Tag: Privilege

Farming While Black: The Anatomy of Privilege

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Note: this article has the title “Farming While Black” because it’s part of a series about perspectives of people of color in the food and agriculture business. This particular story, however, is told from my point of view as an enrolled member of the Choptico Band of Piscataway Indians — the indigenous people of southern and central Maryland.

As it often does, it started with a bumper sticker.

JM Stock Provisions — a butcher outfit with a location in Charlottesville — didn’t mean any harm when they posted this:


For indigenous people in America, the West wasn’t won, in case that’s a thing that actually needs to be said for anyone. The West is a story of dispossession, murder, genocide, and forced assimilation. It’s the Trail of Tears, Bad Axe, Battle Creek, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Round Valley, and Washita. It’s the headstones at Carlisle. It’s forced marches, the extermination of the buffalo, the eradication of a way of life at gunpoint. It’s men dancing Southern Straight in memory of the feathers that were taken from their ancestors. It’s bounties and Red Skins. And, lest we forget, it isn’t over.

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