Activists with Whose Foods / Whose Communities, a multicultural coalition against gentrification, demand “an affordable and diverse Jamaica Plain.” Photo courtesy Whose Foods / Whose Communities.

It’s a late summer morning in Jamaica Plain, Boston, and you’re craving fresh-baked bread and sweet grape tomatoes. Walking through the Hyde Square neighborhood, you’re met with plot after plot of flourishing garden space where once there were parking lots and toxic waste dumps. The breeze carries notes of coffee and jasmine as you pass the bustling Cooperativa de Comida, and you hear the laughter of the neighborhood abuelos playing dominos outside Hi-Lo Foods before you even catch sight of the milk crates they stage their game on.

Just a few decades ago, this would have been a fairly typical experience in the largely-Latin@ district. But these days, you’re more likely to come across a few upscale restaurants and boutiques, brought there by the striking financial success of Hi-Lo’s successor: Whole Foods. Beginning in the 1980s, a surge of gentrification hit Jamaica Plain – and residents are still feeling it ripple through the city’s Latin Quarter today. Jamaica Plain has long been home to vibrant immigrant communities; it has roots in Eastern Europe and Cuba, Ireland and the Dominican Republic. This time, though, a recent influx of middle-class White residents has triggered major economic, social, and cultural shifts.

Isabelle Anguelovski, an expert in urban planning, takes on the Whole Foods controversy in a 2015 study, which found that the city’s White population increased nearly 6% between 2000 and 2010. Such a change may not seem problematic on its own, but during that same period, both the median house price and average monthly rent jumped more than 50%. Rising property values displaced 10% of Jamaica Plain’s Latin@ residents and 14% of Black residents, especially from less wealthy, districts. In Hyde Square, food cooperatives that brought activists together to address local environmental challenges began to dissolve. The urban gardens Latin@ residents planted on ruined land in the 1980s began to attract young, White professionals unfamiliar with the spaces’ history. The last straw for many residents came in 2011, when word hit the streets that Hi-Lo, often called the best Latin@ supermarket in Massachusetts, would close its doors – only to be replaced with a Whole Foods.

In an area where 65% of Latin@ residents earn less than $35,000 a year, many residents can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods: according to Anguelovski’s report, basic staple foods cost nearly 39% more at Whole Foods than similar products at Hi-Lo. To make matters worse, the same economic trends that brought Whole Foods to Jamaica Plain have shifted the benefits of reasonably priced, community-driven agriculture from low-income residents to middle-class transplants. Two tools that might otherwise provide affordable, nutritious foods to all residents – community gardens and inexpensive supermarkets – have, in the wake of gentrification, effectively turned Jamaica Plain into a new kind of food desert. While wealthier newcomers can take advantage of costlier establishments like Whole Foods, their emergence has largely displaced cheaper grocery options. Many low-income locals now find themselves choosing between Stop & Shop (which is still 12% more expensive than Hi-Lo), convenience stores, or fast-food joints – placing them at far higher risk of diet-related disease.

Anguelovski highlights voices on both sides of the Jamaica Plain controversy, noting that proponents of Whole Foods commend its selection of organic, local, and “healthy” foods – often cited as pillars of the alternative food movement. What many don’t recognize, however, is that these categories are racially and economically coded. When these advocates praise Whole Foods for providing “healthy” options while ignoring its total lack of basic Latin@ staples, like plantains and queso fresco, they reinforce the idea that White practices around food are universal, rather than tied to specific histories and cultural origins. “Healthy” becomes a euphemism for upper-middle-class White food preferences; critiques of multicultural food practices escape scrutiny under the guise of being “green.” These patterns reflect deeply held assumptions that weaken the alternative food movement – and U.S. environmentalism more broadly – by excluding countless worldviews, practices, and peoples.

Hi-Lo wasn’t just a source of affordable, culturally essential foods, it was also a vital gathering place for community members. In the wake of its closure, this community space hasn’t gone elsewhere – it’s simply disappeared. “There is a loss of place,” says a Hyde Square local, “[Hi-Lo] was a haven for Latino people…it created a place within the neighborhood. Whole Foods is more transient.” Likewise, fewer and fewer Latin@ and Black residents feel comfortable cultivating Hyde Square’s community gardens or shopping in local food co-ops. As these spaces become trendy mainstays for newer, wealthier residents, their capacity to serve their original consumer base diminishes. Shifting demographics – combined with increasing prices – make once-familiar places feel inaccessible, foreign, and exclusive. For one community organizer, “Gardens represent a form of alienation. Before they felt like a home.”

Each of these spaces – co-ops, gardens, supermarkets – is ripe with opportunities to improve the environment. We risk serious collateral damage, though, if alternative foodies – like those who supported Whole Foods – ignore the diverse identities at play. Foodscapes can (re)create and support resilient multicultural communities, but not if dominant groups use “alternative” practices to replicate inequality in our cities, communities, and bodies. By refusing to critically examine the language and practices of a majority-White alternative food movement, White environmentalists – myself included – shortchange ourselves of the opportunity to build a strong, multifaceted coalition for our shared future.

We need an alternative to “alternative food.” The displacement of inclusive sustainable food spaces in Jamaica Plain calls us to move past colorblind environmentalism to an identity-conscious food justice lens. By respecting community autonomy, by addressing the root causes of food access disparities, by making way for a pluralistic definition of “good food,” we make food a tool of true sustainable transformation, rather than a cause of further tension. In describing Hyde Square’s urban gardens, one resident said, “Food was a product of love because it was a communal process.”

Let’s cultivate just and sustainable foodscapes – and let’s make it a communal process.