2015/5/13-In public appearances and classes this semester, I’ve talked about eating better and improving the food system in ways that would enable more of us to do so. That’s a discussion about food.

Invariably, someone asks me, “How do you help people eat well when they can’t afford food?”

That’s not a food question but a justice question. Without economic justice there is no nutritional literacy, there is no good eating, there is no health.

And there’s increasing concern on the part of many Americans that too many of us lead diminished lives — and in some cases, dramatically shortened lives as well.

Yet amid the revelations of Baltimore and North Charleston — the latter quite clearly the murder of an unarmed, middle-aged man — more and more people are refusing to close their eyes to the institutionalized racism, murder and injustice that causes this.

I saw this firsthand in the downtown Berkeley BART station the other day. Two policemen were arresting a black woman. On the ground, she was yelling and, technically I suppose, resisting arrest. The cops were working hard, business-like, and clearly in control of themselves.

They had to be. There were no fewer than 20 people bearing witness, and at least five shooting video. No one seemed to know why the woman was being arrested. (One guy said, “That’s the crazy lady from the library.” Another responded, “Just ’cause she’s crazy …. ”) No one knew what would happen when she was finally taken away. It occurred to all of us, I’m sure, that she could have her spine broken in the paddy wagon.

In a flood of emotion, I realized that that moment was being repeated more times daily across the United States than we can possibly know.

Somehow I felt hopeful: Hopeful at the thought of the black people whoaren’t being shot in the back because others are bearing witness. Hopeful because the hard work of so many people over so many years is paying off. Hopeful because Chicago is paying reparations to police victims. Hopeful at the sight of the mass demonstrations against injustice we’ve seen in the last year, and the positive results they’ve had. And hopeful because the official responses to recent deaths involving unjustified police activity seems more appropriate than it did a year ago.

Yet even if one is hopeful, there is plenty of justification for anger.

We saw Walter Scott shot in the back. (To add insult to injury, he was then handcuffed, even though he may well have been dead.) And no human with feelings can watch that video without a racing and broken heart.

Sadly, though, fewer people can imagine and understand how systematized deprivation of opportunity virtually guarantees that a majority of African-Americans and other minorities as well as growing numbers of increasingly poor white Americans — will lead lives whose difficulties are barely imaginable to those of us who are well off. This is not mysterious, however; it’s simply a question of economics and of budgets and of inequality.

The argument here is a summary of that made by the economist John Komlos; it’s straightforward, logical, nondoctrinaire, irrefutable, and goes like this: If you’re born in a bad neighborhood you will go to a bad school; if you go to a bad school you will get a bad education; if you get a bad education you will get a bad job, or none at all; thus you will have a low (or no) income; with low income you have no wealth (it’s more likely you will have debt). And so … your children, and theirs, are likely to live in bad neighborhoods. Without education or jobs.

And — since I’m the food guy, it’s worth pointing out — without access to good food or nutrition education. This is murder by a thousand cuts. The rate of hunger among black households: 10.1 percent. Among white households: 4.6 percent. The age-adjusted rate of obesity among black Americans: 47.8 percent. Among white Americans: 32.6 percent. The rate of diabetes among black adults aged 20 or older: 13.2 percent. Among white adults: 7.6 percent. Black Americans’ life expectancy, compared to white Americans: four years less. (The life expectancy of black men with some high school compared to white men with some college: minus 14 years.)

These numbers are not a result of a lack of food access but of an abundance of poverty. Lack of education is not a result of a culture of victimhood but of lack of funding for schools. And rather than continuing to allow these realities to divide us, we should do the American thing, which is to fix things. Which we can do, together.

Not long ago African-Americans were enslaved; until recently they were lynched. Isolated racist murders still occur, but they are no longer sanctioned or tolerated, and we’re seeing the vestiges of that as both national and local attention is paid to violence by the police against black people.

But oppression and inequality are violence in another form. When people are undereducated, impoverished, malnourished, un- or under-employed, or underpaid and working three jobs, their lives are diminished, as are their opportunities. As are the opportunities of their children.

This is unjust and intolerable. The bad news is that we should be ashamed of ourselves: As long as these things are true, this is not the country we say it is or the country we want it to be.

The good news is that it’s fixable, not by “market forces” but by policies that fund equal education, good-paying jobs, and a good food, health and well-being program for all Americans.

Source: The New York Times

Mark Bittman