Food Apartheid: Recontextualizing Food Inequity in Black America

By Shameema Imam

“Disembodiment is a kind of terrorism, and the threat of it alters the orbit of our lives, and like terrorism, this distortion is intentional. Disembodiment.”

- Ta-Nehesi Coates, Between the World and Me

Why Food “Apartheid”?

The death of the grocery store in urban America was conceived from a torrent of mass relocation from inner-city neighborhoods to the suburbs as a means to avoid the socio-political changes of the civil rights movement. “White Flight,” as the phenomenon is appropriately named, effectively withdrew a large portion of economic resources, businesses, and investments that supported areas of black development–specifically in the food sector. Today, grocery stores and their adjacent chains continue to ostracize predominantly low-income black neighborhoods, subsequently creating food deserts, or residential communities where access to healthy and affordable food is severely limited.