“Is there a lot of crime in this area?”
This was a question that my family member asked while we were driving in the car through Troy and Albany, New York. When we were driving through these cities, I noticed that the buildings seemed to be more run-down and that there was a lot of poverty in the area; a direct effect of redlining. When my relative asked this question, I instantly thought back to the point that our professor had made in class which was that she once asked this question when looking for a place to live and had later become horrified when she learned this question was plagued with implicit bias that discriminated against marginalized people by implying that they were criminals. This question did not acknowledge the racist system that linked impoverished people on the margins of society to criminality, therefore implying a prejudiced assumption in the way that it was asked, even if unintentional.
It may be true that some people such as my relative and the younger version of my professor may not have been aware of the hidden meaning behind this question when they asked it. It also may be true that people are well aware of what they are talking about when they ask that question and have bought into the narratives of the implicit and explicit racism that makes that question “valid” to those predominantly white askers. However, that bias expressed through the way that these questions are asked, whether implicit or explicit, is the key element that maintains these unequal systems that make things the way that they are. It perpetuates racism so that white relatives like my own can ask questions like that when they drive through areas that are unfamiliar to them and that do not mirror the “safer” suburbs that they have always lived in.
A few days later after driving through those cities, there was a screening of the film Farming While Black as a part of Muhlenberg’s Center for Ethics 2024-2025 series of the Ethics of Repair. In the film, Leah Penniman, a Black woman who is one of the founders of Soul Fire Farm in Albany, talks about her experience of living in Albany with her family in which she called the city a “food apartheid” rather than a “food desert.” She explained that to purchase nutritious food in the city, she had to travel 2 miles in an area where the food was very unaffordable and difficult to access due to transportation limits, meaning that she often had to travel by foot to find nutritious food. The “food apartheid” refers to the explicit division of people through redlining that is very apparent in the city. Food sovereignty activists have steered away from using the term “food deserts,” a relatively benign term, to “food apartheid,” which recognizes the direct effects of redlining that have made things the way that they are. This example of changing the term to call out the oppressive system is one way in which people can change the way they conceptualize the framework of these issues to call out racism. What are other ways we can change the way we ask questions and use certain terminologies to actively call out these oppressive systems when we bring them up in discussion? How effective is changing our vocabulary as a way of progress toward less racism?
Information about the film Farming While Black: https://www.farmingwhileblackfilm.com/
About the photo: Naima Penniman, acrylic on wood, photographs, 2018. “African women braided seeds into their hair before being forced to board transatlantic slave ships, a creative act of survival and resistance.” View the photo on instagram for more: https://www.instagram.com/p/B8BwwcaBI3F/