[TW violence against women, violence against children, gun violence]
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The bravest woman on Earth.
Lélia Gonzalez (1935-1994) was a Brazilian intellectual, anthropologist, professor and militant of the Movimento Negro Unificado. She is a legend in the history of the Brazilian feminist movement in its struggle to combat violence against women, particularly sexual and domestic violence. A pioneer in the study of Black Culture, she earned a degree in Philosophy and History, a Master’s in Social Communications and a Ph.D in Social Anthropology in São Paulo and dedicating herself to research on the topic of gender and ethnicity. She joined the Movimento Negro Unificado and played a fundamental role in the defense of black women, participating in the Research Institute of Black Culture and the Black Women’s Collective, N’Zinga.
Gonzalez’s work highlighted the plight and social position of black women in Brazilian society, a position of triple oppression in terms of race, gender and socio-economic status. On Brazil’s particular brand of racism and white supremacy, Gonzalez wrote:
“racism in Latin America is sophisticated enough to keep blacks and Indians in the subordinate condition within the most exploited class, because its most effective form of ideology: the ideology of whitening, so well analyzed by Brazilian scientists. Transmitted by means of communication and the traditional ideological systems, it reproduces and perpetuates the belief that the ratings and values of white Western culture are the only true and universal. Once established, the myth of white superiority proves its efficiency and the effects of violent disintegration, fragmentation of ethnic identity produced by it, the desire to whiten (“cleaning the blood” as they say in Brazil), is internalized with the consequent denial of their own race and culture.” [x]
Gonzalez is now credited as responsible for the development and practice of black feminism in Brazil. To read more about this incredible lady, click here.
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Uprooting racism in the food system: Communities organize for justice
March 11, 2013A shovel overturned can flip so much more than soil, worms, and weeds. Structural racism - the ways in which social systems and institutions promote and perpetuate the oppression of people of color – manifests at all points in the food system. It emerges as barriers to land ownership and credit access for farmers of color, as wage discrimination and poor working conditions for food and farmworkers of color, and as lack of healthy food in neighborhoods of color. It shows up as discrimination in housing, employment, redlining, and other elements which impact food access and food justice.
Many people involved in creating food - from Haitian tomato pickers organizing in Florida, to Native Americans saving seeds in Arizona, to Black Detroit residents growing gardens in fractured neighborhoods – are simultaneously chipping away at structural racism. In the Harvesting Justice series we touch on many of these issues, starting with a look at African-American farmers and what they doing to win justice in the food system.
In 1920, one in every seven farmers in the U.S. was African-American. Together, they owned nearly 15 million acres. Racism, violence, and massive migration from the rural South to the industrialized North have caused a steady decline in the number of Black farmers. So, too, has, institutional racism in the agricultural policies of the USDA. By 2007, African-American farmers numbered about one in 70, together owning only 4.2 million acres.
Over the years, studies by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission (CRC), as well as by the USDA itself, have shown that the USDA actively discriminated against Black farmers, earning it the nickname ‘the last plantation.’ A 1964 CRC study showed that the agency unjustly denied African-American farmers loans, disaster aid, and representation on agricultural committees. But organizations like the National Black Farmers Association, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, the Land Loss Prevention Project, and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives have been challenging racism in agricultural policy through legal action. In 1997-98, African-American farmers filed class-action lawsuits against the USDA for unjustly denying them loans. The lawsuits were consolidated into one case, Pigford v. Glickman, which was settled in 1999. But due to delays in filing claims, nearly 60,000 farmers and their heirs were left out of this settlement. In November 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Claims Settlement Act (known as Pigford II) to compensate Black farmers who were left out of the first settlement. President Obama signed the bill a month later, making $1.25 billion available for claimants in the form of cash payments and loan forgiveness, though the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association has filed an appeal because Pigford II provides smaller payments and places limits on claimants’ future legal options.
bell hooks wrote, “Collective black self-recovery takes place when we begin to renew our relationship to the earth, when we remember the way of our ancestors… Living in modern society, without a sense of history, it has been easy for folks to forget that black people were first and foremost a people of the land, farmers.”[1]
Some who are still farmers are carrying on the fight for economic and civil rights for land-based African-American people, a fight which dates back to the days of slavery. Probably the most impressive contemporary example of such organizing has been the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. An outgrowth of the civil rights movement, it formed in 1967 when 22 cooperatives met at Atlanta University. The federation has used collective action ever since to support Black and other small farmers and rural communities. Today, their members include over 100 coops in 16 states across the South.
A fast-growing movement is African-Americans reclaiming their connection to their urban land and their food, as part of food justice and food sovereignty movements. People’s Grocery and Mo’ Better Food in Oakland, Growing Power, Rooted in Community, Detroit Black community Food Security Network, and many others are organizing with farmers and connecting African-American growers and consumers. Many of these, such as the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, are working forcommunities of color to have democratic control over their own food systems. Their work includes youth programs and urban gardening in areas where access to healthy, affordable food is limited, as is the case in many low-income and people of color neighborhoods.
These groups are also raising awareness of the ways that African-American communities, and communities of color in general, have been sidelined within the food movement itself. Inclusion and participation of people of color has come slowly and late. Often, African-American neighborhoods are targeted as ‘intervention’ areas by outside organizations that - though well-meaning - are neither led by nor accountable to the community and its most urgent needs and goals. The prevailing white culture of the food movement as a whole creates barriers: the typical image of farmers presented often reflects a white archetype and the types of food solutions presented are not always culturally relevant or practical.
A critical element of many African-American groups’ work thus involves nation-wide education and organizing on structural racism as it impacts health, farming, food, and land. Among other elements, these organizations are committed to knocking down barriers to food production and food access. Some have joined the world-wide movement for food sovereignty, in their own communities and through the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, so that citizen control over food and agriculture can exist across global economic systems.
Ultimately, we all eat, and we are all implicated. Achieving racial justice in the food system is not the sole burden of African-Americans organizing but will take multiracial alliances of people raising awareness of systemic disparities, and working together to end them.
I want to add many Latino & low-income communities have started community farms as well. It’s a huge step toward autonomy, mutual aid & collectivism in these areas where healthy food isn’t readily available or it’s very expensive.
I recently began working with a women’s collective & migrant farm workers to develop a community farm in south El Paso near the Texas/Mexico border. I would really encourage people with the time & resources to start organizing a community farm because food justice is a human right’s issue!
I find this to be such a powerful portrayal of the conflict between Black and White America. At first, something about this depiction of the Black man didn’t sit quite right with me. I think it’s because I was hoping there would be elements in the photograph that are racially empowering and at first glance, that didn’t seem to be the case. I thought that perhaps it wasn’t the artist’s intent to offer an empowering image, but simply one that shows the gravity of race relations in the US. But when I thought about it some more, the message became much clearer to me.
I love the chess board and how it represents race relations as something that is strategic and inherently a life or death scenario. Love it. I like the uncertainty of how things will end since it’s the beginning of the game, and I also like the pensive stature of the Black man. I initially disliked that aspect of the portrait because I thought it made the Black man seem to be acting from a reactive, and not a proactive position. But then I thought about how, in the game of chess, any move is simultaneously a well-thought out response and a direct challenge to one’s opponent that seek’s to catalyze a new chain reaction. To me, that gave the Black Man some more agency and was a step in the right direction.
My second main issue was with how the Black man was dressed. I was sitting here wondering why he couldn’t be wearing a suit and why he needed to be wearing a hat and seemingly baggy shirt instead. But at the same time, the reality is that there are a wide variety of barriers to a lot of Black men being able to live a suit and tie kind of life. Although I thought it was stereotypical at first, it could be argued that it’s a more representative depiction of African-American men to wear the kind of clothes shown above than a collared, button-down shirt and a tie.And lastly, there’s the knife and there’s the gun. I was unsettled to see them on the table and thought that the gun, in addition to Black man’s clothes, attempted to portray him as a gang-banging, violent Black man.
But then I paused and realized the White man brought a knife to a gunfight.
So, I feel like it’s an empowering image after all.
When I saw the picture it portrayed two destructive things to the black comminity…racism and black people killing one another. The hood and knife represented stabbing one in the back while cowardly hiding behind the identity of the person/agenda…the gun reps the violence in the black community. Chess represents the depth and thought each side puts into the destruction…two destructive forces going head to head playing people on the board to achieve their goals. I had this image saves on my pc and recall it originating on a black journalist radio blog. He was having a debate with a kkk member and used it on his blog.
[TW violence against women, violence against children, gun violence]
A version for tumblr that can be read without opening a new tab, since plenty of people would scroll past this story otherwise.
The bravest woman on Earth.