Two leftist professors are taking on, well, other leftists for what they call “environmental gentrification” for supporting farmer’s markets, those small organic markets that crop up in city centers all summer, where local farmers and growers sell their organic veggies to people who might typically only have access to Whole Foods.
According to San Diego State University geography professors Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Fernando J. Bosco, farmers markets are “white spaces” where “habits of white people are normalized.”
Apparently, when once white, mostly leftist hipsters move into a new neighborhood, they quickly bring familiar trends with them: artisan cheese purveyors, quirky bookshops that also host poetry slams where they discuss the dastardly impact their upper middle class upbringings had on their ability to understand their own gender fluidity, dedicated bike lanes, and, of course, farmers markets.
But the problem is, farmers who appeal to local hipsters put a mark-up on their organic produce in an effort to make a quick buck off vegans who are too weak to ride their bike ten blocks to a local grocery store, and locals, and original neighborhood residents — usually not white — aren’t able to afford the fresh fruits and veggies.
Farmers markets, the professors also contend, only appeal to white people because they are “white spaces where the food consumption habits of white people are normalized.”
The nicer the farmers market, the professors claim, the more quickly the neighborhoods completely gentrify, leaving local residents with little choice but to move to poorer places.
“The most insidious part of this gentrification process is that alternative food initiatives work against the community activists and residents who first mobilized to fight environmental injustices and provide these amenities but have significantly less political and economic clout than developers and real estate professionals,” the professors write.
Of course, this is leftist on leftist violence. It’s not often that young Republicans establish vegan outposts in up-and-coming neighborhoods, so it’s fairly clear these professors blame young, mostly liberal, probably college graduates for forcing minority communities to meld to their young, mostly liberal, undoubtedly white needs. And it’s also a question of privilege: it’s only leftists who think they know what’s best for poor people who would want to force locals to frequent raw milk cheese producers, craft brewers, and non-GMO purveyors of silken tofu and kohlrabi.
Unfortunately for their fellow leftists, the only solution the professors can offer is for white people to stop moving into poor neighborhoods for the cheap rents.
“Ultimately,” they conclude, countering gentrification “requires slow and inclusive steps that balance new initiatives and neighborhood stability to make cities ‘just green enough.’”