Week 7: Reflection on the access of food during my childhood

The Miami Dade metropolitan area is home to roughly 3 million individuals with a significant presence of minorities. In fact, non Hispanic whites make up close to only 20% of the population. I grew up in northeastern Miami-Dade, couple miles south of the county line that separates Broward county. The suburbs I resided in was called North Miami Beach, a city that dubbed their acronym to Now More Beautiful sometime in middle school. Compared to the rest of the county, North Miami Beach has a significant Jewish population as well as a Haitian population that ranks fifth among US cities. My mother did not drive, thus, she often would participate in public transportation, walk, or a combination of both depending on the location. Sometimes, this mean that she would have to take us with her to doctor appointments, school, shopping, and other means to live -- by bus.

The articles this week went into great detail concerning assessing food security, specifically in a spatial context in terms of racial disparities. Before they built Skylake Plaza that includes a Publix and daily community activities such as a gym, bank, McDonalds, nail salons, and etc less than a mile from our home, we had to walk along the creek 2 miles to go to the Publix that is no longer in existence to date. I remember complaining when I had to walk with my mom to do groceries because I knew that meant we would be carrying bags home. Amusingly, I recollect one of the readings stating that one of the environmental impacts of supermarkets were displaced carts. My mother eventually began taking the carts with her from Publix to alleviate the load off my younger brother and I. At the time, I use to blame the my mom's phobia of driving rather than considering how the community officials could have made implemented plans that considered food deserts.

Around 2006, the community's prayers were answered because a new Publix was built nearby along with new economic development occurring adjacently. In 2007, a Walmart SuperCenter arrived in North Miami Beach. I was amazed at the diversity of products, the vastness of the store (and definitely the parking lot, and most importantly: the price differences compared to Publix. My parents did not fail to realize the savings either and quickly changed their preferred SuperMarket of choice to WalMart, only going to Publix for weekly specials. My father would sometimes work long hours and my mother would have to cook for us. As a mother with no license she would take the responsibility of walking to Walmart to go grocery shopping since it was cheaper than Publix. The irony is the WalMart location was direcltly across the street of where the old Publix was 2 miles away!
(By the way, the old Publix Plaza was modified into McIntosh Park and Soccer Field, a popular facility in the community)

My mom use to always wonder why the community never implemented a local short circuit bus route to accommodate the two primary shopping centers to the individuals in the community. The readings really bought back some good instances in my childhood where the shortcomings in the food systems affected myself and my family directly and indirectly. Nonetheless, mapping disparities to food access is a wonderful idea, however, I do not believe is should not be done in the context of race only because I believe food systems should be ubiquitous in their consumer needs. African Americans don't specifically need access to a bananas, apples, and oranges, humanity needs bananas, apples, and oranges. Thus, in terms of environmental justice, where people live in a community, there shall be real food for them to eat.