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Welcome back to Point of Origin.
This is our very last episode of the season, and it is a special one to capstone a recurring theme, not just from this season, but ultimately our entire podcast series.
Today, we're talking about justice within the food system, its absence and the circumstances that lead to lacking.
Now, you might have heard of the term food desert as a means of describing these circumstances.
circumstances, but food apartheid, which is the title of today's episode, is more forceful, it's more succinct, and frankly, it's just a more accurate term.
So we will discuss the importance of specificity in language when talking about food justice, and to do so, we have exactly the right person.
It happens to be the same person who coined the term, in fact, that is the Bronx resident and activist, the legend, Karen Washington.
We also chat with Mr. Bryant Terry, Terry BT, my brother, an award -winning author and chef in residence of the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and longtime food justice activist. Finally, we close with Dr. Hannah Garth, author and anthropologist whose first cameo was so strong this season.
We're having her back again today.
Today, she and I will compare and contrast food systems in the U .S. and Cuba, the ways in which each of the systems fails its constituents, and how ultimately systemic racism endures in both.
Today on Point of Origin, it's food apartheid.
you know the boogie down Bronx we're not Brooklyn we are the other B the Bronx that's Karen Washington you know I mean I think that's what makes the Bronx so strong because of the fact that for years we've always gone without limited resources and always turned to our community community for strength and resiliency.
Karen has been an activist for decades, promoting urban farming as a means of accessing fresh and locally grown food, at first for her family and subsequently her entire community.
In the New York borough of the Bronx, Karen has turned empty lots into community gardens for years.
In 2010, she co -founded the Black Urban Growers, and she is the co -owner and farmer at Risen Root Farm in Chester, New York.
During the late 1960s and 70s, when New York and so many urban cities were going through financial and fiscal crisis, the Bronx literally was burning.
And it wasn't because of the community.
The truth is, is that a lot of landlords, you know, torch the building to get insurance money.
And as a result, there was a huge movement, they call white flight, of people fleeing the Bronx and going to the suburbs.
And those that could not leave just were there in devastation.
But again, those people that could not move got together from the actions, rebounded and worked on fighting for affordable housing, fighting for green space, fighting for jobs, fighting for better education, overcrowding school, fighting to get the drugs out of their communities when crack cocaine was prevalent.
And so now you see a vibrant community.
Again, you know, when you talk about New York City and you talk about the history of New York City and the Bronx, the Bronx was always a stepchild.
And so what we're trying to do is really come together and really let people know that the Bronx has survived.
has come out of those ashes and has come out a better borough because of the fact of the resiliency that we have in our people.
As you know, hip -hop originated from the Bronx, the music of the current era originated from the Bronx.
And again, that was a call for salvation.
That was a call of reckoning for people, again, who are left behind, but have come out swinging and become more powerful.
So I'd like to ask you a question about language.
I think it was in the early 2010s in which I began to hear an evolving language within food justice circles where previously we used to talk about places or environments that lacked access to food as food deserts.
And then shortly thereafter, we started to discourage the terminology because it didn't accurately address the origins of those conditions.
And even though I'm not exactly sure when it first came on my radar, I do have a clear memory that your name is the first one that I heard associated in making the shift in language.
So can you talk to us about the linguistic distinction between food desert in favor of the more apt terminology, food apartheid?
So when I heard the term food deserts, it was like, first of all, I was like, first of all, we live in a desert.
And then realizing that was an outsider term really designating the fact that these are places where have limited access to food or grocery store.
and it's like you know i had to reach out to all my friends detroit baltimore chicago oakland and say like what's what's up with this term and then to put more salt on the wound they change it from food desert to food swamps i mean come on y 'all you know i'm saying i mean give give us a break and so i i coined the term food apartheid because i wanted to shake shake shake up because when you said food desert a food swamp you're not you're talking about a location you're not talking about the social impact that that is having on food is having the injustices the food is having in low -income neighborhoods
and neighbors of color so when I coined the term food apartheid all of a sudden eyes open ears open you know it's like because we need to have those difficult conversations around race difficult conversations about about wealth and economics, and difficult conversations about where people live.
And so by saying food apartheid, it brings in all those social elements that people don't want to talk about, but we need to talk about in order to move the food system more close to being just and inclusive, which it's not.
And talk about the racism that continues to infiltrate our food system.
OK, we're going to pause here for one second to let Karen's extremely perceptive and nuanced analysis sink in.
To reiterate, food deserts imply a naturally occurring landscape, a place absent of vegetation, but also absent of life.
And though she doesn't say it explicitly here, there is another slight within this phrase, which is that it doesn't originate from within the impacted community.
And so the people who come up with this terminology, white researchers and organizations calling it food apartheid becomes not just a more accurate term, but a way for activists within these communities to reclaim agency and how they talk about the disparity.
Well, the whole history around how the food system was built.
Let's start with that.
Number one, you know, because for you, first of all, the right now, 7 .5 billion people on this planet and only a handful of people control our food system, which are predominantly white men.
When you look at food, especially in this country and look at farming and food, it's the pitch is always a white male.
if you look at the agricultural system globally, it's dominated by women, especially women of color.
Hello. And so you start peeling back this negative, incorrect narrative around our food system.
Well, the food system was built on the backs of enslaved people and indigenous people.
And that the reason why we were brought here was because of our knowledge of agriculture.
Seeds in our head. We were the foundation when it came to food, when it came to farming practices, instruments that were made, we were the ones.
And so it's not about us picking cotton.
It's about us really starting the whole framework of agriculture, which was denied in history books, which continues to be denied today.
day. And so again, right now, trying to really build in the whole truth, the narrative around food and farming here in these United States.
And as a result, talking about the history of land grabbing, talking about the history of racism, which prevented us to have our 40 acres and a mule, the fact that farms were being ransacked, taken away both physically with the consequences of death by just lies.
And so looking at how a system has been in place for so, so many years continues to exist today, whereby if you look at the food system, a food system, a subsidized food system, a a charity -based food system of food that have no nutritional value at all being dumped into low -income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color.
This is pretty crucial, I think, because a lack of access to healthy food isn't merely an inconvenience.
It also means that the inhabitants within these communities are at a greater risk of diet -related conditions like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.
As Karen says, These are not deserts.
They are thriving communities who are living with a lack of local resources that have been manipulated and withheld with intention, not happenstance.
I'm glad you mentioned the importance of not just speaking in terms of deficit, because so often that is the single perspective that emanates from our stories, when in fact our story as Black people is a multifaceted one.
So especially in talking about resilience, it's equally important that we name this in the ways that we tell the stories about ourselves.
What we were talking about in the beginning is doom and gloom.
But baby, it's a wake up call.
It's an awakening of these young people, these young black and brown people that understand their power, that understand it's going back to the land.
We have been brainwashed about going away from the land.
And we had realized the land is our power.
The land is our power.
And so now so many Black and Brown young men and women get it.
They no longer believe that narrative around slavery.
They know exactly why we were brought here.
They know the history of agriculture here in this country.
And so what they're doing now is they're demanding justice.
There's so many, I go across the country, so many young people that want to go back to the land, you know, and I tell them not only go back to the land, but, you know, get those stories up from grandpa and grandma about how they were never sick a day in their life.
If they never went to a grocery store, you know, they had their own substance.
They were able to maintain a household, feed their family.
And so many young people are doing that.
So many young people are now also being very, very vocal about the government and not relying on the government for help.
For instance, right now here, and I'm going to sort of toot my horn, but right now here in New York, you know, we've gathered together.
And we have formed a Black farmer fund.
What? A Black farmer fund that is formed by Black people to help Black people move on.
Because you know what?
We have to understand, as a people, we always have been brainwashed to think of ourselves in terms of deficits.
But people, we are Black people.
We are proud people.
And coming together collectively, we are powerful.
And start to teach that within our communities that you may be designated as poor, but there's nothing poor about you.
Coming together collectively, we can move mountains.
For so long we've been taught to take money because of the capitalistic society, to take money and go out of our community.
Now we're talking about base building, community wealth, social capital within our community, coming together, putting our dollars together and making sure our dollars together are producing black businesses, black ownership.
With the Black Farmer Fund, we're now creating an opportunity whereby we'll collectively get money and with that money, help farmers and black owned businesses get a start.
And that comes from the essence of understanding what communal wealth and social capital looks like.
How do you invest in a community and not think about getting monetary return, but that return is building a whole way of living whereby you're supporting infrastructure and you're supporting Black businesses, Black -owned businesses.
businesses again this is this is language of that talk in our community but now that is starting to change as people now are forming cooperatives they're coming together collectively they're doing the so -called susus or bringing their money collectively and using that money to build a community from the ground up and making people understand the value the true value of our our community lies within ourselves take away those distorted ideas about us being always on the downside always in terms of deficit and bring into our community that wealth of resilience of being strong and coming together
to base build our community so that at the end of the day our community has our faces our values our businesses and instead of always looking from behind and having outsiders come in and push i'm not talking about i'm talking about gentrification pushes out of our own communities we have to now be able to stand foot within our communities and start base building and look at the unique power that we have as a community together and that's what's happening and that's why the politicians white a lot of white politicians the people are starting to, to, you know, get, get afraid.
It's, it's here. You start seeing these, all of a sudden these narratives about, yeah, you know, they're going to come into your, they're going to come into the suburbs or the violence and stuff like that.
Don't believe the hype.
We're base building within our communities.
Karen, this has been obviously a hell of a year, but also a year, I think in some ways that you are uniquely qualified to absorb because a lot of the ways in which we've seen our communities protecting ourselves, not only from the virus, but protecting each other is something that you've been committed to for a long time.
I'd like to ask you, do you think that we are at a kind of social tipping point?
Have we learned something from this COVID era that we might be able to take with us going forward?
Let's start talking about a group of society now that's on the brink, on the brink of resistance.
I don't want to say revolution yet because I'm a little too harsh, but it's on the brink of resistance in such a way that they are going to stand their ground and fight back.
And how they do that, hopefully, will be in a way that we come together and demand change And stand our ground and say we will not be moved We're not going to be pushed out of our houses We're not going to see our children not being fed We're going to stand our ground and make sure that whoever is in that office The political people, that they hear our voices That they hear our plea When you have millions and millions of people that can't pay their rent Or can't feed their family That is a strong sentence, a strong group of powerful people standing together to demand change.
And you demand change by standing your ground and prevent yourself from being moved until change happens.
And that's what's going to happen.
That's what's going to happen.
you can't take away the basic needs of people which is food and shelter and expect them to sit back and and just take it it's not going to happen there's a myth a lot of us grow up believing that hair loss is just a part of life it happens it runs in the family once it starts there's no stopping it but here's the truth that's outdated thinking scientific understanding of hair loss has advanced in recent years.
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One of the things that's so central to my work is bringing in art and culture and music as a way to help us think more deeply about these issues and just be human and connect and kind of bridge this chasm that our industrial food system has created where you have food on one side and it's this commodity and all the things that have been traditionally very central to food like community and culture they're so disconnected so much of my work has been about bringing those things together.
Our second guest today is Bryant Terry.
Bryant is a James Beard award -winning chef educator scholar cookbook author and renowned for his activism to create healthy, just, and sustainable food systems. He's currently the chef in residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, where he creates public programming that celebrates the intersection of food, farming, health, activism, art, culture, and the entire African diaspora.
His fifth book, Vegetable Kingdom, was published earlier this year.
He's someone that I'm happy to call a friend and someone who has been in the food justice work for a very long time.
And as you'll soon hear from him, it is his love of Black people and Black culture that has remained a constant throughout his career.
For me to recognize that there's a thread of Black -led food and health activism throughout the 20th century, and I'm standing on the shoulders of many of the ancestors who've driven much of that work.
But then we could think about groups like the Black Panthers.
We could think about, you know, activists like Dick Gregory.
We think about hip hop artists like KRS -One and others who have, you know, brought these issues to the fore and forced us to think about them in ways that I think we should all be thinking about them.
Can you talk about the impetus to specifically center black health in your food justice work?
Yeah, I'll put it like this.
I always say that food is simply like lack of access to healthy, fresh, affordable and culturally appropriate food is simply one indicator of material deprivation.
in our communities, right?
Let's just talk about systemic racism and the daily effect that that has on our mind, body, and spirit and release of cortisol and the energy that it takes just dealing with being a Black person in this country.
And so I just want to say that because I don't think you could just talk about food and expect that even if we were to create an abundance of options for healthy, fresh, affordable, and culturally appropriate food in communities that somehow all these other issues that our community members are facing in terms of health crisis would be fully addressed.
Typically, when you go to a community that doesn't have access to healthy, fresh, affordable food, good food, these are the same communities that are also dealing with a number of barriers to just living a healthful, good life.
So, you know, most of these communities have crumbling infrastructure, underfunded, segregated public schools, very little safe green space for people to be active in for their physical health, very few jobs that pay a living wage.
When we focus on food, we need to think about the bigger issues that also intersect with food.
And that's why, you know, this whole idea of talking about food apartheid and kind of like abandoning this archaic term food desert is important, because I think what it does is that it puts the issues of economic inequality and systemic racism squarely in front of us and helps us to really understand the way in which we have to deal with, you know, these issues, as well as the range of material issues that people in communities that are dealing with food insecurity or food insecurity.
justice have to confront.
People kind of move away from this idea that, you know, just focusing on what we're consuming is somehow going to address the chronic illnesses that many of our family members and community members are facing.
You know, these are systemic issues and food is certainly central to it.
But I would say, you know, at least in the framing of their approach and the way in in which Black Lives Matters movement generation are really encouraging us to think about kind of a pathway forward. I truly in my work have striven and just really encouraging others to come from a place of genuine love and care for communities, right?
And I think that what that means is putting our ego aside, what that means is not feeling like we have to be right and that we have the answers And most important, meeting people where they are.
Definitely, definitely.
And speaking to this intersectional analysis, can you talk about your work and focusing on the maternal mortality crisis, specifically among black and Native women?
What brought this crisis into your consciousness and what is the relationship to food?
Yeah. Well, there are a couple of things.
One, I had worked on this book, Between Meals, that was a project of refugee transitions.
in Oakland, which is an NGO that works with newly arrived immigrant women.
And they actually produced a book that was a cookbook, along with essays that allow these women to kind of talk about their traditional foods talk about the way in which you're adjusting to their new homeland and share their culture.
And so just, you know, working on that project helped me understand the immense issues that women are facing in our society, and being more sensitive to them.
The second thing was actually having a child.
And we, my wife is Chinese American, and we had a lot of conversations with my mother -in -law about the role of traditional postpartum foods and postpartum traditions that we often, in, you know, American culture, you know, we just don't have these things, like the 30 day period after having a child and like the, the, the specific foods that you need to eat to help with, um, kind of providing nutrient density for the, the, the healing mother and the child and ensuring that they're, you know, nursing well and all these things.
And so I started getting involved with this project mothers to mothers, which, you know, similar to the food justice movement doesn't look at, uh, the maternal health crisis, um, that mostly impacts African -American and Native women in isolation, but understands that the fundamental causes of this maternal mortality crisis is sexism.
It's racism, both the historical, institutional, cultural, and interpersonal.
It's individualism.
It's a for -profit healthcare system.
And it's the abandonment of traditional postpartum wisdom.
And so I see this just kind of like part and parcel of this larger food justice work that I do.
Because if you think about taking care of mothers.
When you take care of mothers, you take care of the women who ideally are providing the first food that children will actually receive, right?
You know, they call like the breast milk is liquid gold, and it has everything that a developing child needs.
In my mind, something that the food movement, I don't think, privileges, puts a lot of energy into is the reality that food justice is, it's driven by the people who are most impacted by the issues, right?
These are the people living in communities.
They recognize the issues that they're facing and oftentimes they have brilliant solutions, but what they need are resources shifted, power shifted, and then actually giving them the ability to be self -determined and address these issues and not having this kind of paternalistic holistic relationship where you have, you know, the all -knowing, snow -capped NGO coming in and arguing that they know the best way that these communities should be, you know, kind of addressing the problems. I'll be the first to say that if one has resources, social capital, you know, whatever you feel like you could bring
to communities to help improve conditions, I think that's a noble thing.
But I think that the problem is that so many of these organizations that are are supposedly working towards the liberation of these communities, they're further exploiting them.
Again, it is really hard to ignore the echo of Karen's frustration with this exact dynamic.
Talking about the not -for -profit and industrial complex and the way in which it often reproduces harm in these kind of very exploitative relationships with the communities they work in.
And I say, if you have like a white CEO or executive director of an organization or a person, you know, frankly, a person of color that may not come from that community.
Because it was something that I had to really confront is understanding that there are the racial dynamics around people coming into communities and supposedly doing good work, as we've seen, both here and abroad.
But then there's also the class dynamics.
And I recognize that, you know, when I was working with young people, there was very little that I had in common with a lot of these young people outside of the fact that we were brown skinned.
Because, you know, I grew up with a lot of privileges.
And these were young people who were dealing with not just, you know, how could I get some organic fruits and vegetables, but where was my next meal coming from?
And so I think that, you know, organizations that aren't actively planning to like train and bring people in the community into leadership so that they can then run the organization, people are just playing games.
They're just, you know, they're there doing this work, but you know, it really hearkens back to the origins of the social work, the field of social work in the United States in the early 20th century.
And we needed to ensure that people who are most impacted by these issues are the ones who are in the room.
You know, one of the things that really informed my thoughts about this food justice work was the second scholarly monograph that my graduate school advisor, Robin D .G.
Kelly, wrote. It's this book called Race Rebels.
And in Race Rebels, he looks at the mid -20th century and many of the ways in which Black people resisted capitalism and white supremacy outside of organized labor movements.
And he talked about things such as theft and breaking equipment and tools and quitting on the spot and sabotage and how these These were like these everyday acts of resistance that we need to reexamine.
And so, you know, that helped me kind of reimagine these seemingly apolitical acts, such as cooking and gardening and building community around a table.
And, you know, reframing them as highly political, dare I say radical in a food system that's largely controlled by a handful of multinational corporations.
These corporations don't want you cooking.
They don't want you making things from scratch. They want you to buy their ready made food and stuffing it down your face in the car to your next job because the one that you have doesn't pay a living wage.
They don't want you building community around the table.
They want you isolated.
And, you know, I just think for me, we all need to see these as political acts alongside the more organized movement building through organizations and through on the ground grassroots activism.
There's a myth a lot of us grow up believing that hair loss is just a part of life.
It happens. It runs in the family.
And once it starts, there's no stopping it.
But here's the truth.
That's outdated thinking.
Scientific understanding of hair loss has advanced in recent years.
Today, we have a deeper knowledge of underlying causes, and we've developed science -backed solutions that are both effective and safe.
And that's at the very root of happy hair.
Dermatologists' led innovation offering stronger FDA -approved ingredients that work.
But what really sets Happy Head apart is how personalized it is.
They don't do one -size -fits -all fixes.
You fill out a comprehensive consultation and their board -certified dermatologists design a formula specifically for your hair loss pattern, goals, and lifestyle.
And whether you're early in your journey or more advanced, Happy Head offers targeted options that actually work.
Topical treatments, oral capsules, or potent dual -action bundles all deliver directly to you, discreetly and freshly compounded in the U .S. Most people start seeing results in three to six months.
But the real magic?
It's sustainable. This isn't just about growing hair.
It's about keeping it long -term.
So know, hair loss isn't inevitable anymore.
Visit happyhead .com and find out what's possible when science, expertise, and personalization come together.
Hair happiness starts here.
year? So when you lack food and it becomes something you cannot take for granted, then it becomes an important object of study or inquiry.
We heard from Dr. Hannah Garth earlier this season on our anthropology episode.
Today, we'll be drawing from her excellent book, which came out earlier this year.
It's called Food in Cuba, The Pursuit of a Decent Meal.
And she's back with us this week to talk about her research in Cuba to talk about food rationing, ways of acquiring, and really a socialist food system more broadly.
Here's Dr. Garth. So understanding how groups of people are able to basically shift everything about the way that they live, so shifting from being subsistence agriculturalists to being people that work and live in cities where you can't grow all of the food that you consume and you have to rely on a food system.
I've been interested in thinking through how people experience those forms of inequality and how people understand that.
One of the things that is really compelling and interesting about Cuba is that it has a food rationing system where everyone is guaranteed a basic amount of food to be able to survive.
And that food ration has been around for over 50 years and every single Cuban is eligible for the ration.
And it originally provided more food than it does today.
They've slowly been reducing the amount of food that's available in the ration.
And so this is a place where although people are provided with the minimum that they need to survive, they're still experiencing a sense of lack or a sense of food scarcity because they can't, it's very difficult for them to access food on top of that food ration.
Unlike the United States, Cuba provides a minimum dietary sustenance for all of their citizens in the form of food rations.
The system is still fraught, and there is a racial hierarchy in terms of who gets what, which Dr. Garth will soon explain, but still, with over 35 million people in the U .S. who are food insecure, hungry, and unsure where their next meal will come from, Cuba's food rationing system is a deeply imperfect but still enviable option that ensures none of its residents are left starving.
Although Cuba is socialist and the state does a good job of distributing basic needs to everyone, it's still tied to capitalist systems. So Cuba imports most of its food.
It ranges from 60 to 80 % of the food that's consumed on the island.
And those imports are made almost exclusively in capitalist countries.
So the breadbasket of Cuba is really coming from the global industrial food system.
Their rice is imported, for the most part imported.
A lot of their meats are imported.
When I was in Cuba, I was eating Tyson chicken that had been raised in the United States, had been exported to Russia, and then had been imported into Cuba.
So Cuba is not, and the government, the Cuban government definitely feels accountable for providing basic needs for people.
The problem that the Cubans that I do research with face is that they feel that the government does not address their needs and does not sort of take into consideration other elements of what's necessary in food beyond basic nutrition.
nutrition so they want to be able to make the foods that they connect with on a cultural level on a social level um on a familial level they want to make the things that their grandmother made and the ingredients for those foods that they view as central to who they are as people are not available the difference between our programs here and programs in cuba is that But our programs are tied to particular, like you have to apply for them and you have to follow certain criteria in order to be able to get your food benefits.
Whereas in Cuba, every single person gets them regardless of their work history, how many children they have, any other element about themselves.
So it's really available for all people.
In Cuba, since everyone is getting the same rationing from the government, it's a socialist food system.
Is there racism in Cuba in a socialist food system?
So in Cuba, it's important to also consider that they have free socialized health care for everyone.
So thinking about health and food together, it's really important to include that in the context.
Thank you for that.
Agree. Although the Cuban government has done a lot to eliminate forms of institutionalized discrimination and forms of racism, there's still a lot of ongoing racism, racialized discrimination, and forms of white supremacy that happen on the island.
So there's institutionalized discrimination that happens against Black Cubans in general.
There's institutionalized racism against Black Cubans that live outside of Havana or on the eastern side of the island who are seen as country folk in a derogatory way.
They mean that in a derogatory way.
So people view certain categories of Black Cubans as not sophisticated enough to eat certain kinds of food, and therefore it's unnecessary to distribute those kinds of foods to them.
So these are some deeply racist understandings that Cubans have of Black Cubans.
A very long standing race based problem is resource distribution.
People inherit their homes and they live in the same neighborhoods that their parents lived in and their grandparents lived in.
And those neighborhoods have been racially segregated and continue to be racially divided.
And lower income neighborhoods tend to have disproportionately high amount of Black Cubans and wealthier neighborhoods have a disproportionate number of white Cubans.
We still see very similar patterns to what we have in the United States, but I do think they shake out a little bit differently because of free socialized health care, free access to the food ration, free education, and subsidies for things like electricity, transportation, housing that help lower -income Cubans to sort of have a basic quality of life That a lot of lower income people in the United States do not share.
So, Hannah, what we've seen in our coverage is what we would classify as a global food movement and specifically a movement that is tightly bound to food and identity.
So often we see stories of reclamation, reclamation of land, reclamation of ingredients, of recipes, and in some cases, even ideas.
So do you have any sense if there is a similar reclamation movement happening in Cuba right now?
And secondly, as a scholar, would you mind sharing with us your hopes for a healthier and more vibrant food system in Cuba?
I find that among certain Cuban families, it's really common to aspire towards eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh herbs.
And people talk a lot about how they have a conceptualization that that's how people ate before and people were healthier before.
And so if we could get back to not adding any processed seasoning to our foods and we could use all fresh herbs and fresh fruits and vegetables, that we would be healthier.
And then recently with economic problems tied to COVID -19, the Cuban government has been encouraging people to grow their own vegetable gardens in any plots of land that they may have. And I think people are, some people are grasping onto this as a collective way of moving towards sustainability as a nation and being less reliant on the global food system.
So this crisis has really underscored for people how important it is to improve Cuba's national food system.
i mean to just put it into one word i think capitalism is the problem with most food systems it's it's the problem with cuba's food system even though it's socialist it's the problem with our food system and so if we i mean it's quite aspirational but if we could untether profit and capitalism from food and make food into something that is not something that corporations corporations profit off of, we would all be better off.
I don't know exactly the steps for moving into that direction because, you know, we're pretty well in that direction.
If you're interested in learning more about Dr. Garth's work in Cuba, you can check out her newly released book, Food in Cuba, The Pursuit of a Decent Meal, which is a perfect encapsulation of her scholarship on the many ways in which marginalized communities struggle to overcome structural inequalities to satisfy their most basic needs.
Okay, this is the last episode of the season.
It is hard to believe 30 episodes down.
Wow. I would like to thank each and every single person who has listened not only to this episode, but especially if you've listened to multiple episodes because they keep track of those sorts of things.
We really, really appreciate it.
it helps us a lot and we are so grateful.
So thank you. And especially to everyone who has left a review of the show that is also major.
So we thank you for that as well.
We are always trying to improve not only on this podcast, but with our magazine, which is our flagship and with our W journal, which I must say has been the most pleasant surprise of the year.
The stories have been tremendous and there have been no shortage of them.
So our foray into digital publishing, I'm happy to say has gone really, really well.
We are seriously overjoyed that we get to find ways to continue to work with and learn from so many brilliant scholars, chefs, activists, journalists from all over the world.
All of you that we get to work with who are so steeped in whatever the thing is that you're sharing.
It is contagious and much appreciated.
And it is because of you that we get to exist because without you, Whetstone would just be an idea so thank you guys all so much we are working on many many more ways that we can collaborate and although this is our last show of the year there's still plenty of whetstone to be had by way of our print magazine or the aforementioned journal on our site whetstone magazine .com backslash journal there is always more on the way there i'd like to thank our guests today, the legendary Karen Washington, BT, my brother, Bryant Terry, and the endlessly genius Dr. Hannah Garth, sociocultural and medical anthropologist,
author of Food and Cuba, The Pursuit of a Decent Meal, and along with Ashanti Reese, editor of the fabulous compilation Black Food Matters, Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice.
And according to her Twitter bio, will be joining Princeton University next fall as an assistant professor.
So, congrats to her and congrats to Princeton, who is very lucky to have her.
Finally, I'd like to give a special shout out to our production assistant, Quentin Lebeau.
If you've all been following us on IG, you know that for each of these episodes, there is a really stellar accompanying series of illustrations, both on our IG page, but also on our website.
Quentin has been responsible for those illustrations and has done such a beautiful job.
They are so additive.
We love having them go with each episode, Quentin.
So thank you for blessing us, Q.
We really appreciate the artwork.
Finally, you can learn more about this episode and our guests on our website, whetstonemagazine .com backslash podcast, or as always on IG at whetstonemagazine.
That's W -H -E -T -S -T -O -N -E.
I'm your host, Stephen Satterfield.
We'll be back sometime.
In the meantime, we'll see you online.
Peace. We'd also like to thank our incredible podcast producer, Celine Glager.
Celine, you are the best. To our editor and Whetstone partner and director of video, David Alexander in London.
Appreciate you, Dave. Thanks to our Whetstone production intern, Quentin Lebeau.
And last but not least, my business partner, Mel Shee, who makes all things at Whetstone possible.
Thank you, Mel. We'd also like to thank our partners in production at iHeartRadio, to Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer, and executive producer Christopher Hassiotis.
We'll be back next week with more from the world of food worldwide.
Point of origin listeners, as you know, So rating and reviewing our podcast is the very best way for more people to find out about our very important work at Whetstone.
So please, if you're able, we would really appreciate a positive review and rating on Apple podcast that will help others like yourself find out about Point of Origin.
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