Before the Streetlights Come On: Black America's Urgent Call for Climate Solutions (An Excerpt)

Abstract

Abstract: This excerpt is the chapter titled "The Cultural Appropriation of Collard Greens: Food Insecurity and the ClimateCrisis" from Before The Streetlights Come On: Black America's Call for Climate Solutions (BroadLeaf Publishing, 2023). The chapterlinks together climate crisis, policy, and food deserts. Produce inflation—like the absurd pricing of three collard green stalks in a health foods store, just miles from boundless fields of homegrown greens—is a phenomenon of global warming's effect on farming and its broad implications on the global food system. Such implications contribute to the growing number of food deserts across the US and their direct correlation to climate crisis and our current governmental food assistance program's shortcomings. Toney reveals Black Americans' response to this injustice, and how the nation at large can learn from the solutions being surfaced by the Black community, like vegan lifestyles, cruelty-free animal care, and home gardening. The very community disproportionately affected by climate crisis can lead the way in changing it.