If you grew up in a Black neighborhood, you know what the corner store looks like. Chips, soda, ramen, canned goods with ingredients you can barely pronounce. That was the grocery store. That was the option.
And somehow we turned that into a conversation about personal responsibility.
The narrative that Black people just make poor food choices is missing the most important part of the story. The choices that were made for us long before we ever walked into that store.
Between 1968 and 1984, 11 out of 13 chain supermarkets left Hartford, Connecticut. That same exit happened in Black communities across this country. The grocery chains pulled out, and what moved in was not a farmers' market. It was fast food, dollar stores, and convenience shops stocked with processed everything.
Supermarket redlining is the deliberate practice of major grocery chains refusing to maintain stores in predominantly Black communities. It limits choices while driving up prices for whatever remains. Our communities are paying a premium to eat worse. That is not a coincidence. That is the design.
It did not start with grocery stores. Redlining in the 1930s marked Black neighborhoods as hazardous for investment, locking entire communities into economic decline. When investment leaves, everything leaves. What stays is whatever can extract money from people with limited options. The health outcomes followed. In 2023, 23.3% of Black households faced food insecurity. More than double the rate of white non-Hispanic households. Higher rates of hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes followed right behind. Our ancestors were not eating like this.
Before enslavement, before colonization disrupted African food systems, there was a relationship with food that was rooted and intentional. What replaced it was a system built on extraction. When someone in your family gets that diagnosis, know it did not happen in isolation. It happened within a system that made certain foods unavoidable and others inaccessible.
The personal choices matter. But they exist within structures built without us in mind. If you grew up in a Black neighborhood, you know what the corner store looks like. Chips, soda, ramen, canned goods with ingredients you can barely pronounce. That was the grocery store. That was the option. And somehow we turned that into a conversation about personal responsibility.
The narrative that Black people just make poor food choices is missing the most important part of the story. The choices that were made for us long before we ever walked into that store. Between 1968 and 1984, 11 out of 13 chain supermarkets left Hartford, Connecticut. That same exit happened in Black communities across this country. The grocery chains pulled out, and what moved in was not a farmers' market. It was fast food, dollar stores, and convenience shops stocked with processed everything. Supermarket redlining is the deliberate practice of major grocery chains refusing to maintain stores in predominantly Black communities. It limits choices while driving up prices for whatever remains.
Our communities are paying a premium to eat worse. That is not a coincidence. That is the design. It did not start with grocery stores. Redlining in the 1930s marked Black neighborhoods as hazardous for investment, locking entire communities into economic decline. When investment leaves, everything leaves. What stays is whatever can extract money from people with limited options. The health outcomes followed. In 2023, 23.3% of Black households faced food insecurity. More than double the rate of white non-Hispanic households. Higher rates of hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes followed right behind.
Our ancestors were not eating like this. Before enslavement, before colonization disrupted African food systems, there was a relationship with food that was rooted and intentional. What replaced it was a system built on extraction. When someone in your family gets that diagnosis, know it did not happen in isolation. It happened inside a system that made certain foods unavoidable and certain foods inaccessible. The personal choices matter. But they exist inside structures that were built without us in mind.
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