food justice are all built on this foundation of the climate of anti-Blackness, and furthermore how food justice movements have yet to incorporate racial justice in addition to the disjuncture between Black food cultures and food justice movements. This ‘climate of anti-Blackness’ relates to Beliso-De Jesús and Pierre’s work on anthropology and white supremacy. Beliso-De Jesús and Pierre agree that anti-Blackness is pervasive and foundational to any such project or relationship, namely in that “race and racialization [are] constitutive of all modern relations” (Beliso-De Jesús and Pierre, 2). In this way projects undertaken by food justice movements are conceptualized of in anti-Black, white supremacist food systems, which only serve to reproduce these very same conditions.
Finally, Garth and Reese explored ethnographic methods and the impact of ethnographic work on one’s self and on the participants and communities implicated in the study. Reese theorized that “ethnographic methods are an invitation”, and spoke of how as a hesitant ethnographer, one does not want to disrupt people’s lives (Garth and Reese). Reese furthermore questioned “how do you build relationships with people in real life? Not just [in] ethnography?” (Garth and Reese). In this way we cannot imagine ethnography or ethnographic methods existing as ‘outside’ of or distinct from ‘real’ life, given that these very processes influence the ethnographer and their study’s participants, perhaps even individuals and communities that were not explicitly involved with the study in the first place. Reese described how, despite frequently volunteering at a rec center while performing research in D.C., the center itself never appeared in the resulting book other than a mention in the introduction. For Reese, it was important to “contribut[e] more to the community outside of the ethnography” (Garth and Reese). Instead of trying to force a detached ‘objectivity’ to the work in D.C., Reese celebrated the involvement of personal life and emotion in spaces and communities both within and outside of the purview of the ethnography. Reese also spoke of this emotional involvement by describing the grief following the death of one of the study’s participants. Reese’s questions concerning relationship-building in ethnographies and ‘real life’ alike remind us that these relationships are predicated upon emotional vulnerability and caring about one another, and that these relationships and all the emotions that may be associated with them, such as grief at the loss of someone, “emphasizes why your work is important” in the first place (Garth and Reese).
Works Cited
Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha, and Jemima Pierre. “Special Section: Anthropology of White Supremacy.” American Anthropologist, vol. 0, no. 0, 2019.
Garth, Hanna, and Reese Ashanté. Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice. Global Racism, State Violence, & Activism Speaker Series, 2/5/21.