0094 | October 21, 2019
1619:
Food, Sugar, and Race
The hosts talk about the history of food production in the United States and its connections to poverty, race, and slavery. How is the legacy of slavery connected to the contemporary obesity epidemic? Listen and find out.
| C.T. WEBB: 00:19 | [music] Good afternoon, good morning, or good evening. And welcome to the American Age podcast. This is your host, C. Travis Webb, editor of the American Age, and I’m speaking to you from sunny and warm Southern California. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 00:30 | Hi. This is Steven G Fullwood. I’m the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project, and I’m coming to you from Harlem. And it’s cool out, and I love Autumn. So this is one of my favorite days. |
| S. RODNEY: 00:42 | This is Seph Rodney. I am a senior editor at the Hyperallergic arts blog. And I’m coming to you from the South Bronx, and I’m experiencing the same weather as Steven, although for me, the fall is a little more challenging because I want to sleep a lot longer. This was one of my sleepy days. |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:02 | A bear. |
| S. RODNEY: 01:03 | Yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 01:03 | Yeah. I was going to say hibernate maybe [laughter]. |
| C.T. WEBB: 01:07 | This is to remind our listeners that we practice a form of intellectual intimacy, which is giving each other the space and time to figure out things out loud and together. And a brief announcement that our other host, Sarah Bond, will be with us for the next couple of podcasts, not because she doesn’t want to be, but because of an overwhelming number of personal and professional responsibilities. So we will welcome her back very soon. And we are continuing our discussion of the 1619 Project. And we’re going to talk about food today, kind of broadly speaking in terms, probably using the cultivation of sugar as jumping off point, obviously, very tightly tied to the history of slavery in the Atlantic and in the United States. But I’m sure the conversation will go other places as well. So Seph or Steven, do one of you guys want to jump in about sugar? |
| S. RODNEY: 01:59 | Well, I can because I have, in the last few years, had a kind of crisis around sugar, a health crisis, low-key. I’m not in danger of being hospitalized or anything. But one of the things that comes out of the 1619 project is an essay by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, which begins, “The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery.” But then he goes on to talk about the ways in which sugar has become such a part of the American diet that it has led to a kind of general crisis in that. And I’m quoting from the piece here, “If it is killing us all– if it is killing all of us, rather, it is killing black people faster. Over the last 30 years, the rate of Americans who were obese or overweight grew 27% among all adults to 71% from 56%, according to the Centers for Disease Control, with African Americans over-represented in the national figures.” So a few years ago, when I still in the process of working on the PhD – bless Obamacare – I had managed to get insurance when I really couldn’t afford it. And so I was able to see the doctor and get, actually, really good professional care. |
| S. RODNEY: 03:23 | I mean, when I say I couldn’t afford it, for the listeners, I want you all to understand. I was making less than $16,000 a year, I think, before I started working at Hyperallergic on staff. That was a high point for me within the previous 10 years, so poor. But I got a checkup, and my doctor told me that my glucose levels were elevated. And he scheduled an appointment with a nutritionist. I think it was the same day. I saw the nutritionist, and she was very sort of alarmist. She was like, “Hey, you’re prediabetic. You’re in this range. You really need to change your diet. You really need to be serious about this.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. All right. All hands on deck. Okay. I’m with you [laughter].” So she talked about portions, and she talked about protein portions and how much meat am I having, looking at how much meat I’m having in each meal for lunch and dinner, and what portion of the meal is vegetables, what portion are starches. And for the uninitiated, starches essentially devolve, the majority of starches. Potatoes are kind of different, depending on how they are prepared. If you cook potatoes and you eat them warm without chilling them first, then they eventually devolve to basic sugars in your bloodstream. |
| C.T. WEBB: 04:44 | They’re monosaccharides, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 04:45 | Right. But if you chill them first, then they chemically change to something else. And they actually become a kind of– what’s it called? I actually take this as a dietary supplement now. Anyway, there ends the science lesson. Essentially, what I had to do is think very seriously about cutting down on the carbs, on rice, breads, and so on and so forth, and really changing especially my lunch and dinner meals, reorienting myself towards taking more proteins and more vegetables. And I happen to love vegetables, so that’s okay. And I’ve steadily, actually, brought down my glucose levels from a range that was definitely prediabetic to just– I think I’m just below now or just on the threshold, and I’m still working on things. But what it’s done is it’s made– what that crisis has done for me is made it very clear that, one, at this age – I’m 48 now – I have to be mindful about what I eat. It’s not like I was 20 years ago, where I could kind of eat anything and just get away with it. Two, there is such a thing as food deserts. |
| S. RODNEY: 05:54 | And that’s become an issue, not only for people who are sort of environmentally– concerned about environmental issues and public health issues. But it’s become a concern for me because I notice that around me, in the South Bronx, there are lots and lots of options for mediocre or bad food, right, like the two pizza joints within two blocks of me. There are two or three Chinese restaurants, probably four, actually. There’s a Mexican taqueria around the corner, which is actually healthier because they tend to have really fresh ingredients and lettuce and tomatoes and cilantro mixed up in the tacos. But I’ve had to really rejigger the way I think about buying food and how I lay out my meals and what my resources are around me. |
| S. RODNEY: 07:01 | So what I end up doing now is – this has changed in the last year – is I used to go to Costco a lot, but now, I also have added Trader Joe’s to the mix because I can get a lot of fresh produce there, and some meats that are organic, healthier, that sort of thing. So this whole sugar thing and diet and how it relates to my own personal health feels like I inherited– the way I am with it now is I realize that I, like probably both of you, have inherited a kind of normalized, naturalized American diet that, as we become older becomes– we’re more aware that it has endemic issues, right? It’s not the healthiest for us, especially processed foods, especially foods that– sodas that have a ton of sugar in them. Almost daily, I walk by a Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin-Robbins and see people carrying these gallon jugs of drinks that are basically pure milk, sugar, and ice. And I’m just kind of horrified by that because I’ve had to think so seriously about this. So that’s kind of where I enter the conversation. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 08:32 | Have– |
| C.T. WEBB: 08:32 | Yeah. Go ahead. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 08:32 | Have you seen the three-liter sodas? The first time I walked into a store and I saw a three-liter soda, my heart sank because [laughter] I was like, “No one needs to have that much of that kind of drink.” So Travis, you were going to say something? I’m sorry. |
| C.T. WEBB: 08:49 | Well, I was going to say that the sugar thing– and I mean, this is underlying Seph’s description of his diet and his sort of process of kind of reprogramming it is exactly what he said at the end, I think, which is that we have been enculturated to a particular kind of diet that is fueled by not just sugar but salt. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 09:11 | Oh, absolutely. |
| C.T. WEBB: 09:11 | And sugar and salt are the two things that really drive fast foods and fast food derivatives, right, things that you can just go to the store and just grab and throw into the microwave. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 09:21 | Access, quick, convenience, all these things that we’re programmed to crave. |
| C.T. WEBB: 09:28 | Yeah. There’s sort of two threads in your description of that. One is the time and education to really, in your area, to live counter to the prevailing practice and culture, right? Now, if you’re in a more upscale area, those areas have started to shift to a kind of food abundance, where you can get a variety of healthy foods and things like that. |
| S. RODNEY: 09:56 | Sure. Precisely. Precisely. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 09:56 | My part of Harlem, absolutely. You just described us. |
| S. RODNEY: 10:00 | Absolutely. Whole foods. |
| C.T. WEBB: 10:01 | Yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 10:00 | Right. Right. |
| C.T. WEBB: 10:02 | Yeah, yeah. So it’s much more accessible, even if not affordable, but certainly more accessible. And so there’s a kind of– you have the tools to sort of overcome that. And then the other side of it is that what hath capitalism brought, right? So broadly speaking, in terms of slavery– in the podcast, we’ve talked about how capitalism sort of perfected this ancient institution of slavery, right, and it’s been with us for thousands of years. But really, capitalism and American-style capitalism really perfected this human institution. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 10:35 | And regulate it. Absolutely. |
| C.T. WEBB: 10:37 | Yeah, yeah. And when I say perfected, I mean, of course, it’s the most awful iteration, right? I mean, not in some admirable way. But the other thing that it did is that– what it drives and shapes and runs off of is this natural biological appetite that we have for sugar and salt. We like the taste of it. We evolved to crave these high-calorie, dense-calorie to fruits and things like that, because they help you for the long mile when you’re chasing that herd of gazelle or whatever it might be. So I mean, in that way, it is really at the crux of the tension around sort of what is good and bad about the capitalist system because our current obesity epidemic can actually be traced back to the 1950s policy in which the US government greatly subsidized corn for the production of corn syrup. And they did it, though, with actual good intention because starvation was a real problem in the United States in the early 20th century and the 19th century. And so they were looking for cheaper food sources so that you could produce more caloric foods. And now, look what has happened as a result of that. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 11:55 | I mean, we still have starvation. We still have food deficits. We still have these things. I’m glad that you brought that up, though, because when I think of sugar, I thought immediately about Tar Baby by Toni Morrison. And the book essentially is, depending on who you ask, a relationship between a man and woman who were– a black man and a black woman who were trying to figure out how to be in this new world. They’re not connected to family or community in a particular kind of way. The woman is, but she sort of rejects it. And so they are in the Caribbean, unnamed Caribbean island, with a white man who’s retired. He has built up his fortune by producing candy. He married a woman, who was a beauty queen, and they lived there in comfort now. So Son shows up– and the other parts of the story I can just skip over, but. So they’re there for Christmas, and two of– Valerian – this is the retired gentleman’s name – has just fired two workers of his for stealing apples that were supposed to be a part of the celebration. And so Son is listening to him. And so the two people that work for Valerian, Ondine and Sydney, they’re like, “Well, we could’ve taken care of this. This is no big deal.” And he was like, “Well, I fired them, and that’s that.” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 13:21 | And so I want to read something to you, what went through Son’s head when he heard, “Well, they did this, and I let them go, and that’s that.” This is how Toni Morrison describes this, which I think is really interesting about how we’re thinking about sugar and waste and a few other things, “Son’s mouth went dry as he watched Valerian chewing a piece of ham. His head of coin profile content, approving even of the flavor in his mouth, although he had been able to dismiss with a flutter of the fingers the people whose sugar and cocoa had allowed him to grow old in wrinkled comfort. Although he had taken the sugar and cocoa and paid for it as though it had no value, as though the cutting of cane and picking of beans was child’s play and had no value. But he turned it into candy, the invention of which was really child’s play, and sold it to other children and made a fortune in order to move near, but not in the midst of the jungle where the sugarcane came from, and build a palace with more of their labor, and then hired them to do more of the work he was not capable of, and pay them again, according to some scale of value that would outrage Satan himself. And when those people wanted a little of what he wanted, some apples for their Christmas, and took some, he dismissed them with a flutter of the fingers because they were thieves. And nobody knew thieves and thievery better than he did. And he probably thought he was a law-abiding man; they all did. And they all did because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated. But they could defecate over a whole people and come to live and defecate some more by tearing up the land. And that is why they love property so, because they had killed it, soiled it, defecated on it. And they love, more than anything, the places where they shit, would fight and kill to own the cesspools they made. And although they called it architecture, it was, in fact, elaborately built toilets, decorated toilets, toilets surrounded with and by businesses and enterprise in order to have something to do, and between the defecation, since waste was the order of the day and was the order and principle of the universe. And especially the Americans, who were the worst because they were new at the business of defecation, spent their entire lives bathing, bathing, bathing, washing away the stench of the cesspools as though pure soap had anything to do with purity.” |
| C.T. WEBB: 15:36 | Damn. |
| S. RODNEY: 15:37 | Damn. Wow. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 15:38 | And there’s more, but I want to stop there [laughter] because that’s what I was thinking of when I reading Khalil Muhammad’s essay, which was really, really painful. But also, it was like when you think about what it means to– like you said, it’s at the crux. You mentioned that earlier, Travis. It’s really at the crux of really terrible capitalism. And so it brought me to A Subtlety by Kara Walker as well. |
| S. RODNEY: 16:09 | Right. I just looked that up on my phone, yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 16:11 | And I saw it twice. And I remember her– |
| S. RODNEY: 16:13 | Yeah, me too. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 16:14 | –disguising herself, probably limitedly, but taking pictures of people who were in the back of the sugar sphinx. |
| S. RODNEY: 16:20 | The mammies, yes. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 16:21 | Right. But what trips me out is I think these public installations are really important for people to get thinking about the roles of labor because we really have– we are so good at forgetting. We love nostalgia, but we love nostalgia whitewashed. We love it, even black people do. But I think, at one point, one can’t decide to– it’s too painful to remember. And so doing the genealogical work that I’m trying to do right now, it’s really hard to pull people and pull stories together. But we constantly need to be reminded of what happened here and in a variety of ways, through novels, through public installations, through this thing with 1619. These are really powerful moments for us to sit there and reflect. And it continue to need to happen because we are so used to our attentions being diverted. And so– |
| C.T. WEBB: 17:20 | Yeah. I think of nostalgia as sort of the history and service to ideology, though. I mean, I don’t really feel– history’s lessons are much rougher than nostalgia. It typically makes room for– |
| S. RODNEY: 17:37 | Yeah. I think that’s– |
| C.T. WEBB: 17:39 | Not even typically, I mean, does make room for it. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 17:41 | That’s a very good point. |
| S. RODNEY: 17:42 | Sorry, Travis. I think that exactly– |
| C.T. WEBB: 17:43 | No, no, no, no, no. Please, jump in. Jump in. |
| S. RODNEY: 17:45 | That’s exactly Steven’s point. |
| C.T. WEBB: 17:47 | Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, no. I wasn’t disagreeing. I was sort of– I was trying to riff on it. I mean, I actually agree completely that when I think of nostalgia in those terms and I think of how capital and– maybe I don’t even want to say capital. Maybe I want to say it is something in particular about America in the way that America tends to perform history and tends to perform historical recollection. It tends to just be a nostalgic performance in service to the kind of ideology that obscures the history that you just read from– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:28 | I mean, and necessarily so. |
| C.T. WEBB: 18:28 | –that Morrison– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 18:29 | Could you get up in the morning? I mean, there are just the kind of things that we have to think about, what the American imagination can actually take. |
| C.T. WEBB: 18:38 | Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 18:39 | Because you just read is a devastating critique. And one of the things that came home to me, listening to you read that, was that I’ve known men like that. And in some ways, my father is a bit like that, I mean, not wholly. But he’s the kind of person who– and he is a property owner. And he’s definitely the kind of person who would just sort of shit on people and imagine that– what justified him doing that is that he had earned his way to the top and somehow, they had fucked up and hadn’t. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:19 | Right. They were losers in the game. |
| S. RODNEY: 19:19 | And being real specific about this– what? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:22 | They were losers in the game. He won. |
| S. RODNEY: 19:23 | Right, right, right, right. So that’s the way the world works, and it’s supposed to work that way. And I remember being really dismayed when I lived in one of his buildings when I was doing my undergrad. And he would constantly hire – I’m not sure how to describe these men – men that were down and out, men that didn’t have much education. I mean, the way he had described one, at least to me, at some point was like, “Oh yeah. I hired this crackhead.” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 19:56 | [crosstalk]. |
| S. RODNEY: 19:56 | And to be fair, I abused that term too. I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that anymore because that’s really dehumanizing. But basically, he would hire these men. And he would hire these men that were unskilled because he could just tell them what to do. And then when they didn’t do it to his satisfaction, he could just easily, again, dismiss them with the sort of flick of the fingers, wave of the hand. Yeah, yeah, they’re not important. I mean, I don’t want to get too far from nutrition. But there’s a way in which– I have to imagine that the people who are on the boards of directors, rather, the board of directors of companies like Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin-Robbins must be aware of the epidemic of obesity that’s happening in the US and must be aware of the contribution they’re making to that epidemic, and must be aware that they don’t really give a shit, right? |
| C.T. WEBB: 20:59 | So I don’t think that they’re– I would say that my guess would be– I mean, so if we can sort of create these fictitious board members or whatever and imagine and project mental states onto them, which I’m happy to do– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:13 | They exist somewhere. Let’s go. |
| S. RODNEY: 21:14 | We’re in the game. Yeah, let’s do it. |
| C.T. WEBB: 21:15 | Yeah, yeah. So I would say that it would be something like a choice, right, the way that you justify producing something like ice cream which, on the spectrum of things, you could produce on a mass scale in a capitalist society sort of hedges more towards the good, as far as kids like ice cream. I like ice cream. |
| S. RODNEY: 21:39 | Yeah. It’s pleasurable, yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 21:40 | We’ll all scream for ice cream. Got it. |
| C.T. WEBB: 21:42 | Yeah. Right. Right. So I think at some point– and I would want to bring a little bit closer the judgments to myself. I’d want to bring those judgments a little bit closer, that I have also enacted those judgments in my own mind, and that on some level, moving through the world– I mean, Steven kind of touched on this, moving through the world, you almost have no choice but to use some of those shorthands and have some of those beliefs in place to move through a world of manifest inequality. You have to, at some point. And I know that you might challenge me on this, and we could probably have a full podcast on it. But I think that we all, at some point, have to believe in the mythology of meritocracy and in the mythology of free will. And I mean mythology with a capital M in the sense that I don’t find these things to necessarily be– |
| S. RODNEY: 22:42 | True. |
| C.T. WEBB: 22:43 | –of negative consequence. I think mythologies can be very positive. And I think dismissing or allowing people’s choice to eat ice cream at their leisure, and not be overly concerned about their individual choice to over-consume it, is probably a world I would prefer to live in. I don’t know that I would want to live in a world where institutions were regulating the amount of fat or unhealthy foods I could take in. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 23:13 | So great way to end that because I think it’s– so it sort of reminds me of Tyler Perry movies. Tyler Perry movies, they’re terrible. They are absolutely terrible [laughter]. |
| S. RODNEY: 23:26 | Thank you. Thank you. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 23:26 | The only redeeming value is a lot of humor, that they’re self-referential, and they also referential to a black culture that I’m not sure that certain kind of whites would know something about, right? Hot grits in the face– |
| S. RODNEY: 23:38 | Agreed. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 23:38 | –Al Green. So I– |
| S. RODNEY: 23:40 | Agreed. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 23:40 | –bring him up because I think that sometimes, that’s the only choice. And so when I think about what you just said, Travis, about the regulation– I’m not even thinking about regulation. I’m just thinking about choice. So if you’re in a food desert, what are you eating? And what are doing to assuage your feelings of anxiety, or how are you coping? So I think a lot about coping mechanisms, and I think a lot about that because it’s in my family. It’s with my friends. It’s me struggling just to stay– I’m 53. And like you, Seph, I’ve had to figure out how to eat better when I don’t feel like it, when I don’t want to, because rice tasted delicious, and I want white rice, please. Thank you very much, sir [laughter]. I’ve got a big old thing of brown rice in there, and on good days I’m– but then there’s tension and there’s anxiety and all these things. So I just want different kinds of choices available to people. And I think in this ruthlessness, I honestly feel like the kind of blinders you have to put on, the headphones or whatever it is you need to do to even just get a fucking train in New York City and go to work, keeps you insane. But I hate it that people– or even to myself, I’ll put it on myself. I never want to stop being surprised or want to stop being disgusted or stop being something– so that it stops me from seeing people, right? And I think in the neighborhood where I’m at right now, they call it Central Harlem, depending on what real estate agent wants to call it now [laughter] because of gentrification, is that there is a proliferation of people who are home stressed or homeless. And I see more people now than ever. And so I don’t want to not look at them. I might not have anything to give people, but I make myself look because I’m going, “I can’t go through this life thinking that somebody didn’t do it right [laughter], and that’s why they’re in that position.” I mean, fuck it. 1619 is just a drop in the barrel sort of describing these institutional racism but also mass poorness, just poorness, and with blacks specifically with 1619 but just in general. |
| S. RODNEY: 25:59 | More poverty, yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 26:00 | Yeah. And so we’ve been watching this happen for a long time. And so our job is to be more sensitive and be more proactive and be more thoughtful about it and help whatever way we can, and not to go crazy doing it. |
| C.T. WEBB: 26:16 | Yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 26:16 | And what I want to say is– and this is sort of epical to what you just said, Steven. But I really want to address what Travis had sort of laid out as the sort of binary options for the world in which he would like to live in. And I want to say I think that’s kind of a false choice. I mean, I don’t think that it’s about either regulation from an institution of from a government or by the state or a kind of free-for-all, where it’s about the pleasure principle or profit motive driving us. I think there’s another option, a third way, which is just acculturation towards the things that are kind of healthy. So a sort of easy way to say this, or a easy analogy is when I go to– well, yeah, when I’ve been in France. I’ve been in certain parts of France where the diet is just healthier. There just isn’t an emphasis on processed foods, on overly sweet things. They’re just fizzy drinks. They’re just not treated as treats, they’re just not. It’s possible to find them on a menu here and there. But mostly, it’s just the culture has acculturated itself towards really liking things like artichokes or – what do you call it? – Brussels sprouts that are fried in butter. |
| S. RODNEY: 27:51 | I mean, I think one of the true difficulties about being a citizen of the United States is that we are enveloped by this ideology of personal choice, the notion that where we start as human beings is in our ability to– in our agency, right, there’s no ability to choose this drink or that drink, or that fast food option or the other one, as opposed to thinking about just acculturating ourselves to a whole other set of options. For example, I want to live in a neighborhood where there’s a community garden. I want to live in a neighborhood where I can go to that community garden or farmers market on Saturday and buy fresh produce and that be a thing that is normalized and naturalized. And I get it. I know that this is very class-based and all of that. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 28:54 | Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up [laughter]. Community. |
| S. RODNEY: 29:00 | So I get that. Right, but I think one of the ways– and I think people are already starting to do this. But one of the ways that we can sort of get around this sort of binary option is to think about forming different kinds of communities. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 29:13 | Oh, nice, nice, yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB: 29:14 | So I am 1,000% in agreement with what you said. But I feel like the critique that you started to offer, it implies the other. So when you purport to lay responsibility or suggest– you didn’t lay it out completely, but I feel like this was implied. When you suggest that the responsibility for something like Baskin-Robbins or – you didn’t name these, but – McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken with its fried chicken buns and stuff in the middle [laughter]. But when you lay the blame for that or suggest that the blame for that lies within the corporate boardroom and the profit motive for those people, I feel like you are strongly implying and assuming an institutional critique, and one in which that shapes individuals’ behaviors. And if that’s where you’re starting, then I feel like the next step in that argument is we need to curb these institutions because they’re shaping individual behavior too much. And so I don’t– the argument that you just laid out, though, I’m entirely in favor or. And I do believe that it’s enculturation. And in this, I would draw on stuff that Steven has said in various podcasts, that maybe we’re just in the midst of growing pains. And maybe we fucked up in the ’50s and went like, “Oh, let’s subsidize all this sugar. No one will ever start–” and went, “Holy shit– |
| S. FULLWOOD: 30:45 | Credit card, everyone. Yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB: 30:45 | everyone is fat and dying. And what do we do now?” And we’re now kind of adjusting back in the other direction. And maybe, in my most hopeful iteration, not that I would even bet on this, but in 150 years, maybe you show up in the Bronx, and it’s what you describe, Seph. Maybe there are community gardens, and maybe people are eating their version of artichokes prepared in whatever particular way because we’ve figured out, “Hey, we don’t want all these people dying with all of these obesity-related diseases.” |
| S. RODNEY: 31:19 | And just to put a final point on that, you do understand that in 150 years, I’ll be dead, right? You know that [laughter]. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 31:27 | [crosstalk]. |
| S. RODNEY: 31:27 | I know I’m going to be dead. I just had to know if you know I’m going to be dead. |
| C.T. WEBB: 31:31 | Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| S. RODNEY: 31:32 | Okay. I’m going to be dead. |
| C.T. WEBB: 31:32 | You’ll be dead. I’ll be dead. We’ll be gone. |
| S. RODNEY: 31:34 | Yeah, yeah. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 31:34 | Yeah. We might want, theoretically, an educated, healthy person. But we need to really think about how a more thoughtful, less conspicuous consumerisms– I know what I want to say. |
| S. RODNEY: 31:52 | Consumerist? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 31:53 | But the think is, I think that we’re not educated consumers [crosstalk], we’re not. |
| S. RODNEY: 32:00 | Yeah. That’s for sure. That’s true. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 32:01 | And we also live in a culture where Christianity in terms of sort of being apocalyptic, “I’ll get my reward in heaven. Don’t have to worry about nothing here,” that kind of thing. And it’s not all Christianity, of course, so different sects and whatnot. But I think a lot about what would make someone care about somebody else that’s not close to them, right, and how to imagine that community. Like you, I would like to live in a– I came from Ohio, and we lived in a community, but. And when I moved here, though, because I’m a loner and because I like space, I mediate those spaces where I say hello to everybody that looks at me, “How are you doing?” or whatever because that’s how I grew up, but also because I crave that connection, right? And I wonder how to build community in a way that allows for one to be healthy in a way that doesn’t constantly compromise the individuality. And not individuality in the sense where you could just, “I choose to buy something,” no. I’m talking about something a lot more intense because communities, at times, feed upon each other, and they need pariahs. They need to know how to act. So, “Seph’s over there fucking all these women or whatever. We’re not like him. We’re these people. We’re good, God-fearing people.” Do you know what I mean? So I think about communities. I want to imagine different kinds of communities that allow for the spaces for people to grow, for this thing to contract and grow. |
| C.T. WEBB: 33:34 | Yeah. So we’re up on time. But Seph, do you want to have the last words? Do you want to have anything you want to– so if you want to lend a hand to hoisting the conversation back [laughter] into what was our sensible theme? |
| S. FULLWOOD: 33:48 | Sure [laughter]. |
| S. RODNEY: 33:50 | Well, I think that what we did was that we came around to thinking really seriously about how one’s own sort of nutritional values or health connects to these larger questions of one corporate stewardship, the profit motive, and governmental sort of oversight, and community building. And I think that what we’re saying is that, ultimately, we’re in one of those interstitial places where we’re moving from an old paradigm, slowly but surely, moving from an old paradigm that was, at least in terms of basic nutritional values, bad for us, ultimately, right, high caloric, lots of sugar, lots of salt. And we’re trying. In that moment of growing pains, we’re trying to figure out how to be different. And we understand that these sort of interlocking pieces that will have to come together in some ways to make that difference manifest, right, so governments, institutions, corporations, local communities. I think, also, we haven’t talked about this. There’s are some, I guess, what I would call art projects, art movements, that look to also do that, to form, under guard, that movement towards creating a community. But what’s encouraging is at least, we are having these conversations in the very places where we live. So in Central Harlem, in the South Bronx, I think in Southern California too, the people are starting to say, “Oh, right. We can’t live like this anymore.” |
| S. FULLWOOD: 35:41 | It’s unsustainable. |
| S. RODNEY: 35:41 | Exactly. That’s a good place to start. |
| C.T. WEBB: 35:45 | Yeah, yeah, and that it directly leads back to the history of the cultivation of sugar and slavery. I mean, these choices. We are constrained and led and forced into these kind of choices and these kind of struggles because of that, I mean, direct line. |
| S. FULLWOOD: 36:02 | No, direct line, direct line. |
| S. RODNEY: 36:04 | That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. |
| C.T. WEBB: 36:06 | So okay. Thanks, my friends, very much for the conversation. And I’ll speak to you next week. |
| S. RODNEY: 36:11 | All right. Take care. [music] |
References
First referenced at 11:55
Toni Morrison
“Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.” Amazon