Gardens, nonprofits, farms and new businesses have recently bolstered Detroit’s food system but critics say it remains plagued by an old city foe — racism.
A quick look at the city’s history — discrimination of early black migrant workers, race riots over social conditions, “white flight” to the suburbs — paints a picture of racial complexity unrivaled by other major cities.
Photo: Earthworks Urban Farm — Capuchin Soup Kitchen
Detroit’s population is more than 80 percent black. But despite their majority, people of color lack access to food and justice in its distribution, according to some of the major players in the city’s food system.
And they’re doing something about it.
Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System is a group plugged into the city’s food and nonprofit world. Members hold monthly meetings and workshops to build an awareness and understanding of how race constrains the city’s food system.
Inadequate food and health problems
A disproportionate number of black and Hispanic Detroiters suffer from poor health linked to diet.
“We see racism in the food system mainly through chronic health conditions,” said Shane Bernardo, outreach coordinator with Earthworks Urban Farm in Detroit. “Diabetes, obesity and heart disease disproportionately affect people in Detroit — especially African Americans.”
Heart disease in 2009 killed 302.7 Detroiters for every 100,000 people. That compares to 231.4 for Michigan and 211.1 nationally.
Seventy percent of the city’s population is obese or overweight, according to the Michigan Department of Community Health.
Detroit’s distinct lack of healthy food options has been much publicized. The city is often labeled a “food desert.”
Fast food restaurants and convenience stores dot the city's landscape. Photo: Photos by Mavis (Flickr)
Roughly 550,000 Detroit residents — more than half of the city’s population — must travel at least twice as far to reach the closest mainstream grocer as they do to reach a fast food restaurant or a convenience store, according to a 2007 study.
Detroiters lost many more years of their life due to lack of healthy food than their suburban counterparts, according to the same study. This disparity is rooted in historic racism, according to Bernardo.
“Detroit is one of the blackest cities in the country, and has one of the most racially-segregated metro areas,” Bernardo said. “White people left the city and discriminatory policies locked black people in.”
Bernardo points to the housing and lending practices in the Detroit area, spanning back to World War II and the subsequent GI Bill, when black soldiers ran into problems trying to move to fast-growing suburbs.
Suburbs grew — full of grocery stores and other amenities — while the city became more vacant, poor and empty of healthy food.
“This started the divide between whites and blacks,” Bernardo said.
This divide is worsened by poor public transportation, said Lila Cabbil, coordinator for Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System.
“People have no access to food,” Cabbil said. “And whenever we talk about rapid transit, suburban communities worry about black people having access to their communities — so people in the city remain stuck without options.”
Nonprofit structure doesn’t reflect the city
Detroit’s industrial roots are increasingly replaced by those of fruits and vegetables.
Farms and gardens continue pop up throughout Detroit. Photo: Brian Bienkowski
There are approximately 2,300 gardens within the city, according to Charity Hicks, secretary of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.
Food nonprofits sprout up as quickly as the gardens. But some critics say these solutions are as racist as the problem they’re trying to fix. The organizations lack the employee diversity that reflects the people they try to help, Hicks said.
“People are approaching the work with very good intentions,” Hicks said. “But it’s a continuation of the status quo.”
Two of the more prominent nonprofits in the city — The Greening of Detroit and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen – lack people of color in leadership, management and administrative positions, Hicks said.
“When the Greening of Detroit folks were pressed about their leadership, they went and hired a bunch of young, black Americorps members for grunt work,” Hicks said. “But if you look up and down their management, they’re still very white.”
Greening of Detroit officials refused to comment for the article.
Earthworks Urban Farm is a program of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen. Bernardo and others have been a part of the Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System group, and Earthworks continues to “explore who controls and influences the food in Detroit,” Bernardo said.
Hicks credits food, social and environmental nonprofits for trying to improve conditions for people in the city, but the “do-gooders are trying to save the natives, when the natives need to save themselves,” she said.
The nonprofits miss out on the resources and the voice of the community by not hiring from within, Cabbil said.
Food nonprofits are creating jobs mainly for white people who typically don’t live in the city, while there’s a community expertise that could be tapped into, Cabbil said.
The nonprofits are necessary though because “the challenge for Detroit is that it faces so many challenges,” said Simone Lightfoot, consultant on regional urban initiatives at the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center.
But they can still alienate the very people they’re trying to help.
“Food issues have been around for a very long time in Detroit,” Lightfoot said. “It’s just recently become vogue, so you have people who’ve been in the city, struggling with this, saying ‘where have you been our whole lives?’”
Sparking a change
The Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System meetings have drawn approximately 200 — 300 racially diverse people, Hicks said.
The group’s mission is to start the conversation about racial food inequality.
“There is no quick fix for legacy racism,” Cabbil said. “The group’s purpose is to first initiate awareness, and then understanding.”
Smaller groups discuss racial issues and how they can bring the deeper understanding of other races back to their organizations or businesses.
The group also holds an annual workshop looking at how the city’s power structure affects people economically, and, ultimately, their food options.
“There are implications to who owns the land, who rents the land and who has access to the land,” Cabbil said.
Hicks sees the conversation as a first step in a long, difficult process of change.
“We need to walk the walk … right now the meetings are almost like a little clique of people that get it. We have to find a way to take that beautiful learning, growth and reflection and pour it out in to the other 140 square miles of city.”