Food Injustice and Discrimination

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Recommended: Nurturing the seeds of food justice

Food Scandal Picture a group of people restrained from specific type of food because of their skin color, or because they belong to a lower class status. Or imagine people are not being allowed to enjoy the freedom of growing what they love. That’s why food injustice can be seen as pervasive problem that affects different people. According to veteran organization Just Food (2010), food justice is “communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat [food that is] fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate, and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals.” Race and class are two of the factors that lead to food injustice because people’s access to food can be limited according to their skin color and class status. Food injustice is a problem that affects working class people, which are often victims of discrimination. According to Omi and Winant (1994) food system is implicated in many of what they call racial projects, such as the Federal immigration laws that discriminate people based on their right of workplace protections, also the urban planning and mortgage lending policies are another racial project as they tend to block colored community’s people from high class areas that are well shaped. It is unacceptable for people of lower classes to be subject to unlawful situations such as being forced to give away their rights of owning and managing a land for food production. In addition, race has also taken a part in this food injustice issue. For example, the Karuk people, which once lived a life of rich and were amongst the richest tribes at their time. This tribe depends on the Klamath River in their fishing which is their main food source. However, this tribe is now sufferin... ... middle of paper ... ...ater on that this cheap food policy has more costs to the environment and the people than expected, so it wasn’t really a great solution for the issue because using low-cost fertilizers, and crappy crops has led to many environmental problems regardless of how much cheaper the food produced and the industrial costs were. Indeed there are people who believe that food injustice is a minor problem and they shouldn’t worry much about it because they can eat whatever they want, but this is not just a matter of money or ability, it is more of injustice inequity as it can be tolerated according to race, or class, and by power. Maybe it is right that the rich should live more convenient than the poor, but that still doesn’t mean that the insignificant, or the colored, or the worker shouldn’t get his rights served well or in another words gets his individuals even treatment.

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