Hometown Boy?

I've done alright for myself.  I was on the college track as a high school student, but during my senior year I abandoned that path and became an auto mechanic.  My parents were horrified.

Mostly, what I can say about being an auto mechanic was that it gave me a unique insight into race and class, my current intellectual preoccupations, but this insight only developed after I got to college and began reading critical literature on race and economics.  My personal experience as a working class person appeared as exploitation with the right framework, and the clear exclusion of blacks from higher-paying, white collar jobs was only recognizable through the lens of race theory.

Now, I see the world through these lenses and I observe how both race and class shape the local food movement, economic development, and alternatives in the Birmingham region, my home.  What I bring to the table is clarity about the political-economic framework under which most of this activity happens. 

Not everything that is billed as universally good is, and not everything billed as parochial is bad.  Different groups with vastly different experiences need different sorts of responses from business and government, and the notion that "we can all just get along" may be true, but it has to be a getting along that recognizes difference and doesn't universalize one way of being (which, in the end, tends to universalize the being of the rich and powerful, as evidenced by my discussion of obesity in the last post).

Finally, I consider myself to be in the tradition of the great Southern eccentrics -  William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Mark Twain, and Hunter S. Thompson.  And, like them, I wrestle with the beauty and brutality of the South, with its persistent racism and sexism, and the Southern belief that being poor is somehow noble (and therefore not challenged).

I'm also increasingly concerned with the ubiquity of the Christian religion in the South and its use as the connective tissue of community, following Martin King's formula.  This seems like a highly exclusionary way to construct community and reveals the problem of creating community through difference.

Ultimately, I would like Birmingham, and by extension Alabama and the South, to transform into a progressive, open society that celebrates, instead of mourns, its past.

Let's stop talking about obesity.

I'm glad Eric Schlosser has publicly adopted the food justice paradigm in his recent Washington Post op-ed, Why being a foodie isn't 'elitist.'

I'm saddened that it took criticism from industrial food advocates to finally gain acknowledgment that food justice is the only acceptable paradigm for the food movement, and that years of criticism from food justice advocates went ignored.  Unfortunately, because of this, Schlosser appears to wield the poor as a political tool instead of having a true dedication to the plight of the oppressed. Anyone with any significant involvement with the food movement (I have been involved in both Alabama and North Carolina) should recognize that the movement has absolutely no answers for the poor and that most movement interventions are targeted at the privileged-lifestyle left.

Leaders like Schlosser may finally be understanding the necessity of addressing injustice for a movement to be successful, but the practices of the rank-and-file in the movement only reinforce its elitist status. Farmer's markets in trendy neighborhoods, $800-a-year CSAs and cooking demonstrations are no substitute for a robust policy agenda that genuinely remakes the food system.

While I'm glad Schlosser is on the right side, I'm cynical about his motivations. I wonder how much work he has actually done in poor neighborhoods and his argument seems like one of political convenience. Furthermore, to suggest that the food movement has any workable answers (i.e. empowerment not charity) to issues of hunger and food insecurity is to either be completely naive or outright lying.

The fact of the matter is that the industrial food system produces affordable food, and the food movement does not. Industrial food advocates are right - the food movement is elitist, but Schlosser's arguments are a step in the right direction. I have another step to suggest.

Let's stop talking about obesity.  Medical professionals have long branded the poor and oppressed as deviant, alternately disciplining that deviance with punishment and working to change that deviance through medical intervention. All the talk about obesity serves the purpose of branding the poor as deviant because they are poor - it further "others" them. Moreover, the BMI was developed using white bodies as the norm, meaning as usual, whiteness becomes the standard by which all others are judged.

The poor deserve good food because they are human beings, not because it is our ("the privileged's") job to ensure that they meet some standard of bodily normality. They also deserve the option to be allowed to choose bad food.  In fact, this line of reasoning calls into question whether largely white leaders like Michael Pollan and Schlosser (and myself for that matter) should have any say at all about how food is produced, distributed and consumed among the poor. Food sovereignty should be the goal, not technocratic fixes to bodies constructed as deviant by medical science.

Schlosser's op-ed is a step in the right direction. Now the question is, are the poor going to serve as a political volleyball, or is the movement going to bend towards a real justice paradigm?