Overview:
Food connects Black Americans to family, faith and generations past. But affordability, access and health complicate that relationship, revealing how forces far beyond individual choice shape what we eat.
There are few simpler questions than “What’s for dinner?”
In Black America, the answer has never been simple.
Starting today, and for three days, every story you see on our site’s front page will examine some part of that relationship. And we started by doing something journalists should probably do more often: We asked questions, and listened to the answers.
It might be greens cooked the way your grandmother taught your mother, who taught you. Or perhaps macaroni and cheese that absolutely did not come from a box. It could be a green salad and broiled chicken, or carryout from a corner joint, or fried chicken from a recipe that survived the Great Migration.
Or it might be nothing at all. Because there isn’t anything in the fridge.
If you’re Black, food is survival, memory, culture, celebration, family, and faith. But it’s also a paradox, a factor in diseases that disproportionately shorten Black lives. Communities that need it most are often the places where it’s hardest to find. Families stretch food budgets as grocery prices climb.
And sometimes, even when fresh, affordable food is available, there’s no guarantee it’s safe to eat.
Those contradictions are at the heart of What’s On Your Plate, Word In Black’s first special issue devoted entirely to food and the Black community.
Our food issue is grounded in a survey by Dr. Christa Mahlobo, a social scientist and director of Word In Black’s research department. She conducted the first-ever survey examining how Black Americans think about food—what we eat, what we worry about, what shapes our choices, and what food means in our lives.
The answers helped us see something that should have been obvious all along: You cannot talk seriously about food in Black America without talking about almost everything else. Money. Health. Geography and access, even climate change. And, of course, race.
What lands on our plates is shaped long before we walk into a grocery store or sit down at the dinner table. This issue, and a special event on Sept. 19, will explore Black farming, the role of churches in feeding communities and the ways Black people are reclaiming control over where their food comes from.
But we’re also interested in something less easily measured.
What does food mean to us?
That is why What’s On Your Plate isn’t simply a collection of stories about what Black people eat. It examines the systems that determine who has enough, who pays more, who gets sick, who grows our food, who profits from it — and who gets a seat at the table when decisions about our food are made.
Starting today, Word In Black is telling those stories.
So pull up a chair. There’s a place for you at the table.
And tell us: What’s on your plate?
Joseph Williams
Head of Content, Word In Black
