By Black Hammer
Our ongoing genocide as Colonized people is not by accident rather it is carefully calculated and designed. It is designed into every single aspect of our daily lives from the crumbling infrastructure in our communities to our inaccessibility to healthy foods; colonialism plagues us everywhere in every way.
Colonialism inhibits our access to our cultural foods as a method to prolong our genocide and squeeze us of every drop of production our labor and lives create. The colony labels the restriction of healthy foods as “food deserts”.
Deserts are not the barren and lifeless landscapes the colonizer often depicts; deserts are beautiful, vibrant and bio-diverse ecosystems.
By naming food apartheid “food deserts”, the colonizer attempts to deceive Colonized people into thinking our malnutrition and starvation is a natural part of life, so we at Black Hammer call it what it is: food apartheid.
Food apartheid describes the lack of access to fresh, healthy and affordable foods in poor and working-class Colonized communities, where there are no nearby grocery stores or supermarkets, rather communities are flooded in fast food chains, liquor stores and small convenient stores to meet nutritional daily needs.
African communities are half as likely to have access to supermarkets than white colonizers while Indigenous communities are a third less likely to have the same access. Colonized communities have smaller grocery stores that carry limited options and are higher priced while having more processed foods.
To escape this food segregation, Colonized people must travel farther and pay more for food and travel than white colonizer communities. Realistically, poor and working-class Colonized people cannot allocate more financial resources for healthy foods that are more costly when we are barely surviving on crumb wages of our 40-hour work week and the colony knows this too well.
With few food options, Colonized working-class communities have a higher daily intake of fat, salt and sugar which creates a poor nutritional diet that leaves our communities vulnerable to obesity, heart disease, hypertension, various types of cancer and a variety of chronic illnesses. Additionally, a poor diet influences the cognitive development of children, especially in utero, making them more susceptible to sickness. When our communities are restrained from having a nutritious diet, our future will always be impacted.
Food apartheid is a manifestation of colonialism through racist housing and financial policies and government regulations that have segregated Colonized people into a prolonged genocide. To blame Colonized people for their physical illnesses resulting from the deprivation of nutritious foods is racist. To tell Colonized people to “simply eat better” is racist. This same racism has been used as a justification for our violent colonization for the last 600 years.
In the desert of occupied Hohokam land (Phoenix, Arizona) a 2015 study found that 452 communities are under food apartheid. People in these communities live too far away and/or do not have access to reliable transportation to go to the grocery store. According to this study, at least 233,438 people are in food segregated communities in Phoenix, Arizona and the majority of them are poor and working-class Colonized people.
Before this colonial virus pandemic, 1 in 4 households were facing food insecurity and now it is 1 in 3 households. Since the pandemic began, food insecurity has increased by 28%. Primarily in this desert valley, it has been Indigenous households with children making less than $50,000 a year that have been pushed by into this colonial contradiction of food insecurity rooted in food apartheid.
No food aid programs have been extended as the pandemic continues. We are being starved and pushed back to work in the middle of a global pandemic for a disintegrating colony.
This is a settler-colonial nation founded on the genocide of Indigenous people, the kidnapping and chattel enslavement of African people and the peonage of Asian people. This will never change. We cannot wait for “more investments” in our communities when we are starving today. The only solution to food apartheid is food sovereignty.
At Black Hammer, we are building a dual-contending food system where no one will ever face the violent contradiction of food apartheid again. We are reclaiming our birthright to food where no colonizer can ever murder us through starvation; where no colonizer can prolong our genocide through health problems rooted in processed foods and restricted access to fresh fruits and vegetables; where we can be strong and healthy to push this revolution forward.
We spit in the face of white power when we divest from the colony and invest in ourselves as guerilla gardeners; we are at war against colonialism and we will win. Now is the time to pick up the rake and the hoe and develop our food sovereignty because only we can save ourselves.
Join Black Hammer to liberate our people from the brutality of colonialism, our Food Ministry to contribute to our Colonized brilliance at [email protected] and become a guerrilla gardener, so you can be ready when this colonial food system collapses.
Use your writing talents to further the Liberation of all Colonized People by joining Black Hammer Times today! We are looking for journalists, reporters, poets, and more, so do not worry; there is a spot on our team for you.
You can also submit your work to us, and as long as it unites with our 4 Principles of Unity, you will see your writing published on all of our platforms.
We are also looking for donations to solve the water crisis in amerikkka which continues to take the lives of innocents to this day. Donate to our Science and Technology Committee CashApp at $BHOSCITECH so that we can provide clean water to Colonized communities worldwide!
