Urban Farmer // Educator // Change Maker
Still Standing: Field Notes on Removed Confederate Statues
A Native Richmonder's Perspective
I was told that my city, Richmond Virginia, has a 'complicated past' now being 'devoid of Confederate Statues' and is entering a 'compelling new chapter'. As a native Richmonder;Black and a farmer, who has dedicated his entire life to black liberation strategies through food – this complicated past and compelling new chapter looks no different than when those statues were up.
← Image: Burned out GRTC Bus at the corner of Broad & Belvidere
The Illusion of Progress
At first glance, one might feel compelled to celebrate the removal of these relics of the Lost Cause mythology. During the zeitgeist of the George Floyd Rebellions across the country; these statues were razed by protesters; vandalized; and became sites for selfies, graffiti, and community protest. In Richmond, the location of the Robert E Lee statue was renamed the Marcus David Peters Circle in remembrance of a young black man who was murdered by police during a mental health crisis.
The fact that these statues could even exist in the first place tells the story of power; a story much deeper than has been told: that taking down Confederate Statues does absolutely nothing to upset the balance of power or who has it in the city.
Monument Avenue: A Living Testament
Monument Avenue and who lives on this stretch of street in the former capital of the confederacy is a living testament to the scars of slavery and colonialism. This part of Richmond is predominately white. The median house price is 1.6 million dollars. The roads are made of cobble stone. Those that live there are only blocks from science museums, art museums and history museums.
Minus the statues; one might be hard-pressed to find another relic of racism on this road beyond its predominate whiteness, but one has to look no further than its abundant tree cover to tell that story. It's hidden in plain sight, but you have to do a little research to understand why.
The Heat Island Effect
Urban Heat Island Maps of Richmond VA
Redlining led to the divestment of Black neighborhoods. The divestment was so bad you can now predict which neighborhoodswould be hotter – and neighborhoods like Monument Avenue would be cooler, due to them having an established tree canopy. The historically Black neighborhoods that people who look like me grew up in had been covered in impervious surfaces and lacked green infrastructure. To quote Lil Wayne: 'The Block Is [quite figuratively]Hot'.
Gilpin Court: A Tale of Two Cities
Take Gilpin Court for example. The housing project located in a formerly redlined neighborhood in Richmond is literally 10–20 degrees hotter than Monument Avenue in the summer due to its lack of trees and greenery. People living in this neighborhood have a life expectancy sixty-three years old but in Westover Hills (a white neighborhood) that number was eighty-three. A twenty-year difference in life expectancy.
The latest state investment was new cameras for police supervision. There is a pool but that has been closed for ten years. We often speak about redlining and housing discrimination. We rarely draw the line connecting that phenomenon to slavery and colonization. Such connections are expected to be inferred. It was easy to make that connection by pointing to those statues. Their removal does not increase the life expectancy in Gilpin Court nor does it cool down how hot it gets there in the summer.
The Alt Right has Rebranded White Nationalist from hoods to 3 piece suits
Clear and Undisguised Racism
I like my racism clear and undisguised. I remember going to protest against the ALT-Right using a public library for one of their meetings when I was in my mid-twenties. I will never forget my expectations: redneck, flannel shirts, bearded white men with cut-off sleeves, and confederate flags patches emblazoned on the backs of tattered jean jackets. What I saw was a clean-cut white man in a suit and tie surrounded by rightfully angry black people as he calmly articulated that he felt white people were the superior race and that black people came from monkeys.
With the Confederate Statues up, it was easier to describe how systems of oppression are the by-product of policies that have been created by and implemented by white people to the disadvantage of black and brown people. I had something I could show you that clearly showed inequity. The racism was loud. Clear. Sitting atop a horse. On a pillar and pointing west in allusion to Manifest Destiny. In your face. Undisguised. Just like the racism of that ALT right guy in the suit and tie. It shouted its racism unapologetically.
The Daughters of the Confederacy were responsible for promoting the Lost Cause Ideology
Policy Decisions and Power
The erecting of a statue is a policy decision. Land use has to be considered. Who owns the land the statue will stand on? Who will pay for it to be built? How tall can it be? What can the statue be representative of? If that statue is of someone who had committed treason against the government, and for that statue to stand for over one hundred years? These are policy decisions implemented by white people for white people.
The Web of Racist Policies
How about the act of redlining and its subsequent housing discrimination? A policy that was implemented by the same white people who had erected those statues. The slave trade and Jim Crow discrimination? USDA discrimination against black farmers? A policy that had been implemented by white people to their benefit to the disadvantage of black people.
The social construct of racism perpetuates systems that continue to privilege white people and disadvantage black people based on an intricate web of policy decisions. Tracing racist ideas down to who thought them and who created the policy that mirrors them is important because it teaches us they are not gods. New ideas can take shape. New policies can be implemented. Change can be made when we understand how things got to where they are today. Alas, the confederate statues that delineated the truth of Richmond VA's past policies as the capital of the confederacy are no more. The ease with which we could point at those statues to extol the continued lording over of black and brown people by the ideals of a losing confederacy has drifted into distant memory. The hard work of connecting those dots now lay at our feet and in my case as a farmer – beneath.
The Story of American Food in the South
The Story of American Food in the South is the story of black people cooking
It is fascinating to hear white people, especially tourism industry buffs, gush ravenously over black-owned restaurants that one can visit in Richmond now that those pesky Confederate Statues are gone. The presence of black people cooking in the city is not a new phenomenon. In urban cities, from slavery to Jim Crow – there has always existed black-run kitchens.
One could argue that the history of American Southern food was written by black people. From crops that were brought to the US via slavery, to the enslaved hands that grew them, to the actual cooking and culinary artistry being done by black people – black people and food are not strangers in the south. The Civil War was fought to keep my ancestors cooking, growing, and working FOR white people.
Land Loss and Food Systems
One stark difference between the past and now is that between Reconstruction and the present-day black people have lost over twelve million acres of land. Where does the food that black restaurants use to cook come from in the context of black farmers losing 325 billion dollars of land value over the past century? Who stole the land from black folk?How did our radical imagining during a global rebellion against police brutality stall out at the removal of Confederate statues, whilst 98 per cent of American farmland is still owned by white people?
← Map of Access to Healthy Food in Richmond VA – The dots are the full service grocery stores
Land, Power, and Self-Determination
As a farmer that was born in the City, I deal with this question intimately every day. Where is the land I can farm on? Who owns it? One of my jobs as an educator is to teach my community about food systems. In a working food system, you have Production, Aggregation, Innovation, and Distribution. Someone gets paid every step of the way. The removal of Robert E Lee's statue does not grant me better control over the food system in my community.
Land is the basis for power and self-determination. Across the globe black people are resisting, strategizing and building alternative food systems that are owned and controlled by the progeny of the formerly enslaved and colonized. White supremacy mandates that we are the labor force in every aspect of the food system. It mandates that we work the land for the benefit of white people. The taking down of Confederate statues does not disrupt this relationship.
The removal of Confederate statues does not transform my landlessness into land ownership and repossession. It does not bring fresh fruits and vegetables to black communities concentrated in poverty. It does not provide affordable housing and green infrastructure to my community. It doesn't stop fentanyl overdose or gun violence. It doesn't plant trees in housing projects. I don't even drive down Monument Avenue. The West End of Richmond Virginia is predominantly white.
The historically Black neighborhoods in this city were Jackson Ward, the Northside, Southside, and East End of Richmond. All formerly redlined neighborhoods. All lacking in access to healthy food. All hotter than Monument Avenue in the summer. I was born on Southside like my mother and my father. My wife is from Northside. My grandfather and great grandmother are both from Northside.
Building Our Own Monuments
Sankofa Community Orchard on Richmond's Southside
The monuments we have built for ourselves in our lifetime were transformed from vacant lots on the Southside into urban farms filled with murals and solar panels. The trees we have planted to give shade and food to others and ourselves. The soil we have improved the fertility of by using compost bins and manure from chickens. The rows we have tilled into a hundred feet of growing African crops like okra, scotch bonnet peppers and calalloo.
These were living statues that taught food justice and climate resiliency. We painted Fannie Lou Hamer, George Jackson, Amilcar Cabral, Claudia Jones and George Washington Carver on…, and welded metal statues of Sankofa birds there.
In Northside we erected greenhouses to produce seedlings, youth farms, and pop-up farmers markets like the North side Farmers Market, a community-led effort committed to purchasing food from black farmers by organizations and residents of Northside. My aunt-in-law tells me that our home in Northside had a cross burned in its front lawn in the fifties because they were one of the first black families who had moved to this formerly predominately white side of town, abandoned by white flight and blockbusting. Our monuments reflect our hope and dreams for tomorrow.
A temple in a housing project was erected in tree plantings, raised beds, and permeable pathways because it lacked access to healthy food and biophilic places for children to play. A shrine was established in a formerly redlined neighborhood in the form of a community garden with shade structures to serve as oasis for folks struggle with concentrated poverty and lack of greenspace.
The Path Forward
The way forward is meandering, iterative yet not complicated or next chapter-esque. It's the same as it has always been. Our policy has been black self-determination and agency. Our adversaries –those who built the Confederate monuments – have worked against that for us. The folks who mandated those statues go up still maintain power in Richmond Virginia.
How do we build regenerative monuments to black liberation in the former capital of the confederacy?