By: Selena Han
In the East Side of Buffalo, NY, many residents face the harsh reality of living in food deserts, where access to affordable, nutritious food is limited or nonexistent. The only easily accessible food sources are fast food chains and corner stores with high-fat snacks and sugar sweetened beverages. This lack of healthy food resources contributes to alarming rates of diet-related diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Food deserts are caused by systemic racial discrimination, a deliberate practice that has oppressed Black communities. Therefore, using the term “food apartheid” rather than “food desert” would be more accurate because “food apartheid” shows that accessibility to nutritious food has been restricted due to intentional discriminatory policies . It demands that these wrongdoings be corrected. The term “food desert” signals that these inequalities in food access are naturally occurring, as deserts are typically naturally occurring, when in reality these inequalities are fully intentional. Food apartheid is caused by racist discriminatory policies, for example, redlining, housing segregation, and harmful schemes labeled as “urban renewal” projects. These practices were intentionally designed to segregate communities in Buffalo and exclude Black communities from resources, including access to healthy food. This restricted access to healthy food in marginalized Black communities on the East Side led to increasing health disparities in Buffalo.
The restricted access to healthy food in Buffalo is an effect of racial segregation in the city. This is caused by systematically confining Black residentes to underserved neighborhoods. Buffalo remains one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States, with its Black residents concentrated in neighborhoods like the East Side, where economic disinvestment and limited access to resources like healthy food persist as a result of discriminatory policies. According to the 2024 Food Insecurity Report from Feeding America, “…the average food insecurity rate among Black, non-Hispanic individuals and Latino individuals is nearly 23% and more than 21%, respectively, while the rate among white, non-Hispanic individuals is nearly 10%.” A major contributing factor to the racial segregation in Buffalo has been the discriminatory process of redlining. In the 1930s, the federal government, through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, created maps that rated neighborhoods based on their perceived investment risk. Predominantly Black neighborhoods in Buffalo were marked with red lines, indicating that they were “high-risk” for investment. This caused banks and lenders to not offer mortgages for loans in these areas, preventing Black residents from buying homes or improving their properties. It led to disinvestment in these communities, only because the residents in these neighborhoods were predominantly Black. Because of this, Black families were forced into living in underdeveloped neighborhoods that were segregated and lacked resources, like access to healthy grocery stores. Grocery stores avoided low-income neighborhoods due to economic risks that were emphasized by redlining, prioritizing profits over serving marginalized communities. Samina Raja, professor of urban planning at UB and founder of the UB Food Lab says, “food apartheid in Buffalo’s East Side, a predominantly Black neighborhood, is an issue deeply rooted in years of disinvestment in food systems by the government and redlining by major supermarket chains.” This is a major issue that urban planners, policymakers, and communities as a whole need to pay more attention to. Raja furthers, “When [urban planners] design cities and think about livable neighborhoods, they need to go back to the fundamentals. And regrettably, urban planning as a profession has neglected that for years.” These wrongdoings need to be fixed, as Dr. Henry Taylor, an internationally recognized professor for his work on marginalized communities of color, states, “Underdeveloped Black neighborhoods (UBNS) experience infant mortality, chronic disease, and premature death rates that are the highest in the nation, comparable to those in developing countries. These adverse health outcomes result from neighborhood-level social determinants of health (SDOH).” With distressingly negative health outcomes in these neighborhoods, it throws residents back into a cycle of poor health, struggling to find healthier alternatives in their neighborhood.
It is not only redlining alone that contributes to food deserts, housing injustices worsened the problem as well. After World War II, many white families moved out of urban centers and into the suburbs in a phenomenon known as “white flight” due to racism. As white families left the city, predominantly Black communities were left behind in urban areas, which were increasingly disinvested by local governments and businesses. At the same time, the GI Bill, a bill that provided home loans and educational benefits to returning veterans, gave white veterans mortgages and loans for buying homes in suburban neighborhoods. Black veterans faced discriminatory practices when applying for mortgages or loans. This resulted in white families being able to build wealth through homeownership in the suburbs, while Black families were excluded from these opportunities. As segregated neighborhoods grew in the absence of resources and economic development, grocery stores became unwilling to open in these areas, leaving people without healthy food options. Another malicious practice used by racist realtors was blockbusting. They would buy property in white neighborhoods that bordered black neighborhoods and sell it to African Americans. Then, they prompted white residents near the borders to sell their homes before their property lost value due to the increasing number of Black residents in the neighborhood. Blatto, a researcher at the Partnership for Public Good, states, “Blockbusting occurred throughout East Side neighborhoods like the Fruit Belt and Broadway-Filmore.” This segregated both communities further and isolated Black residents on the East Side. There were also restrictive covenants implemented, like restricting the construction of multi-family housing in predominantly white neighborhoods. These restrictions prevented Black residents from being able to buy houses in these communities and made houses extremely unaffordable. Gehl, director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, writes, “ Across the nation, localities used zoning requirements to restrict the construction of multi-family housing and built highways to eliminate blighted areas and isolate communities of color.” White flight and the GI Bill created a racially segregated landscape, where resources like grocery stores and fresh food markets were predominantly concentrated in white, suburban areas, while there was a lack of grocery stores in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Less and less grocery stores were willing to invest in the predominantly Black communities, leading to a food apartheid crisis.
Not only were communities in Buffalo maliciously separated, but many rich, thriving, predominantly Black communities were also slashed through by “urban renewal” projects. The process of slum clearance, often justified as a way to eliminate “blight,” involved demolishing entire neighborhoods, displacing thousands of families, and leaving many without stable housing. The displaced communities were often moved into already overcrowded and underdeveloped areas, which had few resources, including access to healthy food. A case study archive for urban renewal states, “The programs [urban renewal programs] cleared out blighted areas of cities by clearing out areas that were declared slums. The programs were designed to replace the ‘slums’ with new, higher class housing and new businesses.” However, this was not actually the case. The author furthers, “Most of the housing authorities found that new housing alone was not enough to remove the slums and provide urban redevelopment. The new housing often became the new slum a few decades after it was built,” (A Case…). The “urban renewal” projects were implemented in rich predominantly Black communities at the time, like Masten. It ripped apart vibrant, established neighborhoods and destroyed homes, as well as local businesses. Beyer, an urban affairs journalist, notes, “Old neighborhoods were thus demolished, replaced with highways, public housing, and top-down economic developments.” Thriving neighborhoods were split apart with highways that displaced whole communities, such as the Kensington Expressway.” The divisions, and subsequent disinvestment in these areas made it difficult for new businesses to thrive, especially grocery stores offering fresh produce. With limited resources and infrastructure, these neighborhoods were left without the essential services needed to combat food insecurity.
While the historical factors contributing to food apartheid in Buffalo, NY, are undeniable, some may argue that food insecurity is not solely a product of discriminatory racial policies. It has been argued that food apartheid is not connected to racism because food insecurity occurs across all demographics. Food deserts are not caused by racism, instead it is caused by socioeconomic factors and lack of demand in certain communities. Shanks states, “When compared to other geographies in the U.S., rural areas have consistently higher poverty rates than urban areas, at 16.1% versus 12.6%, respectively, and greater food insecurity rates than the overall population, at 12.1% in rural communities versus 10.5% of all households, respectively.” While this may be true, food apartheid in urban areas is caused by systemic racism, although this may not be the case in predominantly white rural areas. In these rural areas, the restricting racial policies were not implemented, while in urban metropolises, they were, correlating directly with the historical discrimination that had been going on for decades in Buffalo.
In conclusion, the issue of food apartheid in Buffalo, NY, is deeply intertwined with the city’s history of racial segregation and housing injustice. Policies like redlining and the GI Bill segregated communities in Buffalo based on race, depriving Black communities of resources like healthy food. This segregation was further exacerbated by urban renewal projects, such as slum clearance and the construction of the Kensington Expressway, which displaced thousands of families and disrupted local businesses, including grocery stores. As a result, neighborhoods on Buffalo’s East Side have faced a persistent lack of access to nutritious food, contributing to food apartheid. These historical injustices continue to shape the city’s landscape, showing the need for policies that address the systemic racism that fuels food insecurity. To combat food apartheid, it is important to not only improve food access but also address the underlying issues of segregation, disinvestment, and racist policies that have made these disparities possible. We can help improve this issue by working with organizations that push for policy changes aimed at addressing the root causes of food apartheid. By advocating for better zoning laws that encourage the opening of grocery stores in underserved areas, or supporting local governments to give out funds for food access programs, we can push for systemic change.
