White dominance in supermarkets is something I never really noticed. I frequented the Birdsboro Farmers Market while it was still active, which is a town made of 90% white people, so it made sense to me that it was very white. This summer being my first time being able to experience a market in a more diverse setting, I'm eager to see what the turn out will be like. This chapter certainly shed light on my own blind spots and unconscious perpetuation of whiteness in markets. I definitely have held the opinion that agriculture and farmers markets are places to build community and connect yourself with your food and other people. I have, however, been aware that the people I am seeing at the market are not the entirety of the operation, in most cases. The sentiments that farmers markets build community and connect people with the ones who grow their food are not bad thoughts to have, in fact that's what sustainable agriculture is centered around (along with sustainability). The issue arises through lack of transparency from farm owners or managers who allow people to think they are the ones in the field doing the work. There needs to be greater transparency when it comes to the issues told in this chapter, otherwise sustainable agriculture will fall into the same systemic racial inequalities as "Big Ag".
There is no denying that in the entire history of the United States, systemic racism, prejudice, and classism has been at the base. And I hope to not undermine any struggles people may have faced due to their race. I think that humans have an inherent connection with their land and where they come from, a connection that has been greatly lost in the recent centuries. The "European rural imaginary" that the authors mention, I think, exemplifies the resurgence of white people in the United States reconnecting with their ancestry, which I think is great. However, I think it would be even better to couple that European culture with Native American, Asian, and African cultures as well. I was taught in elementary school that the United States is a melting pot of cultures, but throughout my life I have seen little evidence of this, I have just seen whitewashed everything. Farmers markets could act as a place to truly bring diverse cultures together and harness that melting pot energy, but many social, economic, and racial inequalities need to be addressed.
2 comments:
I know what you mean when you say "whitewashed everything". Your are right to point out the lack of transparency from the managers and/or farm owners running the market. It was not mentioned in the article, but to some extent, the owners of these farms, and more so the managers of farmers markets are allowing this miscommunication to turn into this imaginary by choosing to not be more transparent. I personally never assumed all people working in farmers markets were also the same people doing the farming, and I figure the only reason anybody would is because of common sayings around them like "buy directly from the people who grow our food" and whatnot. One might assume the same thing if a supermarket started saying things like "Fresh produce sold by local farmers" only to realize its still store employees doing the selling.
While I didn't seem to personally notice whitewashing with my experiences in farmers markets, it seems that I may have not consciously been aware of the fact or the economical standing of the location surrounding the farmers market may be a driving factor in whether or not a farmers market becomes whitewashed. Even with my own experiences taken into account, it seems that the majority of people experience the whitewashing issue which changes my perspective of the whole situation and leads me to believe that this is much more common than I initially thought. Without the experiences of my fellow classmates I would have thought that this issue may only be limited to the sample area of California and may not have been a country-wide issue but even within an hour from where I live on the opposite side of the country the issue still seems to be prevalent.
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