I’ve said it many times: Progressives do not care about white supremacy, and they never have. There are several examples demonstrating that their professed opposition to racism is not quite as sincere as they would have us believe.
But this particular story further illustrates that those claiming to care about the plight of black and brown Americans are completely disingenuous. Fox News contributor Jason Rantz published a piece discussing Washington State University pushing the idea that farmers markets and food charities are somehow examples of “white supremacy” and a “white dominant culture.” He wrote:
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.”
The materials claim that “whiteness defines foods as either good or bad” and that farmers markets are merely white spaces.
The webinar was originally produced by Duke University and featured two speakers from WSU’s 2021 San Juan Islands Ag Summit on the same topic. Jennifer Zuckerman from the Duke World Food Policy Center led the conversation and described herself as a white woman who has “benefited from whiteness for my entire life at the expense of other people.”
White guilt is a helluva thing, isn’t it?
Zuckerman argued that “whiteness permeates the food system” and that it “specifically articulates these white ideals of health and nutrition.”
Interesting, I had no idea that minorities did not value “health and nutrition.” Go figure.
Zuckerman also slammed farmers markets for being too white. She said:
“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 continued:
“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 farmers market directors are scrambling because they’re trying to add diversity to a white space. So what whiteness does is center whiteness.”
But that’s not all.
Zuckerman was also not happy that white folks had the temerity to bring food to predominantly minority communities. She insisted that bringing free food assumes “that low income and or BIPOC communities and individuals cannot provide or make decisions for themselves.” Apparently, offering free food to minorities in need is part of “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 explained. “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.”
Interesting that folks like Zuckerman take issue with private organizations and individuals providing sustenance for the less fortunate but has nothing to say when it is the government providing welfare. Perhaps the state is less prone to being white supremacist when it is trying to help Americans.
Instead of giving food, Zuckerman believes folks should focus on “providing economic assistance, increasing wages, or providing direct capital for BIPOC owned food and agriculture businesses.”
I’d say Zuckerman, who is undoubtedly a leftist, had a broken clock moment, but we all know that her solutions in these areas would involve as much government as possible.
This story is the typical “progressive calls everything white supremacist because reasons” situation. We’ve seen it a billion times, haven’t we?
But the question is: Why?
Yes, the words “white supremacy” have been effective when it comes to attacking conservatives and anyone else who disagrees with the left. But what is the point of pretending that white supremacy is present in something as harmless as farmers markets?
RedState’s Mike Miller laid it out nicely:
People like Jennifer Zuckerman don’t live in the real world, gang. They live in a self-created pseudo-reality they’ve created in their narrative-driven minds, solely as some ridiculous, pretend-proof source to use against the sane among us that they think will bolster whatever ridiculous case they’re pushing at the time. They are a dime a dozen, and they do not matter.
But there is something else at play here. Surely they realize that by calling everything white supremacy, they are diluting the meaning of the word, right? When everything is white supremacy, nothing is white supremacy.
It seems odd that they would weaken one of the most powerful weapons they have wielded over the years. But this tendency reveals two things. For starters, they don’t actually care about white supremacy. If they did, they would reserve their ire for situations in which white supremacy might actually be present instead of trying to convince people that providing food for minorities is somehow racist.
The second reason is even more obvious – and bizarre: They just can’t help themselves.
Race-baiting is like crack to these people. They just can’t get enough. Progressives love race-baiting more than Michael Moore loves bacon grease.
But perhaps conservatives should be grateful. The more the left dilutes the term, the weaker it will be when they try to weaponize it. When your enemy is destroying themselves, who are you to interrupt?
