Because it is not natural to consume the milk of another species, Food Empowerment Project refers to people who are unable to digest lactose as “lactose normal.” In addition, lactose intolerance implies there is something “wrong” with Black, Brown and Indigenous people who are not able to digest milk—a product of colonization.
Food is a principal tool of colonization, which is the practice of
acquiring control over another country, occupying it with settlers,
and exploiting it economically. We can see this in how the
descendants of colonizers continue to force dairy products upon the
Indigenous people of North America.
One instructive example is the Mojave people of what is now Arizona,
California, and Colorado. Their ancestral diet was primarily
plant-based: they grew beans, corn, melons, and pumpkins. The
Mojaves were not used to cow’s milk, which they said was poisonous.
In 1911, a physician with the U.S. government (which by this time
was “administering” the reservations where many Indigenous people
were forced to live) called the Mojaves “willfully ignorant and
hopelessly lazy” because they refused to give their children milk.
Yet the Mojaves had no ability to digest cow’s milk—indeed, it made
them sick—so they were perfectly correct to say it was poisonous.
From the U.S. government’s viewpoint, however, feeding the
Indigenous people dairy foods was just another step toward
“civilizing” them with a “superior” European diet—a diet they hoped
would instill “American” values in the Mojaves and other native
peoples.
The colonization of the Americas was a gradual process, and when
Columbus first arrived in 1492, he and his fellow Europeans did not
find the foods they were used to, such as bread, olives, “meat,” and
milk. They feared they could not survive on the unfamiliar diet the
locals ate—or worse, that their bodies might somehow cease to be
European. So when Columbus returned in 1493, he brought sheep, pigs,
and cows from Europe. At last, the colonizers believed, their bodies
would be sustained on “superior” foods—and they could force the
Indigenous people to adopt the “right” way of eating.
Not only does this attitude go back centuries, but it is still
reflected in current practices. Although studies show that “as many
as 75 percent of all African American, Jewish, Native American, and
Mexican American adults, and 90 percent of Asian American adults”
are unable to digest lactose (a sugar found in dairy), the U.S.
government and the dairy industry continue to push dairy consumption
on these populations.
In the 1920s and ’30s, dairy promoters went so far as to link the
whiteness of milk with the alleged purity of the white race,
proclaiming, for example, “Of all races, the Aryans seem to have
been the heaviest drinkers of milk and the greatest users of butter
and cheese, a fact that may in part account for the quick and high
development of this division of human beings.”
In the mid-20th century, the dairy food company PET Milk began a
marketing campaign for their baby formula that targeted Black women,
suggesting it was healthier than breast milk. It became a myth that
is perpetuated today, and only 12 percent of Black mothers still
breastfeed at six months, compared to 26 percent of Latinx mothers
and 24 percent of white mothers. These racial disparities correspond
with infant mortality, which strikes more than twice as many Black
babies as white babies—a ratio that has remained consistent since
slavery.
Food has always been a fundamental tool in colonization, and the
legacy of dairy in North America has been particularly difficult for
Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. For anyone looking to remove
the influence of colonization—as well as help animals, the
environment, and exploited workers—moving away from milk and other
dairy products is a great place to start.
Because it is not natural to consume the milk of another species,
Food Empowerment Project refers to people who are unable to digest
lactose as “lactose normal.” In addition, lactose intolerance
implies there is something “wrong” with Black, Brown and Indigenous
people who are not able to digest milk—a product of colonization.