There It Is, America: Farmers Markets Are Riddled With 'White Supremacy'

Gretchen Ertl

It’s only a matter of time. I mean, sooner or later, everything on the planet is going to be connected to “white supremacy” in some way. Yup, one day, everything is going to be flat-out racist, America. So why not add farmers markets and food charities to the list right now and get it over with? Oh — wait.

Advertisement

Washington State University beat us to it. Never mind.

As reported by talk radio host and frequent Fox News guest Jason Rantz, Washington State University is “amplifying claims” from a webinar originally produced by Duke University that farmers markets and food charities are examples of “white supremacy” and “white dominant culture.”

Warning: This is insane.

Anyway, as Rantz reported, 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.”

See what I mean? And it just keeps getting crazier.

The material in the webinar claims, for example, noted Rantz, that “whiteness defines foods as either good or bad” and that farmers markets are merely “white spaces.” What the h*ll does that even mean? Other than rice, and a few off-white foods, none of my favorite foods are anywhere close to white.

Advertisement

Moreover, I love licorice. Real licorice. I’m talking licorice extract licorice. Oh, and while we’re at it, there is no such thing as red licorice, people, for the love of God. That red waxy crap like Twizzlers — which does not say “red licorice” anywhere on the label — is not licorice. Sorry (not sorry) to digress.

According to Rantz, Jennifer Zuckerman of the Duke World Food Policy Center leads the webinar discussion. She frames the entire thing around her identity as a white woman, who has “benefited from whiteness for my entire life at the expense of other people.”

With that nonsense in mind, she launches into “really specific ways in which whiteness shows up in the food system and particularly in the work of food insecurity.”

Remember, I told you it was insane. It’s also disgusting.

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

Advertisement

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.

And boy, does Zuckerman push it, as transcribed by Rantz:

“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.

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.”

Can you imagine being that screwy? On purpose? Looking at life that way from the moment you get up in the morning until your head hits the pillow at night? Me, neither.

Finally, according to Rantz, Zuckerman gets most worked up about food charities. Specifically, she’s offended by white groups bringing mobile food banks to communities of color. Oh, the humanity! Yeah, I got nothin’, either.

Advertisement

Let’s just listen to Jennifer explain it, shall we?

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

OK, stop the tape. So, if, for made-up example, we know a black family down the street with hungry children because the parents don’t have enough money to buy enough food, and we take some food to that family so they won’t be hungry, that’s racist. “White supremacy culture,” as it were. Sounds legit.

Ah, but Zuckerman argues, by helping hungry people you create within them a pathology based on an assumption that they need to be helped.

“What this does is it pathologizes people and makes the assumption that they need to be helped. 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.”

OK, fine. No problem. Sounds like Jennifer is saying we need to eliminate all entitlement programs in America that provide help to those less fortunate among us — because by helping them we’re teaching them they need to be helped.

Advertisement

Wait. Hang on.

Hasn’t the Republican Party been trumpeting that very message for six decades? (Yes.) Back to the beginning of LBJ’s “War on Poverty,” some $40 trillion (and counting) ago? How has that all worked out for nuclear black families? Black-on-black crime? Children born to single children? Drug addiction? Black-on-black violent crime?

Now these loons get it?

Or don’t they even know they’re saying the same thing — in this respect, at least — that conservatives have been saying for more than 60 years. Go figure. I’m confused.

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos