Food Insecurity
Once, while out supporting the protests in my community, a gentleman came up to us to ask what we were protesting and why. I watched as the person he approached first, a passionate high school student, explained the history of the monument and why we believe it should be moved, paying attention to his body language as they talked. When the man who approached us started waving his arms around, I walked over to see if I could help calm the situation down. We ended up having a good conversation, except for when I brought up white supremacy and he said, “White supremacy? Where? Give me one example of white supremacy today.”
I have to admit, I was flabbergasted.
Because once you know to look for it, white supremacy is EVERYWHERE. Again, I don’t mean people in white hoods parading down our streets. I mean something a lot more pernicious and enduring than those blatant public displays, though of course things like that do still happen. No, I mean all of the foundational ways in which white supremacy is baked into nearly everything we do in this country. If you’re a book reader or listener, Stamped From the Beginning is free on Spotify right now and Kendi will walk you through the origin of white supremacy and racist thought, how it has morphed over the centuries, and how we experience it today. Or read or listen to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, for how the white European colonialist mindset has wreaked havoc on Indigenous peoples, and still does to this day. And believe me, once you know to look for it, it’s there.
By white supremacy, of course, I mean the very basic idea that white people are the best people. Now, I know that sounds ridiculous and childish and, because it’s childish, not nefarious at all, but white supremacy is one of the most powerful forces in the United States. White supremacy is what justified the slaughter and genocide of the Indigenous population of the land that would become the United States. White supremacy is what justified the slave trade and the life-long and cross-generational enslavement of Africans. White supremacy is the battle that must be fought even after the treaties are signed and the slave chains are broken, because white supremacy insists that white people are smarter, more talented, and more cultured, inherently, than people of any other color. White supremacy says that Black and Brown people are just lazy and that’s why they don’t make enough money to pay for food for their families. White supremacy says if they just looked and acted more like white people, if they just worked a little harder, these people would be more than capable of providing for their families.
Of course, white supremacy has also stripped people of generational wealth (see: genocide and mass enslavement above), dismantled thriving Black communities when they did build wealth for themselves (see: the Tulsa massacre and the building of the Durham freeway, among others), concentrated wealth among white people (see: the GI Bill and redlining), and still to this day makes it harder for BIPOCs to get an education, to be hired at jobs, and to work at those jobs. This is, of course, to say nothing of mass incarceration, which I bet we’ll get to in another post this month.
This, my white friends, is what I need you to understand, as we ask you to donate or volunteer at food banks and pantries that serve BIPOCs. These people don’t need your pity or your white guilt. They don’t need you to look down on them for their lot in life. While in this particular moment, yes, they might need help getting food on the table, what they also need is for us white people to realize that the system is rigged against them. Always has been. It was designed that way. Genocide and perpetual enslavement are such grave sins that we had to reorder the world in order to justify them and that reordering doesn’t just undo itself. We have to do that, and we have to do it faster than we’ve been, because it is starving our siblings. It is killing them in the streets. If we don’t help them in their fight to dismantle the systems our ancestors put in place, we have their blood on our hands too.
Anyway, in the meantime, help us feed people.
You can donate to the food pantry at my church by clicking here and giving to Whittier United Methodist Church in Whittier, NC, part of the Smoky Mountain District, with me, Jo Schonewolf, serving as pastor. Make sure to put “Grace House Food Pantry” in the description. We serve anyone who comes and though the majority of the people are white, we have a fair number of Indigenous people (mostly Cherokee) and Latino people who we serve, along with a few multiracial families. You can also give to MANNA, a part of Feeding America, who gives food around the Asheville area, including my communities. Or, if you’re around Sylva, you can help Reconcile Sylva collect non-perishable goods for our food drive between now and September 18th. Contact me for details!
