Across the U.S., redlining, policing, and poverty coalesce to create deep disparities in food access for Black communities. A prime example is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where small corner stores and fast food chains far outnumber grocery stores with fresh produce.
When a corner store is the only place to buy food in a neighborhood, that neighborhood is often described as a “food swamp.” Food swamps fall into a similar category as “food deserts,” though in recent years, food justice experts have argued that the term should be replaced with the more intentional language “food apartheid.” Neighborhoods without grocery stores or any access to healthy food have been intentionally, historically, and systematically undervalued and underfunded by federal and local governments. According to longtime food justice activists like Karen Washington, food apartheid is a man-made act of violence and apartheid, not a naturally occurring phenomenon like the desert.
In neighborhoods experiencing food apartheid, residents have little to no access to healthy foods and food retailers. In many cases, there is a grocery store nearby, however, the food is wholly unaffordable. Many Philadelphia neighborhoods are food swamps. The number of stores selling unhealthy foods exceeds the number of stores selling healthy foods by more than four-to-one. Sixty-six percent of Philadelphia’s food stores sell only unhealthy foods, and the density of these stores increases as the neighborhood income decreases. Food swamps in Philadelphia neighborhoods have serious implications for residents’ health.
According to new research from the American Heart Association in 2023, living in areas with a higher density of fast food and other processed food options may increase the risk of stroke among residents aged 50 and older. Adults with diabetes who live in severe food swamps also have higher hospitalization rates—and living in a food swamp can impact a person’s likelihood of developing diabetes or other diet-related diseases. These health hazards are exacerbated by social conditions, meaning that low-income people of color in urban areas experience the worst of these conditions. Notably, 6.1% of Philadelphia County’s residents suffer from heart disease.
Across many neighborhoods in Philadelphia, the only local, affordable places to find food are corner stores, though the food offerings there are largely unhealthy, and there is no fresh produce. This level of food apartheid touches every area of daily life for Black, low-income Philadelphians. Just as there are grave health consequences associated with living in food swamps, there are other serious implications associated with corner stores being some of the only food sources for Black Philadelphians. Chief among them is how policing and surveillance are carried out in Black communities.
Sites of surveillance and policing
While some may think of their local corner store as a convenient place to pick up snacks and beverages, for Black communities, these stores have historically been sites of surveillance and policing as the result of decades of redlining and food apartheid.
In Philadelphia, neighborhoods living under food apartheid have a long history of disinvestment in the form of redlining, a process that began in the 1930s wherein the Federal Housing Administration deemed certain neighborhoods and areas “hazardous” and “unfit.” This caused banks to withhold mortgages from Black residents in those areas. These same neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s now have higher likelihoods of gun violence, fewer trees than other neighborhoods, inadequate and underfunded schools, and food apartheid.
Gentrification in lower-income cities plays a role in the access that residents have to different resources, but it also exacerbates the policing and surveillance Black communities experience. Two Philadelphia zip codes rank among the top 10 most gentrified in the nation, which decimates lower-cost housing options and displaces longtime Black residents.
When white and wealthy people move back into cities to gentrify them, it changes the entire landscape of the region—and it impacts the way police interact with residents. Black residents might have lived in a neighborhood much longer than the white people who are gentrifying the area, but they are policed more. According to Nicholas Freudenberg, a distinguished professor of public health at City University of New York School of Public Health, there isn’t “a simple relationship” between the size of a region’s Black community and policing because of the variable of gentrification.
“When middle class people move in, they want more policing—and that policing is focused on Black and brown youth,” Freudenberg said.
Because of the role that race and poverty play in segregation in Philadelphia, the only two outcomes of gentrification for Black and brown residents are forced removal or over-policing. According to the Philadelphia-based think tank Economy League, “Residents in gentrifying neighborhoods note that social norms and surveillance—particularly in the form of policing—change as previously low-income neighborhoods undergo the gentrification process.”
The tactic of policing known as “stop-and-frisk” is widely associated with New York City, but Philadelphia also has a fraught history with what is otherwise known as “investigative detention.” This tactic empowers a police officer to detain on the spot any person they suspect is engaged in illegal behavior and then allows the officer to “frisk,” or pat the person down. According to the same report by the Economy League, gentrified tracts in Philadelphia saw an average of 33 stop-and-frisk incidents per 100 residents, while non-gentrified tracts saw an average of 11.4 stops per 100 residents. Additionally, between 2015 and 2019, average police stop rates were three times greater than crime rates in Philadelphia’s non-gentrifying tracts.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, stop-and-frisk first became a prominent policing tool in Philadelphia during Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration in the late 2000s and early 2010s. After last year’s mayoral and city council elections, stop-and-frisk in Philadelphia is making yet another comeback.
Philadelphia’s new mayor, Cherelle Parker, promises to “bring back” stop-and-frisk policies in an effort to curb gun violence. But where do police go to stop-and-frisk Black and brown youth? Which neighborhoods are most likely to be targeted by police officers who are terrorizing residents for just walking down the street? There is a correlation between city areas with the most instances of stop-and-frisks and the areas with the most corner stores and mini-marts.
Sites of violence
In neighborhoods that have experienced redlining and disinvestment and now live under poverty and food apartheid, corner stores have long been sites of police violence. Take, for example, the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Floyd allegedly purchased cigarettes from a corner store with a counterfeit bill. When Floyd left the store, the clerk called the police, setting off a chain of events that led to Floyd’s murder by Officer Derek Chauvin. The fact that the police were called so quickly—and arrived in little time—to mediate a nonviolent situation exemplifies just how dependent this particular corner store was on the police in a city that is 18.5% Black.
While the intersection of policing and corner stores ended Floyd’s life, Minneapolis also suffers from food apartheid, which may be why Floyd frequented corner stores to begin with. According to the Minneapolis 2040 Plan, which aims to increase food access in the city, in 2015, Minneapolis had 11 census tracts that were considered healthy food access priority areas. This means that residents in these areas are low-income and live more than one mile from a grocery store. A much greater number of census tracts have no grocery stores within a half-mile. Many of these food access priority areas are also areas of concentrated poverty, where more than half the residents are people of color.
The painful and completely avoidable death of Floyd is just one grave example of the role that corner stores and policing play in the lives of Black communities. The 2012 murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin also has a link to a corner store, as does the gruesome 1955 lynching of Emmett Till.
In recent years, new corner stores in Philadelphia’s low-income areas have made their intentions to aid in the increased surveillance and policing of community members very clear. A new corner store that opened in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Cedar Park last year has a permanent sign in the doorway that reads, “This location is under 24/7 live surveillance to the 18th Precinct. Any illegal activity will be prosecuted. Drug dealers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to Freudenberg, the visibility of corner stores aids in their relationship to crime and policing.
“Many corner stores are open 24 hours and they are very visible. They’re also places where people who are involved with, or at risk of, crime might hang out and congregate,” Freudenberg explained. “Therefore the stores become targets of policing whether or not there are other places that are equally risky, but not as visible.”
Philadelphia’s history of disinvestment has resulted in a huge lack of third places for residents. Black and brown youth especially feel the impact and don’t know where to spend their time outside their homes and at school. Thus corner stores have become third place for many younger residents of poor Philadelphia neighborhoods. If people had other places to congregate, they wouldn’t meet up at their neighborhood corner store or mini-mart. Corner stores are often targeted by police because Black and brown youth congregate there. So, even when there is no crime being committed, these stores—often the only stores to buy food in the community—are severely surveilled and policed.
When redlining, historic disinvestment, poverty, and food apartheid come together in one community, residents are also sometimes forced to resort to activities that are deemed illegal to earn money and feed their families.
The criminalization of hunger and poverty plays a role in the way police act in food-insecure neighborhoods. Instead of providing resources to people who are malnourished, for example, police are trained to target and arrest local residents for attempting to feed themselves and their families. According to Shep Owen, the former senior director of relief and humanitarian affairs for the international organization Food for the Hungry, food “is the most fundamental of human rights,” and people who steal food are often unjustly criminalized.
“Poor access to food is why people are hungry … and anyone who is pushed to the point of stealing for food is very desperate,” Owen explained.
Healthy food for all
At the end of the day, corner stores are some people’s only option for food. This is why advocates in Philadelphia are pushing for better conditions and attempting to reshape corner stores to better serve the communities forced to live in food swamps.
The Food Trust, a Philadelphia organization determined to provide healthy food to all, implemented the Healthy Corner Store Initiative in 2004. The initiative helps corner store owners stock fruits and vegetables. Instead of removing corner stores from neighborhoods, advocates say the stores can be made healthier to better serve the community.
Additionally, the Philadelphia Food Policy Advisory Council (FPAC) has sounded the alarm for years on the changes necessary to improve Philadelphia’s food economy. In 2021, FPAC published a report on food policy recommendations for the city to implement in the year 2023: support city food program capacity, increase access and ownership of land for agricultural uses, adopt a good food purchasing policy, and expand local food and produce distribution.
Despite the FPAC’s yearslong attempts to rectify the Philadelphia food system, little change has been made. Kermit O, a resident, FPAC member, and writer, believes there’s more to be done at a grassroots level beyond reports and recommendations.
“Food apartheid can’t be solved by just appealing to the city government,” Kermit O said. “We need to mobilize different sectors in the food system to work together: consumption, distribution, waste and recovery, land sovereignty, and land access. There is no other way we can win.”
Grassroots efforts to increase access to food can already be seen in the West Philadelphia Community Fridge, which organizers Sonia and Sonam Parikh opened in 2020.
“We are in an economic crisis—people can’t afford food,” Parikh said. “Grocery stores are shutting down in underdeveloped neighborhoods. People are starting to steal of course, because they need to feed their family out of necessity. People have a scarcity mindset because they’re scared they’ll never have access to food again.”
Although food apartheid is a government-made, systemic issue, not much government action has been taken to reverse it. Advocates and organizers across Philadelphia and beyond have been working hard to increase knowledge of food sovereignty so that all Philadelphians can have direct access to food.
“I believe that food and land sovereignty is akin to the fish parable,” Kermit O said. “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll feed himself forever. We must learn how to be sovereign enough that we don’t need government intervention, and through that power, push for things we want to change.”
