SOS: ComAlt
Seminar Pre-Writing Week 6
9 May 2017
Word Count: 437
Passages:
“As we set out along a sandy path, he told me that it was wrong to view slavery in Florida’s fields as a series of isolated cases. Rather, he explained, slavery is an inherent part of an economic system built on the ruthless exploitation of its workers.” (Estabrook 2012: 97)
“ A landowner of that time told an interviewer for the 1960 CBS documentary Harvest of Shame, ‘We used to own our slaves, now we just rent them.’ Today, fifty-one years after that film first aired, unscrupulous crew bosses find that time-tested debt-peonage tactics still work just fine.” (Estabrook 2012: 82)
“So they took the English language and did what they could with it and it was beautiful. Black people are the only people in this country who speak English and make it sound musical. Anyhow, back to adaptivity, being the granddaughter of a slave who adapted to the unnatural ways of his master, I, too, soon caught on and there I was eating fruit with a fork.” (Smart-Grosvenor 2011: 66)
“ According to oral history, enslaved African women brought okra and rice seeds to the Americas by hiding them in their braided hair. These crops were essential crops to people of African descent. In fact, cowpeas, okra, and, especially, rice all have had profound culinary and cultural effects in the Americas.” (Bandele, Myers 2016: 3)
News Media Source:
“ ‘Clearly, we made some people uncomfortable,” she daid. ‘Good. For too long, our comfort has come on the backs of man who have been uncomfortable for a long, long time.’”
(cited below)
Discussion:
The readings this week spoke largely of culture and how culture is effected by and preserved through times of extreme suffering as well as prolonged oppression.
In Tomatoland, Estabrook makes clear that slavery is not a thing of the past. Workers are being exploited – held in horrible conditions and given little to no pay. The US economy relies on slavery. It relies on taking advantage of those without a voice. It turns people into profit-making objects and machines.
“We used to own our slaves, now we just rent them.” The way in which language is used to give things a name seems to have great power to either pacify or ignite emotion. Treating people like slaves and calling it employment allows folks turn the other away and believe things and legal and just.
The passages from Smart-Grosvenor and Food First have to do more with adapting as well as preserving. In Vibration Cooking, Vertamae points out that the many languages of Africa translated lyrically into their adaptation into English. That musical accent – that can be viewed as preservation through adaptation.
Bendele/Myer’s description of the African women weaving seeds of rice and okra into their hair conjured ideas of strength, cleverness, fertility and endurance. Adaptation and preservation. While I am grateful that okra is in my life, the circumstances that brought it to these lands are horrifying. Those seeds and parts of the culture of those African men and women were taken and commoditized. This still happens all of the time through dance, language etc.
The article I read this week was about the work one organization, Food Solutions New England, is doing to make social justice a more central focus of their mission and actions. Quoted above is Niaz Dorry, the coordinating director of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a fishermen led alliance that seeks to nurture fisheries and fishing communities. Dorry wrote in the organization’s new article that supporters of the organization should stand up for racial equity in the food system. After that newsletter, many people unsubscribed.
I have a friend who often says, “ If it’s hard, to it. If it makes you uncomfortable – you should probably spend some time understanding why.” From the readings this week, I took away a strong theme of culture and how adaptation is often necessary for survival. Sometimes, small adaptations allow for traditions to survive in new ways. The biggest point however, is that people are not all treated fair. It is important to use whatever position we have been given in life to do what we can to work towards equity. It will probably be uncomfortable, and that’s okay.
Works Cited:
“The Roots of Black Agrarianism : Food First.” Accessed May 9, 2017. https://foodfirst.org/publication/the-roots-of-black-agrarianism/.
Estabrook, Barry, and Andrews McMeel Publishing. Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. Kansas City [etc.: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 2012.
Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae. Vibration Cooking, Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011.
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