Complete and utter bullshit, courtesy of Washington State University

I’m gritting my teeth to hold back a few (well, more than a few) choice expressions of my opinion at this report.

The Agriculture Program Coordinator for WSU’s San Juan County Extension Ag Program promoted a webinar event titled, “Examining Whiteness in Food Systems.” During the hour-long presentation, attendees learned that “white supremacy culture” creates food insecurity by “center[ing] whiteness across the food system.”

. . .

Jennifer Zuckerman of the Duke World Food Policy Center led the discussion. She framed the webinar around her identity as a white woman who has “benefited from whiteness for my entire life at the expense of other people.” With that in mind, she explored the “really specific ways in which whiteness shows up in the food system and particularly in the work of food insecurity.”

Promoting the belief that “whiteness permeates the food system” and that “it specifically articulates these white ideals of health and nutrition,” Zuckerman chided the “whitened dreams of farming and gardening.”

She took particular aim at farmer’s markets as being too white. She uses a quote from Rachel Slocum (“a preeminent researcher on whiteness and food”) as a jumping-off point.

“What that does is it erases the past and present of race and agriculture. What whiteness also does is ‘mobilizes funding to predominantly white organizations who then direct programming at nonwhite beneficiaries’,” she said. “And we’ll talk about that a little bit more when we talk about communities that can’t take care of themselves. Also, what this does is it creates inviting spaces for white people. Then program directors or farmer’s market directors are scrambling because they’re trying to add diversity to a white space. So what whiteness does is center whiteness.”

. . .

Zuckerman is particularly offended by white groups bringing mobile food banks to communities of color.

Efforts to offer food free of charge presumes “that low income and or BIPOC communities and individuals (and that’s not necessarily one in the same) cannot provide or make decisions for themselves.” She says it comes out of the “white supremacy culture” of individualism and neo-liberalism.

“What this does is it pathologizes people and makes the assumption that they need to be helped,” Zuckerman notes. “And these assumptions are based on negative racial and class stereotypes. They dictate who’s given power and decision-making in food policy and programming. And then what happens, as a result, is that organizations prescribe solutions to the community without consulting them, assuming that they know better. And there’s so much in our systems that reinforce this narrative that communities can’t take care of themselves.”

There’s more at the link, if you want to inflict such drivel upon yourselves.

I won’t even bother to debate specific points she raises.  The thing is, right from the start, the entire program she espouses is based upon lies and false principles.  There is no way any rational, reasonable person, understanding farmers’ markets and agriculture to even a limited extent, is going to see “whiteness” around every corner and lurking beneath every table.  It’s bullshit, pure and simple.  It’s an attempt to inject a factor that does not exist.  Once you accept that – once you accept her right to lie in order to introduce a non-existent factor – the fight’s lost, right there.  Everything else she says is predicated upon that lie.

Trouble is, too many people today are willing to give idjits like this a hearing.  They actually listen to them, and give them time to make their point.  Instead, they should be challenging them up front, as soon as they make a false insinuation, to demonstrate it in reality and prove their point.  When they can’t, they should turn around and walk away, right there and then.  Why allow a liar to continue to lie?  The proponents of such nonsense are more than capable of building an edifice of falsehood on top of that initial lie – and if they’ve persuaded you to accept the foundation, then the edifice may even appear convincing.  However, every level is built upon the lies of the previous levels.  Remove the key, foundational lie, and everything else must fail.

“Whiteness” is a lie, just as is “blackness” or “brown-ness” or “yellowness” or “green with purple spots-ness”.  Any effort to judge individuals by the group(s) to which they belong is doomed to failure, because people are individuals.  Every group has good and bad people in it, more or less intelligent, more or less honest, more or less strong, and so on and so forth.  “Whiteness” is merely the latest way to express identity politics, where individuals are reduced to the group to which they belong.  Ideological opponents are pigeonholed according to the groups in which the speaker defines them.  If they object, the speaker will simply adduce more and more “evidence” (read:  lies and half-truths) to justify the (wrong) classification.

If someone gets to define the group, they get to label those in it.  The solution?  Deny them the right to define the group, and refuse to be labeled by them.  Who the hell do they think they are, anyway, to define or label you or anyone else?

Identity politics is poison, pure and simple.  Avoid it at all costs – and if anyone insists that you vote according to identity politics, vote against everything they’re for.  That’s an excellent rule of thumb, IMHO.

Peter