West Oakland: The Importance of Many Stories

Throughout this research, I have encountered many scholars that support the approach of Urban Agriculture (UA) as a means for alleviating poverty, hunger, malnutrition, environmental instability, community disinvestment, and an array of health problems. Although there are quantifiable, well-researched benefits of urban farming, it has acquired a heavy burden of “fixing” multiple social issues. Like systems of micro-finance  the responsibility of solving these issues has been redirected to these non-profit organizations and community groups in the field of Urban Agriculture.

                At the same time, UA has also been highly criticized as an intrusive, colonial “solution” to these issues in urban communities – one that is out of touch with community wants and needs and still carries an authoritarian “white” face. While most of the people receiving urban agriculture “aid” live in lower income districts or colored communities, several researchers attempt to understand the social, political, and racial interactions and responses to such approaches. Robert O. Self, however, attempts to challenge those historical stories and ideas about these affected communities and how they came to lack such resources. In his novel, American Babylon; Race and the Struggles for Postwar Oakland[i] he reminds us that outside organizations, academics and policy makers are not the only ones “fixing” these complicated issues and to not rule out the communities’ own response to alleviating its problems.  

                This became an important concept for me as I delve into this project because I have noticed a swayed perspective and perhaps even sightlessness to this side of the story. A good amount of the research tends to victimize the affected communities through explanations of social or political repression and injustice, sometimes even suggesting that a community has been or currently still powerless, or even that they are ignorant to or unorganized about solving the issues at hand. Often, and perhaps even in this class, when we come to these understandings through the lens of “educated volunteer,” the focus gets placed on the volunteers, visible activists, non-profits or policy makers or those who are working to solve the problems. This could lead to greater issues. For example, as I was reading American Babylon, Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, Self illuminated a part of the story that I assume often goes unheard. He brought to life a history of the Black Panthers and their role in organizing community activists and gaining influence after World War II. He also took the time to detail the history of Oakland and how it became a land of disinvestment, which, by many authors, is reduced to overgeneralized terms like “White Flight” or “Black Power” without understanding the complex interactions between participants in its own specific context: West Oakland. The oversimplification of these entangled histories has the potential to stifle the important voices, viewpoints, and stories of those most affected.

                As I was working with City Slicker Farms in West Oakland, a resident walked into the office which is adjacent to a carpentry shop in an older, industrialized neighborhood. He was an older African American male, perhaps late 60’s early 70’s and he came to inquire about a City Slicker Farms program; however the conversation changed quickly and somewhat unexpectedly. He began arguing the inequality still prevalent in West Oakland, questioning the cause of and demanding answers to Oakland’s high lead levels and toxins and ongoing gentrification. This encounter further reminded me of Recalling Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk – The Danger of a Single Story, and the importance for looking at the situation from multiple lenses. Through my recent research and personal experience, I have found that it is imperative to search for a more complete story, that can not only highlight the common viewpoints, like that of the volunteers’ role or organizations’ methods, but also history of the people in the area, their activity in solving or coping with the problems, and importantly, their current understanding of the circumstances they face.

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[i] Self, Robert O. American Babylon, Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland.  Princeton University Pr, 2003. Print.