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I've been inside of "dollar stores". Not a good sight at all. And I stayed in a hotel in a relatively rough area before. Housing projects were close by. I didn't know this until the next day. The nearest store was basically a Family Dollar, and it was very close to the projects. Plenty of fast food restaurants and convenience stores. No actually grocery store. Plenty of junk available, but fresh fruits and vegetables, not so much. Plenty of alcohol around too.
Food deserts are a thing. To what extent, it varies. I used to work in an area you could call a food desert. I had to try as much as possible to bring lunch from home.
Like wise. I worked in an area of Brooklyn called Bushwick near Brownsville meets, bedstuy and east NY. This area is mostly black. It was a major food desert. Only when going near gentrified Bushwick the food options get better.
I tend to concur with this woman, OP. Fat, blubber, obesity, cholesterol, health problems, and unhealthy foods are in fact racist and white supremacist. Reparations are in immediate order.
I disagree to an extent. I used to work in the city of Atlanta. I worked in a really bad area. If I wanted a good grocery store with fresh food, I had to go to the Publix in Cascade Heights. I literally had to leave the neighborhood. When I worked in Midtown, plenty of places to get fresh produce. I agree that people could make better choices. On the other hand, I notice that in bad neighborhoods, it's easier to get alcohol than fresh produce. And the stores have far more junk on hand than fresh produce. You literally must leave the neighborhood.
Stores sell products that their customers want. Not the other way around.
If there were more demand for apples than beer in a neighborhood there would be more stores selling apples than beer.
These food "deserts" are not there due to racism...they exist because the market serves the consumers and their choices.
This is no different than thinking people are forced to live in the ghetto. The reality is that just about every "ghetto" was once a decent neighborhood...the people MADE it a ghetto!
If your undisciplined kids run around trashing things and painting graffiti on everything then it's you're fault the place is crappy. If you don't maintain your property then it's your fault the place is falling apart.
If you only buy junk food it's your fault the stores only sell junk food!
This is a cultural problem...not a race problem. Every race has their ghetto people...and those people generally refuse to live differently.
I have been trying so hard to bite my tongue about the "food desert" excuses being tossed around in this thread.
Food options in the black community have NOTHING to do with racism or white people. Its about supply and demand. If black people who live in the ghetto would start requesting/demanding fresh produce then the suppliers (store owners) would rise up to meet that demand. And let's be honest, the store owners in the ghettos are not white people; they are Asian and Arab. If Asian and Arab store owners do not or will not stock fresh produce then black people should 1) not patronize those businesses and 2) combine resources and form food co-ops, neighborhood gardens and organize weekly farmers markets.
Black people in the ghetto can figure out how to spend their money on ALL SORTS of things so finding ways to buy fresh produce should not be like reaching for the moon and stars.
I have been trying so hard to bite my tongue about the "food desert" excuses being tossed around in this thread.
Food options in the black community have NOTHING to do with racism or white people. Its about supply and demand. If black people who live in the ghetto would start requesting/demanding fresh produce then the suppliers (store owners) would rise up to meet that demand. And let's be honest, the store owners in the ghettos are not white people; they are Asian and Arab. If Asian and Arab store owners do not or will not stock fresh produce then black people should 1) not patronize those businesses and 2) combine resources and form food co-ops, neighborhood gardens and organize weekly farmers markets.
Black people in the ghetto can figure out how to spend their money on ALL SORTS of things so finding ways to buy fresh produce should not be like reaching for the moon and stars.
Thank you.
I am frequently shocked by how many people, not a few of whom are black themselves, think black folks are hapless buffoons unable to make the most elementary of choices and decisions.
I am frequently shocked by how many people, not a few of whom are black themselves, think black folks are hapless buffoons unable to make the most elementary of choices and decisions.
you mean like bringing children into the world you can't support?
I have been trying so hard to bite my tongue about the "food desert" excuses being tossed around in this thread.
Food options in the black community have NOTHING to do with racism or white people. Its about supply and demand. If black people who live in the ghetto would start requesting/demanding fresh produce then the suppliers (store owners) would rise up to meet that demand. And let's be honest, the store owners in the ghettos are not white people; they are Asian and Arab. If Asian and Arab store owners do not or will not stock fresh produce then black people should 1) not patronize those businesses and 2) combine resources and form food co-ops, neighborhood gardens and organize weekly farmers markets.
Black people in the ghetto can figure out how to spend their money on ALL SORTS of things so finding ways to buy fresh produce should not be like reaching for the moon and stars.
I agree in theory but will note that many people in those neighborhoods are poor or elderly in Atlanta and they have advocated for grocery stores and won. Where I used to live they now have a "city" style Walmart with a full grocery store. They also do have a community garden now.
It took over a decade for them to get a store in the neighborhood and during that time many people had to settle with the Family Dollar. Businesses often don't want to invest in these neighborhoods. Note, that this area in Atlanta is near the Atlanta University Center (AUC) which is where all the HBCUs in Atlanta are housed. When I first went to college in Atlanta back in the late 1990s we had to walk over a mile to get to a grocery story or take a shuttle. Luckily the college students did have a shuttle but if you are familiar with the AUC, you'd know that it was next to 3 public housing projects, which housed nearly 10k primarily black people at the time and most of them didn't have a car and relied on public transit so it was indeed a burden for them to get healthy food and that population was not the type to advocate for better conditions. That burden does impact, for instance, a single mother's abilities to make a quick dinner for her kids and not having adequate time to shop does make that mother choose to get fast food or unhealthy frozen options for her kids instead of a healthy meal. So it does have an impact on health and just not shopping at those stores often are not an option for people the people who live in those neighborhoods.
I have 3 cars and so never had an issue living in that neighborhood. I'd go up to Howell Mill to shop at Kroger and Publix with the wealthier population since it was a 5 minute drive. If I had to take a bus up there to shop it would have taken over an hour to get there and over an hour to get back due to the need to bus to a train station, wait on another bus to get to the store and do the same when I came back (I did have to do this when I was younger and poorer and my car broke down). So it is a real reality for some families to have to buy at these places and they don't have time to advocate for change between working long hours and taking 3 hour bus trips all over the place. It wasn't until the black gentrifiers, such as myself started moving back to Atlanta (we did before the white folks) and started the gardens and made a stink/advocated for the stores that things began to change. That is not saying that the older population didn't advocate, but many of them were elderly and poor and because of "flight" from the neighborhood and a low population by the early 2000s, they were just not listened to IMO. I worked with a lot of elderly community members to advocate for commercial investments and improvements to that neighborhood prior to moving away and they often lamented about how no one listened to or cared about them until us richer folks moved back to the neighborhood.
I'll note though I do blame many of the black people in these hoods for leaving the hood and moving to the burbs. The lack of population was always cited as a reason for the lack of investment. When more of us started moving back, that got more invested in the neighborhood.
you mean like bringing children into the world you can't support?
While I am critical of that, no, that is not what I meant.
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