“Bullies Poisoning The ‘Hood Get Splattered!”

The variety of Wal-Mart is hard to beat.

Wal-Mart - a supermarket where the shopping experience of the customer is governed by specific and carefully crafted music, colors, smells, lighting, and store setup. Wal-Mart - a supermarket chain that continues to thrive despite extreme mistreatment of workers, a history of sexism, and a predilection for stamping out all competition, big or small. Wal-Mart is a place of accommodation, an all-in-one store where customers can buy various items ranging, for example, from carrots to clothes, from apples to air freshener.

Imagine, though, that it is time to go grocery shopping. Imagine that you have three children who are hungry, who need to be fed. You live in inner city Detroit, where there is no Wal-Mart, or any other supermarket for that matter, within the proximity of a walk or a bus ride. You do not own a vehicle. Where do you go in order to buy food for your family?

The lack of variety in a convenience store, on the other hand, is glaring.

You live in a food desert, an area in which it is quite difficult to access fresh food and produce without a car. And, according to Raj Patel in Stuffed and Starved, in urban areas like Detroit, the people who are most often denied access to supermarkets are people of color. This is referred to as supermarket redlining - the segregation of neighborhoods of people of color which denies them access to supermarkets and, in effect, healthy food options.


We have not yet answered our question, though. If you are a mother in a redlined, food desert in Detroit, where do you go to obtain food for your family? The convenience store, of course! Okay, so you walk to the convenience store and what do you find? Highly processed and fat-saturated foods. For a more profound look into the ways that convenience stores are negatively impacting inner cities, check out this video:

Pretty deep stuff, huh? Many citizens in your city of Detroit have taken notice of their precarious food situation. Don’t take my word for it, though. Listen, yourself, to the Detroit Voices.

In conjunction with the Detroit Voices project, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network is also working to implement programs which will help break the bonds between citizens and convenience stores. The Network is establishing “D-Town Farms”, a “summer urban ag internship program”, an “annual harvest festival”, and a lecture series on healthy eating. To see more of what the Network is doing to achieve positive change in Detroit, visit their website: http://detroitblackfoodsecurity.org/. It’s pretty visionary.

Don't we all deserve options like this?

While Wal-Mart and big-box supermarkets are not the answer to solving the food crisis which seems to be occurring in inner cities across the United States, take a moment (as you more than likely are not a mother living in Detroit) and be thankful that you, surely, have access to fresh produce. Be thankful that you are able to drive to the supermarket and buy groceries to feed your family. Although a move away from chains such as Wal-Mart would serve us well, appreciate that you have the capability to eat more than only chips, donuts, and hot dogs which
are sold at the Circle K or the Speedway down the street.

At the same time, though, don’t be afraid to follow in the footsteps of those in Detroit who refuse to settle for the status quo. Visit http://detroitfoodmap.com/ for inspiration. Be the change.

~Carly