Food justice racial projects: fighting racial neoliberalism from the Bay to the Big Apple

Abstract

Food justice scholarship utilizing racial formation theory has largely analyzed race and racism within the conventional food system and the food movement, leaving under-examined the political projects of food justice organizations to realize racial equity. This article recovers the dialectical spirit of racial formation theory, that of oppression and resistance, and interjects a distinct focus on activism in the context of racial neoliberalism to investigate two food justice organizations, ‘Planting Justice’ and ‘East New York Farms!’ These organizations reveal through their work some of the heterogeneity of food and urban agriculture related race-making practices, namely antiracist racial projects that challenge racial and economic inequities. We show how these projects intervene in the system of mass incarceration, reclaim land for cultural reproduction, and build racial and class solidarity. We argue that the food justice movement, which is comprised of many racial projects, contributes to setting in motion emancipatory racial formation processes. In closing, the article reflects on the possible range of food justice racial projects, how these antiracist projects might work to transform race relations, and some of the limitations that food justice activists might encounter resisting racial neoliberalism.