Alameda Native History Project

Month: September 2022

  • Alameda Is Not Becoming a ‘Food Desert’, You’re Just More Privileged Than You Think

    During the most recent Alameda City Council Meeting, the very real possibility of Safeway closing on Bay Farm Island was brought up as something which would leave Bay Farm without any means or hope for getting fresh produce, and other nutritious foods. The term “food desert” was used, as well as a definition. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) characterizes food deserts as low-income neighborhoods that distinctly lack supermarkets and grocery stores.

    Low-income census tracts with a substantial number or share of residents with low levels of access to retail outlets selling healthy and affordable foods are defined as food deserts.

    Ver Ploeg, et al. “Mapping Food Deserts in the United States” USDA, Dec. 1 2019, https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011/december/data-feature-mapping-food-deserts-in-the-us/

    The reality of Low-Income Households, situated too far from Supermarkets, Grocery Stores, etc. is something that is finally being identified, and studied.

    These areas are typically urban, rural, and semi-rural environments, where lack of vehicle access, public transportation, or just the sheer distance to a grocery store, prevents people from being able to purchase and transport healthy, fresh, nutritious food to their dwellings.

    In urban areas, the closest and cheapest food sources are often only places like Fast-Food Chains, and Convenience Stores.

    Unfortunately, these food sources are trash. And “ultraprocessed foods” like frozen pizza, hot dogs, store-bought cookies, ice cream, microwave dinners, Fast Food Burgers, Chicken Nuggets, and more, have been linked to certain forms of cancer, and help to provide an early death for those who can’t afford or access fresh meat and vegetables.

    In rural areas, the impossible-to-travel distance from one’s house to any grocery store can mean that people just don’t eat, at all. Or, the amount of food which can be purchased is severely limited by the actual cost of going to and from the grocery store, and/or the amount of time it takes to make the trip is too long.

    Having lived in both types of Food Deserts, it’s easy for me to look around at the City of Alameda and see the abundance of Food Sources, and their Connections via Public Transit, and find a place that is not recognizable as a food desert in any shape or form–at least, not in Bay Farm.

    Upon researching this subject, I discovered that Bay Farm actually is considered a “Low Food Access Area”. Which is surprising, because Bay Farm also has the highest concentration of Home Owners Associations in the entire City of Alameda.

    When the substantial addition of housing begins in Bay Farm, the Harbor Bay Landing will already have been re-developed with multi-unit housing. And it seems inconceivable that another grocery store won’t pop up, just like the Alameda Marketplace did–if a big store like Whole Foods, or Safeway, don’t beat them to it.

    The take away is that Alameda Point really needs some Services.

    That’s really what this map says to me.

    For an area that used to have its own grocery store, the former Naval Air Station has become a point of embarrassment, specifically because of The City’s neglect of its residents. It’s something no one talks about. Just like the soil and groundwater contamination….

    But we need to address these issues if we plan to be here for another 50 years. We can’t just focus on building parks, and leasing buildings to the highest bidders.

  • Forms of Recognition: Alameda’s Anti-Asian History

    Recognition and Acknowledgment can only do so much; we know. But it’s the start of a larger truth and reconciliation process that America needs to engage in.

    This may be a project that focuses on Native American “stuff”, but…

    Native American History isn’t the only American History that has been ignored by Alameda’s Colonial Historians.

    “The Chinese Vegetable Vendor”, Bancroft Collection, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library, (undated.)

    Asian-American History is largely overlooked; despite the fact that Alameda was the terminus for the Intercontinental Railroad. And Chinese people are primarily credited for building the railways connecting the Eastern and Western United States. There was an influx of Chinese immigrants, who would become the backbone of a service industry, in California.

    During the same time:

    1. Alameda was being founded (1853);
    2. Intercontinental Railroad terminus in Alameda (1869);
    3. Chinese Exclusion Act (1882);
    4. First Excavation of “Sather’s Mound” for San Francisco Call (1892);
    5. During 1908, during reporting on the second (and final) excavation of the Mound Street Shellmound, a “Chinese Vegetable Garden” was pictured, and described in newspaper articles, to be on the shellmound itself.
    “The Alameda Indian Mounds”, San Francisco Call, Sep. 11, 1892

    In the last example, the “Chinese Vegetable Garden” was pictured as part of a “Chinese Camp”. The garden itself appeared to be fairly large, and the image seemed to show the boundary of the camp itself butting up against more farmland.

    “A Comparison”, the Alameda Argus, July 25, 1878.

    In Alameda and Brooklyn townships there are not less than 300 Chinamen engaged in gardening operations.

    “A Comparison”, the Alameda Argus, July 25, 1878.

    Research into “Chinese Vegetable Gardens” around the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and beyond, show that these “gardens” were misnomers. In reality, these “gardens” were farms; and could cover several acres. Many were terraced.

    Chinese Vegetable Gardens, Portland, Oregon, c. 1909 via Oregon History Project.

    These farms produced food for entire towns. Not just the Asian-American people who would later be confined to Chinatowns across America.

    Sam Hop Co., San Francisco, California, Feb. 5, 1908

    In historic City of Alameda Municipal Codes, there are laws against the sale of vegetables specifically by Chinese people who did not purchase a vegetable sales permit. These kinds of laws were created as economic barriers to knock the legs out from under any possible competition with white grocers and farmers. White people were so blinded by their own poison that they had no problem publishing their thoughts in black & white.

    “The Determined Heathen”, Alameda Daily Evening Encinal, April 7, 1894

    Chinese-Americans were already barred from owning land, and were excluded from full citizenship because of the same racist, white supremacist ideologies that were already affecting African-American, and Indigenous/Native/First American people. And, just like them, Chinese-American History has been largely ignored, and unspoken.

    Despite the extraordinary measures by white people to insulate their fragility with false “exceptionalism”–by cheating, and excluding fair competition at every turn–rumors of Chinese wealth generated through farming began to circulate.

    One rumor claimed that a man was able to amass $4,000 within four years, and return to China a well-off man from just the sale of vegetables, alone. [$4,000 in 1890 is roughly equivalent to $123,581.54 today.]

    Untitled, Undated (between 1880-1910), picture of Chinese Man with Pail of Vegetables in His Left Hand

    Such was the contempt for any nonwhite citizen of Alameda, that a strong opposition rose by White Alamedans against the minority farmers, who–despite feeding the island–began to be demonized for “benefitting” from the “best land for residences”; and for their practice of enriching bad soil with manure. The land owners who rented to Chinese immigrants, the Alameda Board of Health, Alameda Chief of Police, were all assailed as enemies of Alameda; responsible for the detriment of city life, and degradation of Alameda’s haut monde.

    This story continues. But it’s continued in the shadows of Alameda’s white history. The accomplishments of the Chinese immigrants who literally built this island were re-appropriated and claimed by White Men, who are extolled as “heroes” and “visionaries”. When it is truly the work of the (non-white) global majority.

    Of course, none of this history has been made available at the Alameda Museum. Maybe one day soon multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Alameda History will be made available to us all. George Gunn, Alameda Museum’s White History curator was allowed to quietly retire like the coward he is. And the Alameda Museum is currently looking for a new curator. [Good luck.]

    Stay tuned for more.