WSU Amplifies Claim That Farmers Markets, Food Charity Are ‘White Supremacy’ in Action

Washington State University is amplifying claims that farmers markets and food charities are examples of “white supremacy” and “white dominant culture.” It has nothing to do with helping farmers thrive. This is about creating left-wing social justice activists.

The agriculture program coordinator for WSU’s San Juan County Extension Ag Program promoted a webinar event titled: “Examining Whiteness in Food Systems.” During the hour-long presentation, attendees learned that “white supremacy culture” creates food insecurity by “center[ing] whiteness across the food system.”

The materials claim that “whiteness defines foods as either good or bad” and that farmers markets are merely white spaces.

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The webinar was originally produced by Duke University and featured two speakers from WSU’s 2021 San Juan Islands Ag Summit on the same topic.

Jennifer Zuckerman of the Duke World Food Policy Center led the discussion. She framed the webinar around her identity as a white woman who has “benefited from whiteness for my entire life at the expense of other people.” With that in mind, she explored the “really specific ways in which whiteness shows up in the food system and particularly in the work of food insecurity.”

Promoting the belief that “whiteness permeates the food system” and that “it specifically articulates these white ideals of health and nutrition,” Zuckerman chided the “whitened dreams of farming and gardening.”

She took particular aim at farmers markets as being too white. She uses a quote from Rachel Slocum (“a preeminent researcher on whiteness and food”) as a jumping-off point.

“What that does is it erases the past and present of race and agriculture. What whiteness also does is ‘mobilizes funding to predominantly white organizations who then direct programming at nonwhite beneficiaries,’” she said. “And we’ll talk about that a little bit more when we talk about communities that can’t take care of themselves. Also, what this does is it creates inviting spaces for white people. Then program directors or farmers market directors are scrambling because they’re trying to add diversity to a white space. So what whiteness does is center whiteness.”

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Zuckerman is particularly offended by white groups bringing mobile food banks to communities of color.

Efforts to offer food free of charge presumes “that low income and or BIPOC communities and individuals (and that’s not necessarily one in the same) cannot provide or make decisions for themselves.” She says it comes out of the “white supremacy culture” of individualism and neo-liberalism.

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The CRT-framing around food systems wasn’t a one-off. It appears to be the very basis of the work this WSU extension course offers.

At the race-obsessed 2021 San Juan Islands Ag Summit in May, the focus was also centered on whiteness. {snip}

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