SOS: ComAlt, Seminar Pre-Writing Week 9

30 May 2017

Word Count: 411

Passages:

“They got them on Avenue D but I stopped buying them there because when I was a child I remember at the greens store on Ridge Avenue that when you bought greens, the black man weighed and wrapped them but the white one took the money. It was a put down!” (Smart-Grosvenor 1970: 131)

“Even before it became a foodie gospel and bankable trend, Hoffman focused on buying local products and was a driving force behind the creation of Chefs Collaborative, an organization of culinary professionals dedicated to working closely with local farmers” (Estabrook 2012: 180)

“Today, as we are reconnecting with food, it’s important to go beyond easy romanticization. ‘Farm-to-Table’ so easily erases the labor of many people of Color… ‘This meal is a political act’” (Esquibel 2016: 4).

News Media Context:

College professor Bret Weinstein holds class off campus, citing students theatening violence

“So the core demand is that all people of your skin color leave the campus… George Bridges is supposed to be running the school, why is he allowing a mob to threaten one of his professors?” (Tucker Carlson from Bret’s Tucker Carlson Tonight interview)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/27/bret-weinstein-evergreen-state-professor-holds-cla/

Discussion:

While the contents of the readings are important on their own, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the proceedings on campus, which have consumed much of my time and ponderings over this past week. Although the series of events are a lot to unpack, I would like to focus on the roll that white blindness plays in both the assigned chapters and the perception of this week’s events in the larger news media.

A term I initially thought myself clever enough to create, white blindness can be explained on urban dictionary as “when white people don’t realize institutional racism or subtle discrimination against people of color really does exist today.” For the purpose of this seminar paper, I would extend the definition to white people’s general unawareness of the expansive nature of systemic racism, the privilege they benefit from, and their co-opting of minority narratives. Being that the food and agricultural worlds are teeming with instances of systemic racism, it is no coincidence that this behavior was exemplified in the praise of Peter Hoffman’s Farm-To-Table values in Tomatoland, and briefly critiqued in “Decolonize Your Diet.” Smart-Grosvenor’s Vibration Cooking is sprinkled with anecdotes about both institutional and individual racism.

Now, I cringe at the idea of centering the discussion of racial tensions on campus that include the whole of Evergreen around Bret Weinstein, as he has already done a thorough job of it himself. However, that is precisely the point that is so incredibly offensive and perverse regarding his behavior. While I viewed his initial email as more misinformed than overtly racist, his behavior in the following days have proven how ignorance can be just as damaging as personal discrimination. By engaging in a false narrative of violent and aggressive people of color touted by conservative news media, Bret has done the incredible disservice of putting black students at Evergreen in immediate danger, inciting threats from actual racists both locally and across the nation. If that wasn’t enough, Bret’s decision to don himself a martyr of some greater anti-fascist cause has taken attention away from the actual conversation being had on our campus – a conversation that has been bravely and eloquently presented by black students on campus, and met with a promise of action and further discussion. Unfortunately, Bret’s hubris in these events – his inability to understand the larger consequences of his actions and the rhetoric it incites – is just one of the many instances of white blindness that we continue to see in our “post-racial” society.

Citations:

Estabrook, Barry. (2012). Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Esquibel, Catrióna Rueda. (2016). “Decolonize Your Diet: Notes Towards Decolonization.” Retrieved from https://foodfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DR7_Final-2.pdf

Richardson, Bradford. (2017 May 17). “College professor Bret Weinstein holds class off campus, citing students theatening violence.” Retrieved from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/27/bret-weinstein-evergreen-state-professor-holds-cla/

Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae. (1970). Vibration Cooking: Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.