Scary Mommy: When Quinoa Comes Between You and Humanity

The humanitarianista in me couldn’t help moseying over to Jennifer Ball’s Scary Mommy blog today to dig into her recent experience at a food pantry.

Here’s the scenario she paints:

Bags of upscale organic groceries, provided by upper middle class donors, lined the wall in preparation to be distributed to needy families.

Seeing the bag’s comments, one passing woman snarked, “Too bad they won’t know what to do with most of it.”

As Jennifer tells it,

It was one of those moments in life, when your ears her something but your brain can’t quite process it.

I spoke up, while she was still within earshot. “What do you mean?”. I wanted to know. I wanted to verify what she said, make sure I hadn’t misunderstood.

The woman stopped. She turned towards me, one hand holding a couple of manila folders, the other resting lightly on her hip. She was still smiling.

“Those people won’t know what most of that is. I mean, really, quinoa?”

And there it is. A subtle showing of our sometimes unknown biases, lurking beneath the surface.

A light cast on the small stretch of space between “I’m an educated, sophisticated consumer who chooses healthy foods for our family” to “I look down on those who aren’t.”

Read more about what we miss when we casually drop the phrase “those people” into conversation over at Scary Mommy.