Much fanfare is being made about the upcoming Slow Food Nation conference, to be held from Friday, August 29 to Monday, September 1, 2008 in San Francisco. Among this fanfare were criticisms laid against Slow Food by Bruce Sterlings in the March 2008 issue of the online magazine Metropolis, where he accuses Slow Food of snobbery and elitism. Predictably, the response from Slow Food to this article on the Slow Food USA Blog was to attempt to deflect and counter every detailed point that Sterling tried to make in an effort to prove that Slow Food is not elitist and, if it is elitist in some regards, why it was justified for being so.

The question for me about Slow Food is less whether it’s elitist or snobbish, but whether it’s relevant to people of diverse economic and/or cultural backgrounds. A lot of people don’t feel there is sufficient economic and racial diversity in Slow Food to engender it as a true movement and that the lifestyle and cultural renaissance that Slow Food advocates is not accessible to people of less privilege, income, etc. This is certainly true for us at People’s Grocery as our experience is that people living in low-income communities and communities of color aren’t compelled by, or even aware, of what Slow Food is doing. This is not to say that Slow Food isn’t trying to engender a more inclusive and multicultural movement. But such issues will continue to engender criticism, some of it fair and some of it not fair at all.

Perhaps, when criticized in these ways, Slow Food should not just strive to defend itself from criticism but also acknowledge where its movement is trying to grow and change. Being transparent and open about such challenges and the efforts made will help shift perceptions/criticisms of Slow Food to give it more of a chance of offering meaning to many more people and creating a transformative revolution greater in magnitude and scope. This would be a courageous act on Slow Foods part and would significantly increase the respect it was given by food justice organizations striving to address inequities in the food system. As in all matters regarding undoing social and economic inequality, the first step to becoming an ally to people of color and low-income communities is to acknowledge the privilege one has and the ways one contributes to the perpetuation of inequity. In its effort to connect with communities of color, as well as increase their participation at the Slow Food Nation conference, Slow Food would do very well to make such acknowledgements.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 1:33 pm and is filed under People's Grocery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.