A commonly-held American sentiment is that Black people, particularly those of us in the South, don’t eat enough nutrient-rich meals and that the bulk of our diets consist of fried, fatty, and/or processed foods. As a result, heart disease, diabetes, and “obesity” are health conditions that shorten our lifespans by decades. Many of the studies conducted on our eating habits fail to take into consideration the matrix of oppression that is American society. That is, they do not account for higher levels of stress, food deserts in our communities, lack of access to healthcare, poverty, and so much more. Simply put: in America, the popular narrative is that Black people just … aren’t healthy.
Author and activist Da’Shaun Harrison, whose latest book explores anti-fatness as a proponent of anti-Blackness, has written and spoken at length about what it means to be “healthy” in a world designed to kill you. “Health,” particularly in modern American society, has connotations attached to whiteness and the desire to maintain it, wealth, ability, education, gender, size, and weight—all of which are meant to perpetuate systems of white supremacy such as transphobia, anti-Blackness, and slavery-capitalism.
White supremacy facilitates the death of Black people by pushing the narrative that our food, bodies, and lifestyles are inherently unhealthy, as opposed to a reflection of and/or response to our environments and circumstances. The mainstream image of ‘health’ in America is not a thin, non-disabled, classed, white-adjacent cis person who eats home-grown veggies for every meal by accident. It is so by design and for the purpose of gatekeeping health, life, joy, and existence at the behest of white supremacy.
Calling soul-food unhealthy, conducting dozens of studies on Black people’s eating habits and their correlations to higher rates of death assumes that if Black people didn’t enjoy the foods of our ancestors — if we only chose to eat better (read: more white) — we would be able to finally eradicate the systems that kill us before we are even born.
It assumes that eating kale and chicken substitute instead of collards and ham hock (or turkey neck, as my family does) would give us access to better, more affordable medical care, pay us more, free us from cages, de-pollute our cities, suddenly make housing more affordable, put nutrients back into the soil where our houses are built, and finally reshape a society that created concepts of race and fatness to oppress Black people—but not before profiting off of us. It assumes that Amerikkka would finally stop killing us because—look! We’re healthy!
Now, I’m all for nourishing your body with things that make you feel good and encourage connection to the land we live on. But more than that, I’m for access to fresh produce and nutrient-rich foods, time to cook it with care, having enough to feed many, and knowledge of the recipes that sustained my ancestors through slavery, Jim Crow, and every era of American history that has relegated Black people to the margins where death awaits us.
These things are hard. I’d argue, they’re damn-near impossible to do in today’s society. The majority of Black Americans do not live on farms or have the time, space, or money to grow food themselves. And the majority of us are dangerously close to poverty and homelessness. The conversation needs to shift immediately away from shaming Black Americans for the treasured recipes we’ve retained, to addressing the systemic barriers that deny us access to “health” under white supremacist capitalism. Black Americans need better-paying jobs and access to nutrient-rich foods, so that we may prepare the food of our ancestors and nourish our bodies. Black people in America need to be safe in our communities and supported by the institutions that govern our daily lives, such as childcare, education, housing, and policing.
