Minority-owned Businesses
Did you hear about this local black-owned food business? It’s news to me. What ethnicity are they, Yoruba, Ethiopian, maybe Kongo? Oh, they’re African-American. I’m not too familiar with their cuisine specialties outside of the surprising amount of things they can do with a chicken. African-American and black African diets are quite different. One is much more centered on commercial, supermarket diets than the other. I am not too sure how much of food-related culture has been passed on from Western Africa to their descendants in the Americas, but the in the US in particular, it seems negligible. Even in the Caribbean and the Americas, they seem to have their own local cuisines, partially influenced by European colonial traditions.
I’m more interested in getting to know local Italian and French-owned businesses, as Italians and French can cook some excellent food. If you ever go to Italy or France, you’d be a fool to miss out on what they have to offer. Even the food in McDonalds is surprisingly high quality in Rome: it was a culture shock to me. I’ve always wondered if a certain chain that sells Japanese food in North America is actually Japanese-owned, so I’d like to know. I’ve seen Asian people work there but very few of them seem like they could have been Japanese. Lots of Balkan food stores where I live are usually European-owned, but sometimes I don’t see any first-generation Europeans working there, so I’d want to know about that too.
I can’t forget about Jewish businesses either, there’s a surprising amount of those, and it’s not always readily apparent. Though, Jews are not particularly reputed for their food, so much as other businesses. Even though I’m not Jewish and don’t observe Jewish dietary laws, kosher food is more trustworthy in its content than a lot of meat you’d find at a supermarket, so I wouldn’t object to eating it. They know what they’re putting in their own food, I am sure they would not willingly taint it with what is considered non-kosher.
You may be shocked to learn that a lot of meat is intentionally mislabeled in both North America and Europe. You could hunt or fish for your food in many places, with varying levels of convenience and expenditure, but even then pollution and environmental damage is a concern, unless you are somewhere very remote. In Canada and the US, meat is as affordable as it is due to subsidies for agriculture and fishing. As of right now, though, even now it is becoming less affordable.
With increasing urbanization and reliance on urban markets, it’s less and less likely that you have your own farm and grow your own fruits or vegetables in a way that can provide for you for even part of a year. Maybe you grow a few fruits or vegetables if you have a yard, or on the windowsills, which at best would provide some seasonal meals for you. But few enough people do this. Perhaps some people who run grow-ops could repurpose them into growing fruits and vegetables instead and become local heroes, if they really cared about their communities’ well-being.
Marking minority-owned businesses so you know you want to give them your money is surely more important than knowing what you are consuming though. You want to be seen as forward-thinking and supporting the correct causes for social justice. It couldn’t possibly be a distraction oriented towards people who fancy themselves as progressive and socially conscious, but are very gullible with short attention spans. It’s jiggling keys in front of a baby when it starts crying about something else.
As with inflation, there is every incentive to trick people into accepting higher costs of living as good, if you attempt to placate them with social causes that many of the people complaining buy into, whether they be real grievances, or perceived. The same way a bunch of employees going on strike and using their sick days to avoid getting a vaccine would cause outrage towards them, rather than anger towards a company compelling its employees and overreaching. The same way convincing most people in an urban area that restricting others from entering certain public places if they hold reservations about getting a vaccine, is a good thing.
As congested as shipping has become over the past couple of years since COVID, shipping companies have profited immensely, while providing a vastly inferior service. The demand for shipping increases because of these shortages and delays, which create a tightening bottleneck as the backlog increases. So, it is in their interest to maintain this, as they can profit vastly while having less expenditures due to less net shipping due to the bottleneck – the logistics in shipping are not cheap for the supplier in the first place - while there is increasing demand for their services.
Contextualize current “progressive” social issues and talk of a “climate emergency”, and with the knowledge that most commercial companies (but not necessarily industrial ones) are interested in them because it distracts from or makes their wealth more socially acceptable. This is due to supporting the “right” causes. It will make sense why a faltering economy, which many of these commercial giants profit from, is in their best interest. Since the US dollar, as well as trade with the US itself, backs so much of the global economy, it will not be allowed to fail, even as other important areas falter which are indirectly connected or affected by the fiat dollar. The sacrifices they speak of due to a climate emergency, or what have you, is targeted towards the common person who is not responsible for affecting people’s lives on a global scale, not themselves in any meaningful way.
If they bailed out companies in 2008, why would they then allow it to happen worldwide when the consequences will be even greater? They will simply create more money to prevent a default, like a proposed trillion dollar coin. This is the equivalent of a putting duct tape on a dam holding back much more serious ramifications. It will burst sooner or later, but the consequences, or in the fashion it will happen, are not yet entirely clear.
Online leftists are fond of the phrase “eat the rich”. The truth is that the rich will devour you before you have a chance in hell at biting your teeth into them.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25829637/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956713515300177
https://oceana.org/sites/default/files/National_Seafood_Fraud_Testing_Results_Highlights_FINAL.pdf