Comments on: Freegans of Color?

By: johanna

johanna — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:02:34 +0000

Royce — oh yeah. I definitely think the whole “being a representative of your race” thing is something a lot of progressive white people forget all the time that lots of other people have to deal w/. Augh. I wonder if, like what other folks say, there are other freegans of color but they just would never name themselves as such because the term is so white-identified (or they would just never even think of using it as an identity term — like Noemi said, it’s just let’s go see if there’s anything we can use).

By: Royce Drake

Royce Drake — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:01:20 +0000

@noemi There are lots of types of freegans, most of the one’s I’ve met won’t eat meat. At one point when I claimed the freegan label I did eat some meat, and that made me slide further and further from my original veganism.

@amalgamated In my case I’m far more radically anti-police than my white friends, but thats because activists at my college are largely upper-middle class white students who never have real run ins with the police– many of them don’t understand my fear nor my anger towards the police.

@meep That’s exactly the sort of shame I feel when I go diving in the day time. Of friends I went dumpster diving this last time one was upper-middle class, raised outside the US by parents that work for NGOs, and the other was working class from NE. For one of them diving isn’t a necessity– its thriftiness.

By: Meep

Meep — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:42:17 +0000

I think there might be a level of both excitement and disconnect with the white kids. I’ve gotten things from around the dumpsters, but I don’t tell my family because it’s sort of shameful, because now I’m not poor and I should be able to afford new things, brown people don’t need to be digging in garbage, etc. But for your friends, did they grow up poor or has college life brought about the necessity? Since they don’t have the stigma, then it’s not a concern.

By: amalgamated

amalgamated — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:33:35 +0000

I can say that I have noticed that many of my white friends have completely different attitudes towards the police than I do.
Police, to them, are inherently evil sanctions of the state. I don’t disagree with them, but I, for the life of me, can’t bring myself to understand how they have come to this conclusion so violently. They have all chosen their political affiliations, and chose to participate in activities such as dumpster diving and protests. If they are among many like them in these situations, they “blend in.” They chose their increased risk, yet, I still have to deal with being the only brown person in these situations without them understanding my increased paranoia. They are more violently anti-police in general, I suppose, and I’m more afraid of them, yet, they don’t get it.

By: noemi

noemi — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:42:13 +0000

I thought freegans were those that ate any free food, including meat. This isn’t so? I’ve heard folks say something like I’m not vegan, I’m freegan.
I have dumpster dived in the past outa necessity. But we never called it dumpster diving. It was more like lets go see if there’s anything that’s good or we can use.