Zoe Brook – Page 3 – The Importance of Studying Social Justice and Community

Week 4 Seminar Posting: Socially Imparted Value and Diet.

ComAlt, Sarah Williams.

Seminar Response Paper, Wk 4.

Zoe Wright.

1/31/17.

Racial Indigestion Chapter 2; Secret Financial Life of Food Chapters three and four.

“The magnitude of popular interest in bread may also have been due to the changing dietary habits of Americans. Early in the nineteenth century many reformers were concerned with the increase in meat consumption and the decline in the amount and quality of bread production.” (Tompkins, 60)

“The disparity was clear: cotton was for the rich and powerful; corn was for the poor. Corn was the main staple of slave diets (the standard ration of corn for slaves was a peck of corn a week, or about 2 pounds of corn a day).” (Newman, 32)

“In a new study in Applied Economics, Palma et al seek to reveal consumer motivations behind willingness to pay for expensive foods versus valuation of food attributes. Could it be fashion, a bid for prestige or a statement of wealth and social standing?” (ScienceDaily, 2016)

I chose the lines from Tompkins because it connected to the conversations around diets and nutrition that happen in current times. These conversations being around what foods are considered healthy, fad diets, and a seemingly opposite view of bread and meat than is expressed in these chosen lines. In current times meat is considered the healthy staple while bread is the carb and sugar ridden demon of weight loss represented in Hollywood films.

I chose the lines from Newman because the connection it made between the perceived value of food by different social classes. There are still foods that are associated with being low class, poor, or from particular racial or ethnic backgrounds. There are sections in supermarkets labeled ‘hispanic’ or ‘asian’. And there have been fairly recent dog whistle campaigns that connect certain foods with being lower class, on welfare, or of those particular backgrounds.

I chose this report of a study done on social class and perceived value of food because it makes it evident that these discussions are still being had recently, and are still important.

I find these connections between the perception of value placed on food based on associations with race, class, or wealth interesting because of the way they are used for things like dog whistle politics, targeted advertising, and the cultural shame that is associated with consuming certain foods because of the interactions of your various social status.

Reference: Palma, M., Ness, M., & Anderson, D. (n.d.). Food purchasing and social status perceptions — ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 1, 2017, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160718104332.htm

Weekly Reflection: Celebration, Venting, and Charging. (Wk 2)

There were a lot of complicated things that happened for me during this last week. I participated in C3’s lectures on Wednesday and early Thursday, which included the movie “Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, lies, and the global exchange” and a guest lecture by Sarah Eltantawi on the Iraq war. On Thursday I observed the protest and walk out. I read the first chapter (written by Joni Seager) of the book Dangerous Intersections about the connections between military activity and climate change, and a chapter from Sister Outsider called “Transforming Silence Into Language and Action”. I read various commentary on the Women’s March and the Pussyhat movement. I read an article on the way Martin Luther King’s legacy has been misappropriated as a way to control the content of current protests.

I felt like I was present in an important moment. And I felt like I was absorbing all that was going on around me, even when I didn’t know exactly what to make of it.

Since school started this year I have felt so much expansion in my worldview. I have learned a lot about allyship, advocacy, and activism. I am taking in information every single day, especially in the last few months, about how to be critical and how to be involved and engaged, how to be inclusive, how to lead and when it’s most important to give space to other voices.

I haven’t figured out how all the pieces fit together yet. I haven’t figured out a way to turn all of the things I’ve learned and all the things I feel connected to and all the things I want to contribute to into a solid course of action. A stable idea of how exactly I can best fit into the world around in a meaningful way.

There are people around me who have, or who are comfortable getting involved with action even if they don’t know how it fits yet. I can’t jump in with both feet yet, and part of me feels guilty for that and another part knows I will be next to useless until I feel stable in my knowledge. (Not static, because I don’t ever want to stop learning, but stable enough to stay strong.)

One of my questions for this quarter was why it is important to learn about social justice. What the connections are between activism and education.

Education, either from a somewhat traditional course of reading and writing and thinking or from a hands on, peer spread, or community based learning, has been incredibly important to me in finding out more. It’s taught me how to find information and use it. It’s taught me how to look at things critically. It’s given me a place to be comfortable and pushed me past my comfort zone.

My education has given me tools for putting small details and small pieces together within a bigger picture and make connections that are of vital importance, yet not always made.

At a simplistic point, activism is education. It’s spreading information that is unacknowledged, hidden, or silenced. It’s broadening minds.

Education and activism are entirely tangled. They benefit each other. This quarter, in part, is about expressing in more depth and detail that tangle, and that benefit.

On Saturday, the day after the Inauguration, I attended a Drag Show. Its theme was superheroes and shedding secret identities to become your true self. The organizers of that show were people I went to community college with, who I met through the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) on campus. At that club, we were usually lucky if ten people showed up at a time.

When I got to Evergreen, I attended the LGBTQ Welcome reception. I wasn’t expecting it to be so well attended, and when what felt like sixty or seventy people showed up it was incredibly overwhelming. It was a very overwhelming amount of people, and there wasn’t the space or time to get to know anyone slowly. I am a very white human, I am very straight passing, my personality is quiet unless I’m with people I’m close with, and I don’t have the confidence to take on the powerfully open aspects of personality that I so admire in others. With these things together, I don’t expect to be trusted, I don’t expect to be much more than on the outskirts of any communities, especially when I am new.

So in many ways, the small community I had at community college was more than what I was able to find at Evergreen. And when I go back and interact with those people, it feels comfortable and familiar.

Last Saturday was a charged day. It was a powerfully emotional show. I watched with my partner fighting exhaustion and being overwhelmed by social stimuli and at the same time being a part of a community that was celebrating its strength, venting its frustrations, and charging itself for a fight at the same time.

Seminar Weekly 3: Value of Bodies, Safety Of That Which Nourishes

SOS:ComAlt

Sarah Williams

Seminar Reading Response. Wk 3.

Zoe Wright

1/23/17.

Racial Indigestion Chapter 1; Secret Financial Life of Food Chapter 2

“It is, as animal studies scholars and animal rights activists have noted, permissible to eat meat because animals represent a lower social order than humans, and even then this is not true for all animals: Pets such as Dame Trot’s cat and dog are in a separate category. Those that are eaten are not persons but things, and their thingness is the result of a system of social degradation. For a human to take the place of an animal means becoming the object of a similar social degradation.” (Tompkins, 30-31)

“Although European explorers, particularly the Dutch and Portuguese, would continue to search for new spice islands and spice routes to control the lucrative flow of the spice trade, by the nineteenth century, spices were no longer viewed as exotic. ‘Pepper-pot’ stews were considered mundane affairs for the middle and lower classes and not to be eaten by courtiers.” (Newman, 21)

“The outbreak points to a lack of understanding consumers have with disease risk related to raw ingredients, particularly flour, which isn’t often treated to kill bacteria. ‘Flour is derived from a grain that comes directly from the field and typically is not treated to kill bacteria,’ said Leslie Smoot, a senior advisor in the FDA’s office of food safety, in a press release. This bacteria can be rendered harmless during normal food preparation — what the FDA calls ‘kill steps’ — such as baking, frying or microwaving. However, consumers who spurn such time-consuming processes can put themselves at risk with a quick lick of the spoon. The agency notes products that intentionally contain cookie dough, such as ice cream, use flour and eggs that have been pasteurized and are therefore safe to eat in their uncooked state.” (Visser)

I was caught by the lines from Tompkins because of its connections to how people justify eating meat and treating animals badly to gain meat. The way we order and value beings, is very much connected to whether animals are becoming people or people are becoming animals. I really appreciate these notes about how humans and animals are valued in the text because they put the rest of the work into context for me, and they connect to the studies I am doing of social justice and education, which are topics that are very connected to which people are valued in what way and why.

Newman’s discussion of an exotic spice becoming mundane, common and thus less valuable, relates closely to Tompkins’ discussion of how class and race influence perception and consumption of food.

There is mention in Tompkins’ chapter discussing how to keep your kitchen clean, attractive, and safe, which reminded me of our brief discussion of how the perception of soil has changed over time. The news article I chose mentions that companies don’t expect flour to be eaten raw, thus they don’t treat it in a way that would make it safe to eat raw. Soil and flour seem very similar in this instance. Neither is safe to be around or eat raw, but food that is supposedly safe to eat springs from them both. It is interesting to consider what temperatures flour would have to reach to be safe, and whether it actually does reach that temperature through-and-through during normal cooking processes.

References:

Racial Indigestion, Kyla Wazana Tompkins.

The Secret Financial Life of Food, Kara Newman.

FDA Warns Against Eating Cookie Dough, But Not Because Of Eggs, Nick Visser. Huffington Post, 6/30/16. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fda-cookie-dough-flour_us_5774bf5fe4b042fba1cf2b6d

Tasting Lab Reflections and Connections. wk 1 (rewrite of Tasting Musings)

SOS: ComAlt. Sarah Williams.

Tasting Response. Wk 1.

Zoe Wright.

1/16/17.

In the stead of participating in the tastings every other week, I will be writing a short note on my observations of the tasting and of the social culture related to food that is created in the classroom during mealtimes and tastings.

During the tasting last week there was brief discussion about the phenomenon of liking things less or differently the more you learn about them, and about how so many classes with social justice aspects have a very large success rate of making you really despise things you used to like, or at least feel highly guilty about wanting to still like them.

This week our tasting involved five types of eggs. These were called: White, Pink, Marbled, Golden, and Salmon Roe. The first four were various ways to prepare hard boiled eggs. The fifth is the egg of a salmon. The class was to write down visual observations, then taste each type once and write down first taste observations. Then the class was to read the blurb about each kind of egg, which included something about what it was or how it was made, and some personal touches about what it meant to a few different people. After reading the blurb for each egg, they were to taste the eggs again and write down what, if anything changed.

Thus each description was read and the eggs turned into a normal hard boiled egg from Stiebers Farms Cage free “Sunrise Fresh” eggs; a ‘golden’ egg that had been bought locally and were known as “Egg Lady” eggs, which had been scambled in their shell and then boiled; Egg Lady eggs that had been pickled in beets, a recipe found on Allrecipes.com that one commentor said tasted just like their grandma’s recipe, and that one commentor said was a beloved family favorite; and Egg Lady eggs that had been boiled in black tea sourced from the controversial Sakuma Brothers farm, making them tea eggs that you might find with street vendors in Chinese communities; and salmon eggs that had to be harvested at a particular point in the salmon’s reproductive cycle to get the correct texture and flavor.

This exercise was a way to highlight the different things that go into forming what something tastes like and especially whether or not you like that taste or that food. Where it came from, how it was grown. Who’s serving it, why, and when. Some of what was discussed last week was how knowing background information affected how you physically tasted, and mentally decided, which was better. Some mentioned that knowing when fish eggs had to be harvested, before the salmon has a chance to use them to actually reproduce, made them choose not to eat those eggs. While another said that looking at the background of salmon eggs made them not want to eat them, but the taste and flavor and the personal experiences linked to eating them overpowered that new knowledge.

This tasting was in response to reading and discussion of the introduction of Kyla Wazana Tompkins book Racial Indigestion, which opens by looking at an example of the way black bodies have been considered edible objects in advertisement and entertainment over the last century and a half or so. This introduction is us up for reading the rest of the text, which examines cultural artifacts such as a books and advertisements and what those artifacts have to do with food and eating and how people of different social, racial, or other statuses looked at food and eating. This tasting sets up the idea of taste (or liking) being built on something other than the chemical interaction between taste bud and brain – or the simple ‘it tastes good.’, ‘it tastes like this . . .’, or ‘it doesn’t taste good.

This study of how taste and liking is affected by knowledge is really interesting, since the idea of taste, as in personal taste – taste in food, or even taste in clothing, or taste in movies – is a very prevalent idea in our culture.

Thinking about personal taste and individuality in this culture brings up an interesting contradiction.

One part of that contradiction is that diveristy is a brilliant and beautiful thing, and having different tastes, experiences, and beliefs is deeply part of diversity. For the other part of the contradiction, there is the idea of fitting within certain social boundaries of which things each person with a particular identity can like. Thus there is a contradiction, you can have a diverse personality and life experience, but only within a selection of pre-approved actions and tastes.

This contradiction and the way it takes form in each part of identity or personality is an incredibly complex thing. There are pieces of study in various places. One of the pieces of study is perhaps this class and it’s consideration of and critical thinking about these tasting labs.

And perhaps part of the study, at least a casual version of it, would be further looking at particular topics related to the social interactions around food. The casual and formal ritual of food. The expectation of behavior around food in certain contexts. The things that influence taste, both the physical taste of food, and the attachment of the value of liking something. And the maintenance of social boundaries around food.

And of course, whatever interesting aspect of food and food culture is brought up at each tasting.

Weekly ILC Summary of Activities and Reflection. Wk 1.

Angela Davis Event Flyer — Olympic College. Photo is my own.

I didn’t get a chance this week to get in touch with my internship supervisor because they had a family emergency the day I was supposed to meet with them and I haven’t been able to reschedule that meeting yet, so my activities for that internship haven’t started yet.

This week I read an interesting article about how to learn to write good questions, by the author of our book Racial Indigestion, Kyla Wazana Tompkins. It was called We Aren’t Here to Learn What We Already Know. One thing I found really interesting about reading that was the concept of thinking about the history of where our questions come from. In other words to keep a kind of mental track of each question you write down developed. What did it spark from? Has it been changed, and why? How did you decide to change it? What are you going to use the question you’re creating for?

This idea of keeping track of how question develop is really cool to me, because I feel like it allows for a deeper process of coming up with that question and understanding what it takes to answer it, or expand on it, or whatever needs to be done with that question. It relates to an exercise I do sometimes, without much conscious thought, when I notice that my mind has wandered to a strange place. I back trace each of the topics and things that lead my train of thought to wherever it was when I stopped to trace back. It gives me a better idea of how my mind works in each particular circumstance, and I think that tracing the origin and development of question in a similar way can help you better determine how you’re understanding the information you’re forming questions about.

This discussion of the type of question that was best sounded very much like the form of question that many professors at Evergreen want to see on their seminar response papers, so it felt very close to home.

The day before my twentieth birthday I went up to Bremerton to see Angela Davis speak, an event put on by Olympic College in the gym at the highschool. The event was titled: Building Community: The case for Educational Equity.

It was an amazing experience because so much of the things she spoke about and so many of the conclusions she drew were the same things I was interested in learning, the same things I wanted to work on, and the same things I’ve been learning here at Evergreen, only put together and arranged in a really beautiful way. She spoke about the links between education and activism, and the mistake so often made of considering the separation of topics. That many times we separate topics to study them, such as in a traditional college curriculum, but that that separation is not true to the rest of the world outside of the analysis of those topics. She spoke about critically questioning the things we take most for granted as necessary for gaining a deeper understanding of the world around us and the ways to take down the structures of oppression in that world.

She spoke about the difference of what she called carceral feminism versus abolitionist feminism. In the former, the problem is solved when the perpetrator of violence or injustice is sent to prison. Whereas in abolitionist feminism the problem is closer to being solved when the cultural and societal reasons behind that act of violence are examined and removed.

It was really cool to see her speak, because it feels really rare to me that you get to see powerful women whose voices can fill a room and command attention speak. I’ve had a few such experiences at Evergreen lectures, and I’ve met a few women with that kind of presence, but only a few. The power and strength I see in the woman that are most around me is different in a way I haven’t figured out how to describe. Because it’s definitely there, but in a much different way.

Thinking about that me think about the things I’ve learned about representation in media. Most of the time when I think about that subject it’s in the terms of getting better representation for trans and queer people and people of color. But I rarely think about the lack of different types of strength in women represented in media. And how even though there is a lot of representation of, at least of white, women in media, there is still not the kind of representation that I myself long for. I don’t know that I want to, or need to, see this kind of representation until I’m confronted with the kind of powerful speaker that Angela Davis is, or that Dr. Maxine Mimms is. And I realize how much I would love to see more of that kind of speaker, to have more of those kind of women around me.

Tasting Musings wk 1.

SOS: ComAlt. Sarah Williams.

Tasting Response. Wk 1.

Zoe Wright.

1/16/17.

The idea of taste, as in personal taste – taste in food, taste in clothing, taste in movies – is a very prevalent idea in our culture. Now whether having your own tastes and your own personal style in the way you live your life an interact with objects is a good thing or a bad thing is not something I would attempt to consider. But thinking about personal taste and individuality in this culture brings up an interesting contradiction.

So many of the good things about interacting with different people and difference places is the amazing breadth of diversity in how people live and build and take up their space. Fostering diversity and being able to handle difference is a huge hot topic of this school, this state, country, whatever level you want to look at. In that area, it’s something to strive for.

But there is also the idea of fitting in. and that while sure, you can have a personality, but it has to fall within these boundaries. If it doesn’t fall within those boundaries you can become an outsider, a novelty, or worthy of ridicule.

Thus the contradiction. Have your own personality, but only within this pre-approved selection of actions and tastes.

There are some who enforce those boundaries, some who purposefully flaunt then, and some who just try to live without being pressured by either of the other two.

These social boundaries exist in every part of a personality I can think of. Clothing, movies, culture, religion, food, books. In some cases, there are rules about what actions you are allowed to take to partake in particular aspects of personality, or to enjoy a particular thing. For example, if you eat string cheese by biting the end of whole each time, you are considered differently than if you eat the string cheese by pulling it into strings.

There is a collection of things that go into taste, or liking things. At least for myself there is. Even just focused on the liking of food, there are many aspects to liking that food. Where it came from, how it was grown. Who’s serving, why, when. Some of what was discussed last week was how knowing background information affected how you physically tasted, or mentally decided, which was better.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to be doing for the tasting workshop, so I suppose this was a kind of musing to figure out what I wanted to be able to pay attention to during the next tastings, so I could write in more depth about those.

With this piece of musing on fairly random bits about taste, I did find a few aspects I’d like to come back when it fits with the tasting. Some of the topics that have come up:

Social interactions around food, or the casual ritual of food. The things that influence taste, both the physical taste of food, and the attachment of the value of liking something. And the maintenance of social boundaries around food. And then whatever might come up after observing each tasting.

Seminar Response wk 2.

SOS: ComAlt. Sarah Williams.

Seminar Response Paper. Wk 2.

Zoe Wright. 1/15/17.

Racial Indigestion and The Secret Financial Life of Food.

“However, in Racial Indigestion eating culture is also understood as a privileged site for the representation of, and fascination with, those bodies that carry the burdens of difference and materiality, that are understood as less social, less intellectual, and, at times, less sentient: racially minoritized subjects, children, women, and, at times, animals. Often referred to as ‘hyperembodied’ in this book, racially minoritized – mostly black and sometimes Asian – subjects are at times closely aligned with what we might think of as the bottom of the food chain.” (Tompkins, pg 8)

“I thought of the BLTs and cartons of Tropicana orange juice I’d consumed over the years. Although I had a vague notion of the agriculture and manufacturing associated with bringing food to the table, never before had I contemplated the secret financial life of my meals.” (Newman, pg 1)

“This is not a book on how to trade commodities; it is a book about culinary history and the role that the commodities market has played in shaping culinary history.” (Newman, pg 5)

“Panera Bread Co. has achieved a “no no list” goal first announced in May 2015 as its entire U.S. food menu and portfolio of Panera at Home products are now free from all artificial flavors, preservatives, sweeteners and colors from artificial sources, the company said Jan. 13. To achieve its goal, Panera reviewed more than 450 ingredients, delving several levels into the supply chain.” (Gelski)

I chose the lines from Racial Indigestion about ‘bodies that carry the burden of difference and materiality’ because in part of the words it used to describe the expectations put on those bodies by society, and because it seemed to be a good piece of foundation for connections to other thoughts on commodification and political economy. The words that I found interesting were hyperembodied and minoritized. I heard the word minoritized used by a speaker at the 2015 Diversity Conference at Olympic College. I don’t remember the content of the lecture exactly, though I’m sure some of the analysis and thoughts have stuck with me, but the word minoritized has stuck with me because of the richness implied in the word. It doesn’t feel like the description is static and unmoving, like saying that a person is a minority. It speaks to social and structural factors that keep people belonging to target identities from having the same advantage that a straight white cis male would have. The word hyperembodied was interesting to me because it made a lot of connections to sexism and media representation and the way people in the media are shown existing in their bodies.

I chose these two short sentences from The Secret Financial Life of Food because I thought they fit together really well and set up some interesting connections to think about. The connections I made in my mind to these quote have a lot to do with the discussions I’ve had with my family about food. There is a lot to be learned about which foods are seen in which way in the public eye by looking at the financial backgrounds of that food. Which foods are considered healthy at what time is heavily influenced by who is doing the research on those foods, who’s paying for that research, and how that research is being shifted into advertising. (Things like olive oil or milk are some things that have been heavily influenced those pathways.) Further, when the media attention a food receives moves from direct advertisement to product placement to popular culture. It becomes entirely ingrained into the culture of life, becomes taken for granted, and the validity of that value and placement is never questioned. This fits very well in with the type of analysis that is being advocated for in Racial Indigestion.

I attended a speech by Angela Davis several nights ago. There were several moments where she encouraged the audience to critically think about and question the things we take for granted most. Where she advocated the kind of education that stems from those inquiries into items we most take for granted. This relatively small note of her speech is very powerful when juxtaposed with the topics we’re beginning to study in this course.

I chose these lines from this media article about Panera because of its connections to this questioning of things taken for granted, and also the examination of what happens to food at various levels of production and why and what affect that has on the food itself and its nutritional and monetary value.

References:

Newman, K. (2013). The secret financial life of food: from commodities markets to supermarkets. New York: Columbia University Press.

Panera achieves “no no list” goal. (n.d.). Retrieved January 16, 2017, from http://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/news_home/Business_News/2017/01/Panera_achieves_no_no_list_goa.aspx?ID={EEE484BD-6D60-4EE3-900F-FBB4C719EE12}&cck=1

Tompkins, K. W. (2012). Racial indigestion: eating bodies in the nineteenth century. New York: New York University Press.