The charitable response to hunger represents a significant part of our hunger safety net in the United States. Many churches, synagogues, and mosques administer food distribution through pantries and soup kitchens because it represents a calling of their faith. Prior to the advent of the food bank system in the 1980’s, our country had long worked to address feeding the hungry through religious organizations. Today, most of the national food bank network’s partner agencies of pantries and soup kitchens are still connected to a faith community.
However, giving food to the hungry meets only an immediate need and does not address the root causes of hunger. As has been often said among anti-hunger advocates, “we cannot food bank our way out of hunger.” Truly ending hunger goes much deeper and requires sometimes uncomfortable conversations about addressing inequities. One of those is race.
Although hunger does not discriminate, affecting every race, background, education level, and age, it clearly affects people of color more often. Black households experience hunger at a rate of 21% while white households see rates around 10%.
Hunger is a symptom of poverty, and people of color experience poverty more often, for longer periods of time, and at greater depths than their white counterparts. Closely tracking to food insecurity, poverty rates for black households are more than double those of whites. Even more appalling, according to the Urban Institute, “Black adults have roughly the same chance of experiencing poverty (43 versus 41 percent) regardless of whether or not they were ever poor as children. This stark finding suggests that black families are paying an unfairly high social and economic price in our society.”
A long history of racism in the United States has created very entrenched structural disparities between white and black populations. Disparities in economic mobility, education, and civic engagement all contribute to greater rates of poverty among blacks. Redlining, or discriminatory practices in lending and banking based on the racial or ethnic makeup of a neighborhood, has a long history that carries over to today.
Unless we address these issues head-on, we will make little headway towards affecting poverty and hunger, and the consequences are grave. Households with food insecurity and poverty experience higher rates of chronic disease—diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension—both related to healthy food access and environment. Children who grow up with poverty and food insecurity miss more days of school, have more tardies, have lower academic achievement, and decreased future earnings. Their chances of moving ahead are greatly diminished.
So, what can people of faith do to address racism, and thereby the hunger issue for people of color?
- Educate yourself to better understand racism. Here is an excellent list of resources from University United Methodist Church, Austin.
- Understand that food justice is racial justice. Here are some organizations working to address it.
- Advocate FOR a living wage, especially for those working in the service industry, which is disproportionately made up of people of color. These are also the industries least likely to have paid sick leave. Advocate for that too.
- Advocate against discriminatory banking practices as well as predatory lending.
- Be a part of your school district’s School Health Advisory Council, or SHAC. The SHAC is one of the most effective tools for improving the health of a school district, including healthy food access. Studies show that schools with majority students of color are less able to provide fresh fruit and low-fat milk options than majority white schools. They are also half as likely as majority white schools to adopt and enforce health standards on vendor foods.