SAN DIEGO, CA — Two California college professors are calling to ban farmer’s markets on the grounds that they are racist.
San Diego State University geography professors Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J. Bosco contend that farmers’ markets are “white spaces” where blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities feel excluded based on their race.
In their book, titled “Just Green Enough” (https://www.routledge.com/Just-Green-Enough-Urban-Development-and-Environmental-Gentrification/Curran-Hamilton/p/book/9781138713826), Marcelli and Bosco contend that farmers’ markets are “exclusionary” because some minority groups cannot “afford the food and/or feel excluded from these new spaces.”
The professors, who teach an SDSU course called “Food Justice,” argue that “farmers’ markets are often white spaces where the food consumption habits of white people are normalized.”
“The most insidious part of this gentrification process is that alternative food initiatives work against the community activists and residents who first mobilized to fight environmental injustices and provide these amenities but have significantly less political and economic clout than developers and real estate professionals,” the professors claim.
The pair further claim that while “curbing gentrification is a vexing task,” the negative externalities of “white habitus” occurring at farmers’ markets can be reversed through “slow and inclusive steps that balance new initiatives and neighborhood stability to make cities ‘just green enough.’”
Calls for statement to San Diego State University were met with, “no comment”.
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