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WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY?
Intersectionality is "the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage."
The Oxford Dictionary
The Urgency of Intersectionality - A Discussion
By Dayna Pham
“James has never experienced the taste of fruits that haven’t been attacked by pesticides, just like he has never experienced a neighborhood that hasn’t been attacked by bullets – some things just go hand in hand in his life.”
Joshua Merchant, Addressing Food Inequality Through Slam Poetry (2013)
All individuals' facets of their identity, whether race, gender, or socioeconomic status, play large roles in the hardships and triumphs they face.
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In the exploration of food apartheids, one cannot simply look at the issue through a financial standpoint. In order to completely understand the complexities of food apartheids and why certain populations are disproportionately affected, we must navigate the analysis of food access through an intersectional lens, where factors such as race, socioeconomic status, and housing location all play a crucial role in one's access to healthy food.
Examples of Factors that Contribute to One's Identity
Image acquired from the Association of Women in Science.
Historical Redlining Map
Image acquired from National Geographic.
Redlining was a government practice in the 1930s that defined what areas were "safe" to insure mortgages and what areas were not. From the surface, this looks like an issue of financial feasibility, but looking deeper - the root of redlining was in racism. Areas predominantly housed by low-income People of Color, immigrants, and undocumented individuals were deemed as "unsafe" (Miller 2016).
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The consequences of redlining are still apparent today, as food apartheids geographically coincide with "unsafe" neighborhoods, those of which were dense with low-income ethnic minorities. Therefore, these individuals of marginalized communities disproportionately experience the health effects of EDC exposure, and lack access to healthy and fresh food.
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In this slam poetry piece, poet Joshua Merchant addresses how health, food insecurity, poverty, crime, and racism intertwine at the demise of low-income People of Color (Merchant 2013).
In this TedTalk, activist Kimberlé Crenshaw describes the need to reevaluate how we perceive people's lived experiences as a reflection of their identities (Crenshaw 2016).
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