Democracy and Inequality: Challenges and Possible Solutions

Rationale and History

While Covid-19 had many restrictions for the students when they returned to in-person learning at Hearne Elementary school, it did come with a great benefit to them and me by having lunch together daily. Part of my professional goals was to build and maintain relationships with students while teaching in a pandemic. It became clear to me that lunch would serve that purpose. My students and I began a dialogue with one another where we discussed the foods, they ate in comparison to the foods I would bring from home for my lunch. Another inherent concern was their lack of knowledge about foods that I sometimes took for granted as always being readily available to me, such as fresh mint leaves, mangoes, blueberries, raspberries, Brussel sprouts, snap peas, ginger roots, or cotton candy grapes.

The knowledge they lacked about the different varieties of apples sparked the expository writing lesson of how to make homemade crockpot applesauce in the classroom to expose them to Gala, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Honeycrisp, and Pink Lady apples. Suffice it to say, that writing lesson was a huge hit, especially when the students could eat the applesauce after I was done cooking it.

It was during these daily lunch sessions that I began to observe what the students who brought their lunch to school with them had continually and what the students who refused to eat who had lunch provided to them from the district. Recalling a seminar session led by Ian Shapiro, one question puzzled me concerning those daily lunches held with my students, why so much inequality under majority rule? The students do not get to vote on their lunch choices, but someone does. Who is that someone, and why is there not systemic redistribution from more affluent school districts to poorer ones as Hearne, where 100% of the students receive FREE lunch? Does it have to do with power and access, or is the nutrition distribution a rigged system for those who do not know how to advocate for themselves effectively? If the economy is market-based and that market says that there will be people who are successful and some who are not, does the same ring true for accessibility to fresh and Whole Foods at affordable prices; there will be people who are successful at acquiring those types of foods and prices and those who are not? What matters to the constituents of Hearne Elementary with regards to food options and why? Is the system set up to keep disadvantaged students underserved and underprivileged? If the answer to any of those questions leads a single student to feel or remain oppressed, then as an educator, do I not owe it to them to provide them with this curriculum unit and spark demand change?

When beginning the research for this unit, an NBC news article was suggested as a read and I found that there is a discrepancy with even how food companies choose to market specific foods and to whom they were targeting. Shamard Charles, M.D. contends, “…junk food advertising continues to disproportionately target black and Hispanic youth, contributing to health disparities.”² It was also found at the University of Connecticut that food companies hardly, if ever, advertise or market fresh foods such as fruits and vegetables. Kumanyika told NBC News that, “The marketing is so pervasive that it’s almost invisible, I’m not sure it’s really wide known in black communities that this amount of money is being used to promote unhealthy products.”³ The 4^th Grade students of Hearne Elementary deserve to know that poor nutrition is another factor amongst minorities who live in poverty and that communities that are similar to theirs with high numbers of black and Hispanic neighborhoods do in fact have fewer large supermarkets and the stores they do have do not offer wider varieties of healthy alternatives than stores in neighboring cities and towns provide. According to the website, Hearne fits the very definition of what a food desert is considered to be according to the government. “…an area where 33 percent of a city’s residents live more than one mile away from a supermarket and 20 percent earn salaries below the poverty line. Many residents of food deserts – which are disproportionately located in communities of color – do not have cars and lack access to public transportation, making it difficult to get to a grocery store.”⁴

Another perspective to expose the 4^th Grade students to is the dramatic toll that obesity has on black communities and the study on junk-food ads and how those ads are increasingly targeting black teens and children. A study done at the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that, “…black children are exposed to more junk-food advertising than white kids are - - as much as 50 percent more, in fact, among teens.”⁵ The demographics of Hearne will lend itself to this staggering analysis and spark the rich conversations to be held in the classroom and throughout the teaching of the curriculum unit so that it initiates a change in the mindsets and diets of those who want a different diet that will contribute to a healthier lifestyle.