Uprooting White Fragility: Intersectional Anti-Racism in the Post-Racial Ethical Foodscape

Uprooting White Fragility: Intersectional Anti-Racism in the Post-Racial Ethical Foodscape Brought to you in part by: African Americans for Balanced Health http://aabh.net (Sacramento) and the Colon Cleanse Campaign C3 Membership http://bit.ly/2laJ3CG ------------- Uprooting #WhiteFragility: Intersectional Anti-Racism in the Post-Racial Ethical Foodscape with Dr. Amie “Breeze" Harper In 2011, Dr. Robin DiAngelo (https://goo.gl/MROSXs) published the article "White Fragility" (https://goo.gl/wiIfRm), which deeply interrogated how and why the collectivity of white identified people in the USA do not want to talk about how racism and white privilege impact their and non-white people's lives. "White fragility" was coined by Diangelo to describe how white people collectively find any conversation about race to be too emotionally difficult to productively engage in. White Fragility often means there is dismissal or denial of how mostly white people collude with systemic racism, benefit from white privilege, and how "race matters." From dismissing the validity of systemic racism, to making it about [white] "hurt" feelings, to wanting to be "Post-racial", white fragility is a deeply troubling barrier in creating anti-racism activism and ally-ship. Over the past decade of scholarship dedicated to ethical consumption ("good food", locavorism, vegetarianism, Fair Trade, veganism) , scholars and food justice activists who are focused on intersections of food, ethics, and race have noticed a pattern: the mainstream ethical food movement rarely, if ever, addresses how race (i.e., racism, whiteness, racialization, anti-racism) operates when it comes to food, sustainability, and ethics. Even though critical race applications within the ethical food movement are slowly gaining momentum, many Black people involved struggle with how to navigate, intervene, and break past the barrier of "white fragility" and build intersectional anti-racist based "good" and "ethical" food models and praxis. "Intersectional" in this context means that even though anti racism is the central goal, one must practice anti racism while not reproducing other "isms" (i.e., heterosexism, cis-sexism, ableism). Intersectional frameworks, most importantly, take into account that race does not exist in a vacuum, and is deeply affected by factors such as class, gender, region, age, sexualities, and ability. As an African American food and health scholar, Dr. Harper will specifically talk about key strategies to identify conscious and unconscious racism, anti-Blackness, “white Fragility”, and the health and nutritional consequences of #RacialBattleFatigue”. Dr. Harper will creatively use real life examples of how anti-Blackness and white fragility operate within vegan and alternative health spaces, how to intervene, and how to create intersectional anti-racism and Black liberation within the ethical health and foodscape. Most importantly, even though Dr. Harper’s focus is on food, ethics, and race, this talk will be of interest to anyone who desires to gain literacy and action around health, food, and racial justice during what Dr. Barber of the North Carolina NAACP calls the “Third Reconstruction” of the USA. It is a timely talk during a new era of American politics that threatens decades of social justice and civil rights work collectively and successfully achieved by thousands of African Americans and allies. Dr. Amie “Breeze" Harper Senior Diversity Analyst & Strategist (Ethical Consumption, Technology, Higher-Ed, and Food Sectors) Critical Diversity Solutions Website: http://ift.tt/2mK5DFw Critical Diversity Books By Dr. A. Breeze Harper: http://ift.tt/1NIiTy4 Related: Understanding #WhiteFragility with Dr. Robin DiAngelo https://goo.gl/MROSXs Emunah Y’srael: #WhiteFragility and the #BlackPerspective https://goo.gl/wiIfRm