Racial Silencing in Sustainable Agriculture

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Food Systems Education Part I: Garden and Sustainable Agriculture Education

Abstract

Inverting a question posed in the panel abstract, this paper asks, “What tensions arise when critical curricula, pedagogies and/or methodologies are not enacted?”. I draw on bell hooks’ work to explore the incomplete ways in which sustainable agriculture (SA) curricula addresses issues of justice and has worked like many other environmental fields to exclude people of color (Agyeman, 2002). This piece is rooted in feminist and critical race perspectives using new material methodologies involving a mix of autoethnography, narrative, and document analysis to interrogate the consequences of a lack of critical curricula in SA.
SA defines itself differently than conventional agriculture due to its simultaneous concern with environment, economics and social equity/justice (Goldberger, 2011). Yet, in a study on Washington organic farmers, Goldberger found that most practitioners emphasize the importance on the former two rather than the later. This may not be surprising given the predominately White participants in the field (who may experience less severe injustices than others), the science-dominated curriculum prevalent in the field (Parr et al., 2007), and the oft situatedness of the field within an “inherently racial”, neoliberal market (Agyeman & McEntee, 2014).
Additionally, hooks (2009) writes about racial silencing in the field as an exclusionary tactic towards people of color:
“Few schoolchildren today know about Carver, all that he did … to create a revolution for the farmer in the deep South. Erasing this knowledge enhances white supremacy. Environmentalists, mostly white people, will say they can’t get black folk to be concerned about ecology or sustainability. But this is another racial silence. How many black people were socialized to devalue working land – to look down on farming (p. 198)”.
I contend this racial silencing has framed SA as a space for Whites to return to the romantic roots of a colonial past or to participate in philanthropic or just work. On the other hand, the silencing has limited the ways in which people of color can enter and play roles in the field to those typified as indigent or self-help.
To this end, I provide a glance at SA curriculum to illustrate the emphasis on social impacts of food systems without attention to the exclusion of people of color in the field, their voices, or their experiences, which perpetuates the racial tensions within the SA arena. To counter this racial silencing, I explore ways in which we can enhance our understanding of the field with new narratives. I present three vignettes from my own involvement in the field to provide a glimpse of the ways in which race, class and capitalist systems shape my understanding and participation in the environmental and agriculture fields as a woman of color. Ultimately, I hope these stories and data can illustrate ways in which the SA curricula can be more inclusive and just, avoiding many of the pitfalls of other environmental arenas often co-opted by racial and neoliberal agendas.

Author

• Olivia Aguilar, Denison University