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.
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