Eating While Black

Food Shaming and Race in America

By: Psyche A. Williams-Forson

Narrated by: L. Malaika Cooper

Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of our leading thinkers about food in America. In Eating While Black, she offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people eat are pervasive, bolstering the belief that they must be corrected and regulated. What is at stake is nothing less than whether Americans can learn to embrace nonracist understandings and practices in relation to food.

Sustainable culture—what keeps a community alive and thriving—is essential to Black peoples' fight for access and equity, and food is central to this fight. Starkly exposing the rampant shaming and policing around how Black people eat, Williams-Forson contemplates food's role in cultural transmission, belonging, homemaking, and survival. Black people's relationships to food have historically been connected to extreme forms of control and scarcity—as well as to stunning creativity and ingenuity. In advancing dialogue about eating and race, this book urges us to think and talk about food in new ways in order to improve American society on personal and structural levels.

©2022 The University of North Carolina Press (P)2022 Tantor

Systemic learning

I’ve never thought about food in this way. But I absolutely wasn’t allowed to eat certain foods in white spaces… parents doing the best they could to help us fit in where we were not wanted.

Anecdotal with little thesis behind it

This author uses fictional tv shows and her own personal experiences with vegan food and then makes a weak argument to tie into her theories. I was excited to read this book after her Oligies episode, but was disappointed in the lack of structure/empirical data. Interesting observations and correlations, but also very regionally restricted to DMV area.

This Book Has Me Thinking Differently About Food

I hung onto every word. EVERY WORD! Everyone should read this. It reminded me of times when I may have "food shamed" and thought I was better than others during those 3 months that I gave up beef and pork. I felt "ashamed" for my ignorance but freely enlightened at the same time.