More than 75 University of Michigan students, faculty and community members gathered Tuesday evening in the Michigan Union’s Rogel Ballroom for “Food as Freedom,” featuring Tambra Raye Stevenson, a food justice activist and founder of Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics and Agriculture. As a collaboration between Michigan Dining and the community-academic partnership course Food Literacy for All, the MLK symposium event began with a reception featuring dishes prepared by MDining staff with personal cultural connections to the food.
Amanda Ewing, director of diversity, equity and inclusion for MDining, spoke to the crowd highlighting the MDining staff’s desire to see their own identities represented through the food they create.
“We really wanted to see ourselves reflected in an MLK symposium event and mark the MLK day with something that reflected our team,” Ewing said. “Throughout these conversations, I started to envision an event where we connect our team with the symposium by making food a part of the conversation, rather than a separate element.”
Shalanda Baker, vice provost for sustainability and climate action, took the stage next, remarking the importance of rethinking global systems, including the food system, to be more equitable and sustainable.
“We know that so many of our systems, whether that be the food system, the energy system, the transportation system, have actually operated to produce inequality, produce environmental harm and displace and dispossess (people),” Baker said. “So this program, I think, is a part of thinking through new ways to interact with the Earth, interact with each other and most importantly, how to take care of each other.”
During the talk, Stevenson outlined the historical use of agriculture to put Black communities at a disadvantage, noting how colonialism has often been enforced through revoking cultural food and imposing food with negative health effects to gain control.
“On plantations, heavily salted rations were given not to just nourish, but to keep bodies alive for labor,” Stevenson said. “Over time, these heavily salted foods became staples and survival diets passing down generations of over-consumption that linger in our Black communities today. This legacy has resulted in chronic diseases like hypertension and stroke.”
Stevenson described how food can be a harmful weapon used against marginalized people. She emphasized how food deserts, which disproportionately affect communities of Color, can increase health risks and perpetuate existing inequalities.
“These ingredients may be sweet, light and savory, but there’s a legacy of bitterness,” Stevenson said. “They’ve left us with metabolic diseases like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease, and they’ve turned our food into a weapon against us. The denial or manipulation of food isn’t just a physical act, it’s a psychological weapon that reinforces power structures from the starvation of enslaved individuals to racialized food hierarchies.”
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Engineering freshman Megan Wheeling explained how the event opened her eyes to the complexities of agricultural systems.
“My main takeaway was that food systems are a lot more complicated than we make them out to be,” Wheeling said. “This taught me that there’s a lot of intricacies affecting the current state of food and the cultural meanings behind it.”
Stevenson emphasized during the event how food has the power to be reclaimed by and provide justice for marginalized people.
“Let us remember that we are not born at the table of oppression,” Stevenson said. “By understanding how food has been weaponized historically, we can better recognize the ongoing inequities in our food system and work toward food as freedom, equity and justice….History teaches us that food can also be that tool of freedom. So let’s shift to that power we hold and can reclaim.”
Daily Staff Reporter Greta Fear can be reached at gcfear@umich.edu
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