Don’t unfriend, engage. While it can be tempting to distance yourself from white people with problematic behavior, so you can be labeled the “good white ally,” it is actually more helpful for you to stay engaged with these struggling individuals. When anti-racist white people dismiss conservative whites, it not only places the burden of accountability on people of color, but can lead to disastrous outcomes like the election of “45.” Stay engaged in your circles of white people, continually offering the courageous voice of reason and justice.
UPLIFT
Traces of the Trade
Katrina Browne learned from her grandmother, at age 28, that her ancestors were the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for the kidnap and transport of over 10,000 African people. The DeWolfs were part of a “web of broad-based Northern complicity in slavery.” The North prides itself on its abolitionist history and sidesteps its role in the exploitation of black people. Katrina spent the years from 1998 to 2008 making a documentary about the implication of her family’s leadership in the slave trade, called Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. She remarks, “None of us want to feel implicated. Because then we would have to feel responsible for problems we don’t want to feel responsible for—deep, old, intractable divides … [this] has been instrumental in helping us see that we benefit disproportionately from systems that were set up to serve us, even when we aren’t intending to do harm.”13
Personal Development
What is your history? Who are your people? How did you become white? All of us have a family history that predated the invention of race. Part of healing from racial trauma is to know your family story and to sit with its implications. Your ancestors and your family members likely caused unspeakable harm. Your ancestors also likely created beauty, loved deeply, and acted with profound generosity of heart. We need to sit with those contradictions, find love for ourselves, and act to repair the harms inflicted by our people.
As seed keeper and activist Owen Taylor explains on the Table Underground podcast:
This whole project of whiteness in this country is pretty new and devastating, really, to everybody. Obviously, the biggest victims are not white people, but we’ve lost so much as well in [terms of] losing pieces of our culture. I know that for my Italian ancestors … becoming “American” is what they would call it, was so important because they would belong, they would find more material success. There were so many incentives to lose your language, lose your religion, lose your food culture, in exchange for all the privileges and benefits of being considered white in America. It’s something I talk about with my partner, who is Black … and I know for him it’s really frustrating to be in mixed groups or with white folks who will say something like “Oh I have no culture,” which is something I grew up thinking and believing too … which is, first of all unfair to those who came before us, [and] second of all totally untrue. But it’s also what allows white supremacy to flourish, this concept that there is such a thing as whiteness, and that we’re buying into it … There is so much power in realizing that … there’s so much to find there, that is there [in our lineage], that you don’t have to recreate or take on someone else’s [culture].”14
When white people are plagued by guilt about their unearned privilege, they often attempt to tuck away that privilege by ignoring their whiteness and appropriating the cultural elements of people of color. “I’m not the oppressor, I’m ‘down’ with POC,” they say wordlessly through yoga mats and dreadlocks. According to Who Owns Culture? by lawyer and author Susan Scafidi, taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission is cultural appropriation. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, and religious symbols. It’s most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, such as sacred objects. “Currently, the commodification of differences promotes paradigms of consumption wherein whatever difference the Other inhabits is eradicated, via exchange, by a consumer cannibalism that not only displaces the Other but denies the significance of the Other’s history through a process of removing context,” remarks bell hooks.15
In the song “White Privilege II,” Macklemore challenges, “We take all we want from black culture, but will we show up for black lives?” To begin untangling from the pervasive practice of cultural appropriation, you can convene a discussion group and ask yourselves the following questions, compiled by Larisa Jacobson of Soul Fire Farm.
Undoing Cultural Appropriation Dialogue Questions
What is something that gives you life in your own cultural identity?
When have you observed something that is culturally significant for you be appropriated by another person (for their gain, without consent)? (Note that an inability to answer this question is also an answer.)
What is something you benefit from—socially, spiritually, economically, or otherwise—that comes from a culture not represented in your own identity? Would you call that cultural appropriation? Why or why not?
What are ethical ways of borrowing?
How do we know if we have the “blessing” to borrow from someone else’s culture?
What does compensation or reciprocity look like?
What are ways that you check yourself (or not) when engaging with something from another culture?
What does it mean to live by the precepts of the Honorable Harvest as explained by Robin Wall Kimmerer: “To take only what is given, to use it well, to be grateful for the gift, and to reciprocate the gift”?16
Once we have detached from stealing the culture and identity of others, we are liberated to wrestle with our own privileged and targeted identities. Almost all of us embody a complex matrix of identities, including some that provide social advantage and others that limit access. Explore the “Matrix of Intersectionality” (table 16.1) and record your identities in the appropriate categories. Then share stories related to the identities that are most difficult for you to claim. For example, as an able-bodied person, it is easy for me to take that identity for granted as “normal” and ignore the ways that this privilege opens doors for me that are closed for others. I do not bristle when sidewalks are crusted over with snow or bathrooms are not accessible, because I can effortlessly navigate. I ask myself, “How can I have the same urgency around disability rights as I do about race and gender equality?” Individuals make up the system, so this work of challenging our limited perspectives on identity can transform institutions and power structures. While it is just a small step, my reflective work with this matrix resulted in Soul Fire Farm raising money for and installing a wheelchair-accessible bathroom. What action can you catalyze by bringing your privileged identities into awareness?
Embracing one’s own cultural heritage is part of uprooting racism, exemplified here in this Jewish mikveh ceremony. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.
Table 16.1. Matrix of Intersectionality
In her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” Maya Angelou said, “History, despite its wrenching pain / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.” We are never finished with the work of facing our history with courage. Continue to educate yourself, engage in conversations, and catalyze action toward a racially just world.
Recommended Reading on Racial Justice
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh (online)
Dismantling Racism: A Resource Book by Western States Center (online)
Examining Whiteness: An Anti-Racism Curriculum by Reverend Doctor William J. Gardiner (online)
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 2015)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (The New Press, 2012)
Rewriting the Ra
cial Rules: Building an Inclusive American Economy by Andrea Flynn et al. (online)
Opportunities for White People in the Fight for Racial Justice by Jonathan Osler (online)
Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism—from Ferguson to Charleston by Jon Greenberg (online)
Recommended Training Programs for Dismantling Racism
People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond
AORTA Collective
Catalyst Project
Training for Change
Beyond Diversity 101
White Noise Collective
Center for Study of White American Culture
Interaction Institute for Social Change
Soul Fire Farm’s Uprooting Racism in the Food System
To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves. Are you ready to get free together?
* * *
* Jonah is a Sephardic Jew who presents as Latino and is proactive about naming his white privilege. Many scholars mark the 1940s as the era when Jews “became white” in the United States.
AFTERWORD
A few months back, one hundred Black farmers gathered in the gymnasium of a church in Atlanta, Georgia, to discuss what to do next now that the Pigford lawsuit against the USDA for discrimination was settled and the disbursements were complete. I was honored to be in the space alongside movement elders like Shirley Sherrod, John Boyd, Barbara Norman, Dorathy Barker, John Zippert, and Ralph Paige (in blessed memory). These were the leaders who had the audacious courage to ride their tractors onto the mall in Washington, DC, demanding reparations for the land that had been snatched from them as a result of institutionalized bigotry. These were the leaders who made the largest civil rights settlement in US history possible.
As my heart was filled with humility and inspiration, it also held alarm. At age 38, I was the “youth” in the room. The agricultural census said that the average age of Black farmers was 62 years, but the median age in that room was even higher. I felt quite sure that if we did not figure out how to pass on the legacy of our agricultural traditions, this art of living in a sacred manner on land would go extinct for our people. Then, the KKK, the White Citizens Council, and Monsanto would be rubbing their hands together in glee, saying, “We convinced them to hate the earth and now it is all ours. The water, the minerals, and the soil—all ours.” And then the soil herself would don sackcloth and grieve, saying, “The ones who I birthed have forgotten and foresaken me, worshipping instead the works of human hands.”
We will not let the colonizers rob us of our right to belong to the Earth and to have agency in the food system. We are Black Gold—our melanin-rich skin the mirror of the sacred soil in all her hues. We belong here, bare feet planted firmly on the land, hands calloused with the work of sustaining and nourishing our community.
BLACK GOLD
by Naima Penniman
I am evidence of love under fingernails
knee caps stained from kneeling to pray
sacred remains of yesterday
fertile with future
I am the musk after rain
soft firm unconditional embrace
bosom of returning
I am the earthen floor
slapped with souls of feet
origin story and sorcery
I am vast and cosmic compost
sand, silt, stone
composition of decomposed bones
and primordial ferns
I am sun
turned to rot
particles of stardust
heaped in terra cotta pots
This thing the living clings to
sorghum seed and black eyed pea
nascent seedling
ancient tree
This melanin rich thickness
dripping mineral and mystery
I am galactic blackness
humus of fecundity
I am mud clung to cassava root
in the lower holds of slave ships
I am the soggy clay that raised up sugarcane
and cotton profits of enslavement
I am arid Trails
damp with Tears of dislocation
earth snatched from Japanese farmers
thrust into concentration
I am raped
for modern day colonization
for global market chocolate
whose growers face starvation
I am the ground under Harriet’s Railroad
the smell of promise past plantation
the cracks in pavement post Migration
that spawned the shoots that pushed through subjugation
I am loam lush with nitrogen in Carver’s legume fields
the calcium in Black Panthers free breakfast meals
I am cooperative acres Fannie Lou Hamer made real
the toxic lots Hattie Carthan’s garden plots healed
I am ashes of burned Monsanto seed
stamped under the feet of Haitian revolutionaries
I am flush with tomatoes from Taco Bell boycotts
fertilized by the fruit Immokalee farmers left to rot
I am proof of life after death
I am dawning from decay
my belly of mass graves
my open palms of gardens
I am transmuter of toxins
cauldron of embryos
cradle of coffins
atmospheric alchemist
sequestering carbon
I am dust
bleached, stripped, strained
by purveyors of pipelines
and mountain top explosions
Erosion of homelands
washed to ocean
metropolis encroaching
I am choking
I am swept up and stepped upon
guzzled by the gluttonous
I am paradise paved over
poison drenched
drained of sustenance
I buttress monocultures of monopolies
to feed cultures of injustices
Silent utterance
I am thunderous
I am umber, ochre
saffron, sienna
crimson, cinnamon
cocoa brown and ebony
I am gold, gold, Gold
You are soiled
filthy
black
dirt
rich
You are soul, soul, Soul
Take me in your palms
breathe in my memory
Remember me
Fall soft where you belong, my seed
I need you
The future depends on me
RESOURCES
African People’s Education and Defense Fund (apedf.org)
Afro-Colombian Solidarity Network (afrocolombian.org)
AgPlan (agplan.umn.edu)
Agricultural Justice Project (www.agriculturaljusticeproject.org)
Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) (www.albafarmers.org)
Alabama A&M University College of Agricultural, Life and Natural Sciences (www.aamu.edu/Academics/alns/Pages/default.aspx)
Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (afsafrica.org)
American Farmland Trust Directory (farmlandinfo.org/directory)
Ancestral Apothecary School (ancestralapothecaryschool.com)
AORTA Collective (aorta.coop)
Appetite for Change “Grow Food” video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqgU3co4vcI)
ATTRA (attra.ncat.org); ATTRA directory of Sustainable Farming Internships and Apprenticeships (attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/internships)
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com)
Beyond Diversity 101 (www.beyonddiversity101.org)
Black Belt Justice Center (blackbeltjustice.org)
Black Dirt Farm Collective (www.facebook.com/blackdirtfarmcollective)
Black Family Land Trus
t (bflt.org)
Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (www.bfaa4us.org)
Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondureña Ofraneh) (www.ofraneh.org/ofraneh/index.html)
Black Immigration Network (blackimmigration.net)
Black Land & Liberation Initiative (blackland andliberation.org)
Black Oaks Center for Sustainable and Renewable Living (www.blackoakscenter.org)
Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (boldorganizing.org)
Black Urban Growers (www.blackurbangrowers.org)
Blue Otter School of Herbal Medicine (www.blueotterschool.com)
California FarmLink (californiafarmlink.org)
Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration (www.caami.org)
Carts Vermont (www.cartsvermont.com)
CATA—The Farmworker Support Committee (El Comite de Apoyo a Los Trabajadores Agricolas) (cata-farmworkers.org)
Catalyst Project (collectiveliberation.org)
Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation (www.heirsproperty.org)
Center for the Study of White American Culture (www.euroamerican.org)
Centro Ashé (www.centroashe.org)
Centro Campesino (centrocampesino.org)
Climbing Poetree (www.climbingpoetree.com)
Color of Food (thecolorofood.com)
Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley (communityfoundationshv.org)
Community Seed Network (www.communityseednetwork.org)
Community to Community Development (www.foodjustice.org)
Cooperation Jackson (www.cooperationjackson.org)
Cornell Small Farms Program (smallfarms.cornell.edu/online-courses)
Cornerstone Farm Ventures (www.cornerstone-farm.com)
Cosecha (movimientocosecha.com)
D-Town Farm (www.d-townfarm.com)
Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (www.dbcfsn.org)
Farming While Black Page 44
