On February 15, 2010, an event dubbed “The Compton Cookout” took place on the campus of University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Hosted by several fraternities, it used the guise of Black History Month to celebrate Black culture – but in reality, it was steeped in belittling racist tropes and stereotypes. Attendees were invited to experience “life in the ghetto;” women were told to dress as “ghetto chicks;” “purple drank”  and watermelon would be served. The party sparked protests and sit-ins by students and faculty. Among those protesting was Marilisa Navarro, who at the time was a PhD student in the Ethnic Studies program at UCSD.

“It was devastating,” recalls Dr. Navarro, now an assistant professor of African American Studies in Jefferson’s College of Humanities and Science. “It was also an example of how racism is reinforced through food and food culture .”

This is a central theme of Dr. Navarro’s research. The reality is that access to nutritious food is not a guarantee for everyone, especially for low-income and marginalized communities. Dr. Navarro studies not only the link between food and racism, but also how oppressed communities produce power within this system. Find out more about Dr. Navarro’s research and the questions she’s trying to answer.

Q: What is your research focus?

A: My focus is on critical race studies, food studies, popular culture, and community engagement. In all of my research, I focus on the relationship between oppression toward marginalized communities (people of color, women, and those who are working class), and how these communities resist oppression.

Q: What’s one question you’re investigating?

A: What are the ways in which food has been/is used to reinforce structural racism? On the other hand, how have communities of color engaged in food sites to produce equity, power, and freedom? My most recent project analyzes the slow food movement, which promotes local food and traditional cooking as an alternative to fast food, and how black culinary traditions have been left out of what has been considered “slow food” despite the fact that black communities have been cooking “slowly” for centuries. I analyze the work of African American gourmet, vegan chef Bryant Terry as someone who both aligns himself with the slow food movement, but is also critical of the ways in which whiteness is seen as the norm. This is an investigation of how we understand knowledge production (whose knowledge counts as legitimate and whose is made invisible) as well as how subjugated knowledge is uncovered and shared.

Based on this work, I developed a concept called “Black culinary epistemologies” which I define as the culinary knowledge produced by Black chefs, cooks, and food preparers that build upon the Black radical tradition, reframe Black foods and consumption.

Q: What are you working on currently?

A: In a full circle of sorts, I’m actually taking a look back at “The Compton Cookout” and its flattened interpretation of Black femininity as the “Ghetto Chick” and the parallels to the iconic Aunt Jemima brand. These are two figures who seemingly have nothing to do with each other, but they’re both examples of sites in which Black women are being constructed through food as threatening in some ways, but also palatable and less than white womanhood.