This week, we are reading about oppression and
privilege, two topics of great interest
to me and that are seldom fully understood, as McIntosh notes in “Unpacking the
Invisible Knapsack”. The theme, especially brought out by McIntosh and Marilyn
Frye (“Oppression”), is that it’s hard to notice privilege when one is the
privileged group, and hard to notice oppression when one is not a member of the
oppressed group. This is why, for example, some men don’t understand why women
find cat-calling offensive. They think that it’s complimentary: they would love
to have women complimenting them as they walked by! (I have heard this many
times from men.) But women don’t take it as such: we worry about it, and we can
feel threatened by it. We don’t want to be sex objects for random men, but that’s
what we turn into. And it doesn’t have to do with how a woman dresses, either.
Women dressed “conservatively” will still be harassed if she is found
attractive. (Consider this http://www.news.com.au/world-old/saudi-women-with-sexy-eyes-may-be-forced-to-cover-them-up/story-e6frfkyi-1226198481241#ixzz1e0fcFqS9
)
And this article is clearly meant to demonstrate the
privilege that many of us have who have lived in neighborhoods with fairly
reliable grocery stores:
Yet the evidence it presents does not give a convincing
case. Let me note outright that I do not disagree with the message of the
article. People should have access to sanitary local grocery stores. But this
article is far too incomplete, and if you look at the comments, people simply
don’t understand the problem because of the poor communication of the article. What I will be elucidating in this post is not that the article is wrong, but incomplete. It does not go far enough. It describes only part of the problem, and so is misinforming people about the injustice certain communities ACTUALLY face-- they are far greater than what this article suggests.
When I first read the article, several things sprung out at
me. First, how many trips a week to the grocery store 3 mi away is Olga restricted
to? It makes no mention of how often she works, or other time-drains she has
that makes such a trip difficult, which would make the argument more
compelling. Second, let’s say she can go only once a week, due to time
constraints, which is probably likely. Why not use a backpack to carry
groceries home? They are more durable and can carry quite a few groceries. I
have used one in biking to and from grocery stores. Third, she mentions some of
the things she buys: orange juice, Rice-A-Roni, etc. Why not buy orange juice
concentrate and a bag of rice? A box of rice-a-roni takes up quite a bit of
space, and is only half full! Not to mention it is grossly unhealthy, especially if it is flavored/ “seasoned”—packing
in quite a bit of sodium for the little nutrition it gives. And this brings us
to the other point of the article, the unhealthy children on a bad diet.
But the article doesn’t talk AT ALL about why the children
are unhealthy!! Are we just supposed to infer the cause from a badly organized
collection of details, that don’t even yield a complete narrative?
As a working class woman, I know the reasons normally given
for eating unhealthy: it’s convenient, it’s quick, and it’s cheap. All but the
first are just false, and actually even the first is false most of the time. It
is quicker and cheaper to make a homecooked meal with healthy ingredients than
to go to any kind of restaurant and wait for your food. Let’s look at each
point separately.
Cost: Take the cheapest meal you can get out. Fastfood,
dollar menu. Presuming that you get a burger and fries, you are at $3 per
person already. Let’s say it’s a family of 4. You’re paying at least $12 for
one meal, no leftovers.
Or you can make a huge pot of chili: beans are maybe $2 for
a big bag, or for a big can. Then you get a couple of peppers and an onion, $2.
And that’s really all you need. You can throw in a lb of hamburger for $5. So
$9, and that will easily feed all 4, and is easily healthier—and it’s CHILI. So
it’s not even all that healthy.
Time: You have to travel to go to any kind of restaurant.
You have to wait to get your order at any kind of restaurant. You can save on
time by making enough food to have leftovers, which you can store in your
freezer or fridge. It takes little extra time to double or triple recipes.
Convenience: See above. And if you’re short on time, as I
am, you can buy pre-cut vegetables and fruit for little extra than you would
pay otherwise. It’s still cheaper than eating out.
By now, you’ve probably guessed I’m a privileged white
woman, and right you are! But the privilege is not in my location, not
entirely. The privilege is in that I KNOW EVERYTHING I JUST WROTE. I have
learned it. I have learned it primarily from my mother, the brilliant chef-on-a-budget
that she is, but I also have had the opportunity to take nutrition classes, and
have easy access to information on the internet about healthy eating.
So I previously asked, why does Olga make these choices? She
has other options available to her: she can carry items in a backpack (even if
she couldn’t carry it in the store, she can leave it at the guest counter and
pack items in after she shops) and she can buy healthy items that take up just
as much if not less space. But does Olga know she has these options? Does she
know that she can report the local store for health code violations, so that
her community could get a decent one in there? Even no store is better than one
that ROBS people. (In fact, she probably could sue that store.)
And this is why this article is incomplete, and why people
who are privileged (as I am) may have difficulty seeing what the problem is.
More than being starved for healthy food options, that community is starved for
information and adequate attention from the larger community. The article doesn’t
make its case, and in the end it is these kinds of articles that prevent people
from seeing the whole picture, prevent us from locating the causes of unhealthy
eating and reduced opportunities for leading a healthy life. This is the point
Marilyn Frye makes so brilliantly with her birdcage metaphor. It is not one
wire that keeps Olga and other members of her community oppressed: the problem
is not JUST that the grocery store is 3 miles away. There are a host of other wires:
lack of information, lack of interest by officials, lack of enforcement of
rules on the local store, etc. We need to stop acting as though there is only
one thing causing this kind of systematic injustice against people.
Best of luck to you, Olga. I hope that one day your
community will actually have its needs recognized and fulfilled.
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