Image credit:Mitchell Siporin

Tonight, I can't read Langston Hughes' Let America Be America Again without crying. When Hughes uses "America" twice in the title of his poem, he uses the word to signify a promise and a betrayal. Tonight my tears come not through the joy of a Democrat elected to the White House nor, it must be said, from one gin and tonic too many. For me, tonight is painfully familiar; the betrayal can’t be far off.

Growing up under nearly two decades of Conservative rule in the UK (Margaret Thatcher 1979-1990 and John Major 1990-1997), I remember when the British electorate put Tony Blair 1997-2007 in power. Having voted Green in the 1997 British Election, I came to America on the day that Blair's Labour Party came to power. I wasn't around to see the day when, I'm told, people smiled at one another on the London Underground - a sign of unrefined joy if ever there were.

But Blair's Britain turned to ashes. And I've no doubt that the Obama presidency will disappoint the vast majority of those who voted for him - he will not redistribute as forcefully, nor demilitarise as vigorously, nor change quite as hopefully as he offered.

Despite all that, tonight is still a promise partially delivered. In Britain it would have been, and still is, impossible to imagine a native-born person of colour winning the highest office in the land. It couldn't happen anywhere in Europe. When the United States elects a person of colour, one who grew up without the benefit of inheritance or patrimony, that's a clear sign of transformation, even if it's ultimately an egalitarianism among the bourgeoisie. That said, of course, this wee table from CNN is rather telling.

As we'll soon discover though, in any person's vision of how the future might be, there are always exclusions. In Hughes' poem, it's women. It won't be long before we find out who Obama's forgotten are. And it's as well to understand that Hughes' full promise will be fulfilled not when there's one Barack Obama, but where there are millions. To get from here to there, though, we'll still need to to celebrate the fall of tonight's a very real barrier (even as another is erected).

Let America Be America Again

by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.) ... read more »

Raj's blog | 3 comments | email this page

Posted on 5 November, 2008 - 07:54

The New York Times ran a special food-themed issue of its Sunday magazine a week back. It was kicked off by a fine piece by Mark Bittman, who observed quite rightly that the conversation being had in the magazine’s pages reflects America’s new, and healthy, interest in what they’re eating.

Indeed, just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine this sort of interest, and even harder to imagine that the New York Times would countenance the sorts of politics espoused in Michael Pollan’s Farmer in Chief essay, or David Reiff’s subtle dissection of the Gates Foundation’s African Adventures.

I like David’s piece a great deal, not just because I appear in it as a reasonable person, but because he captures exactly what’s wrong about the Northern do-gooder in Africa. For the record, a mistake crept in to the piece – I’ve never actually met Raj Shah – but the piece certainly captures how I feel about the Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa.

And yet, despite all that, the issue had one or two gaping holes. Labour didn’t really get a look in and, most important, the entire issue was almost wholly silent on the issue of gender. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 4 comments | email this page

Posted on 23 October, 2008 - 06:35

Photocredit WendyUsuallyWanders

This is the bleakest World Food Day in a little while. World Foodless Day, some are calling it.

The commodity price boom of early 2008 has passed. Prices are settling down on the international commodity markets, but most of us don't get our daily bread from the Chicago Board of Trade. And I've not noticed any significantly cheaper food being available at the supermarkets.

It looks as if we're moving into the worst of all possible worlds. Low commodity prices for producers (especially smaller farmers, who didn't do very well out of the boom in the first place), but a high price for food, because retailers are loath to drop prices that they've already spent time getting us accustomed to. This is what economists mean when they say that prices are 'sticky'.

Since I think we should get used to paying more for food, you'd think I'd approve of us getting used to high prices. ... read more »

Raj's blog | add new comment | email this page

Posted on 16 October, 2008 - 15:29

Yes, it has been an embarrassingly long time since I posted something of substance up here. I blame it on too much travel, and the flu. Sifting through the accumulated mail, the financial crisis is of course front and centre.

The Retort group here in the Bay Area have sent along two items that deserve particular mention - one, above, a bit of ephemera from the streets of San Francisco, the second a timeless comedy skit from two very British comics, John Bird and John Fortune. And it's all the more impressive for having come out last year...

... read more »

Raj's blog | 3 comments | email this page

Posted on 8 October, 2008 - 17:57

I'll not make a habit out of trumpeting upcoming speaking engagements, much less repeating said trumpeting, but for two good reasons, I'm going to make an exception. First, I'll be speaking this Friday at the new California Academy of Sciences and it is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. Above, a picture of the 2.5 acre living roof that Renzo Piano put on top of the building, and crammed with nearly 2 million native plants. The Academy has just opened its doors, and it is just as thoroughly on the inside as it is out.

But, and this is the second reason I'm being a little more vigorous in self-publicising, the good people at Litquake tell me that because the Academy is so new, their ticketing system is still getting up and running. So, for those of you who are in the Bay Area and keen to see the building, as well as hear a fine conversation geared towards thinking about how architecture and food will intersect in the future, the details on how to get in are below. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 1 comment | email this page

Posted on 8 October, 2008 - 17:27

Photo credit: Welt Online

In case you missed it, here's the USDA's two-pronged approach to containing mad cow disease:

1. There are no mad cows.
2. Lalalaalalaalalalalaalala.

Although the nattering nabobs of negativity might suggest that, perhaps, it might be a good idea to verify claim #1, the USDA has recently had its Mad Cow Disease vindicated in federal court. Last week, a federal court sided with the USDA in a case involving a small-scale beef producer who wanted to test more than 1% of its livestock for BSE. The federal ruling is this: you aren't allowed to test for Mad Cow Disease unless the USDA lets you.

The argument turned on whether testing dead animals for Mad Cow disease might be considered a treatment. If it were a therapeutic treatment, it'd fall under the USDA's domain.

A federal judge had previously ruled that, since the cows were dead, it seemed clear enough that testing them from mad cow disease couldn't really be considered a treatment since, despite scientific progress, death remains fatal. ... read more »

Raj's blog | add new comment | email this page

Posted on 2 September, 2008 - 15:48

Slow Food Nation will hit San Francisco this weekend. The City's already fluttering with SFN posters, and the Victory Garden, planted on the land outside City Hall, looks very handsome indeed. To prepare for the jamboree, I thought I'd go back to Carlo Petrini's book of the same name, and to Geoff Andrews' new book, The Slow Food Story. Together, these writers offer a corrective to the hoity toity food culture that has become synonymous with the organization. Although it’s often forgotten, Slow Food’s roots are radical. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 1 comment | email this page

Posted on 28 August, 2008 - 20:50

One of the premises of this blog is that there's a deep connection between food and poverty. So it's not too much of a tangent to start talking about poverty directly.

The question asked by my friend Dan Moshenberg, who's guest blogging with this wee article, is this: how are the poorest treated in the world's richest country and the world's most impoverished? The answer: almost the exactly same.

Here's his striking analysis, comparing the Zimbabwean Operation Murambatsvina with Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans three years ago... ... read more »

Raj's blog | 2 comments | email this page

Posted on 28 August, 2008 - 20:37