Gentrification, White Privilege, and the Political Shift from Food Deserts to Food Apartheid: Reflections from a Millennial Food Justice Scholar

It was July of 2006, and my girlfriend, Shay, and I, both white, found ourselves boarding an airplane in Oakland destined for New York City.We were full of excitement, as well as trepidation, about moving to the Big Apple.I had been accepted into the sociology Ph.D. program at the City University of New York, and Shay had gotten a job teaching English at a middle school on the Upper West Side.The prior month, through Craigs list, we had found a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment with a shared backyard in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a workingclass Black, Latinx/e, and Caribbean community.The apartment was close to Maria Hernandez Park, not too far from the Central Ave nue M subway stop, and a long walk to the Morgan Ave nue L subway stop.We thought it would be the perfect place to start our New York adventure.Upon our arrival we set out to buy some groceries.What we encountered was shocking, to say the least.There were many bodegas full of candy, soda, and snack foods, although a few had delis where you could get a fresh sandwich.Fast food restaurants were also common, from fried chicken to bur gers to Chinese.Luckily, we found two grocery stores within a one-mile walk of our apartment too; this was good news to us since we did not own bicycles or cars and were reliant on our feet and public transit to get around.However, they were completely run down with dark lighting and dusty shelves and lacked the produce and food items we were used to.There was no local produce, nut-based milks, fair-trade products, or organic brands.This lack at the two grocery stores was compounded by the absence of farmers markets and consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) programs in the area.Coming from affluent white suburbs in the Bay Area, we were used to being able to shop at numerous upscale grocery stores, not to mention having abundant farmers markets available to us.