Exploring How Diet and Nutrition Redefine Notions of Black Identity, Health, and Gender in the Nation of Islam

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2016
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Haverford College. Department of Religion
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Tri-College users only
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Abstract
In this thesis, I explore how the Nation of Islam’s dietary regulations are used as an instrument that is intended to reinforce Black gender roles, strengthen camaraderie in a separatist framework, revitalize Black bodies, and free Africans Americans from oppression in the United States. I conclude that propaganda negatively depicting soul food, a diet that many Black people perceived as a form of racial pride, was used as a tool to oppress African Americans, and assisted in the formation of a marginalized masculinity in Black America, thereby subjugating the Black woman’s position in society. The Nation of Islam’s diet is practiced as a method of combating notions of Black oppression. The Nation’s leader, Prophet Elijah Muhammad heavily frowned upon the soul food diet, understanding it to be harmful to the sacred Black body and an illegitimate source of racial pride. For Black Muslims, diet is very much related to the understanding that Black people are made in the likeness of Allah, who has the form of a Black male. Because of this, addressing the issues of racial and gendered subordination involves the adoption of a sacred dietary practice that aids in their formation of a communal identity separate from Black Christianity, White America, the Black Consciousness Movement and Orthodox Islam. Muhammad attracted followers by promising that adherence to the Nation’s diet would ensure health and longevity. Additionally, it would foster growth in Black society by strengthening one’s identity as a Black Muslim and relation to God. During the Civil Rights Era, men predominantly became involved with the faith because it offered an alternative philosophy to the Christian movements of nonviolent protest that were understood as feminine. Blackness became associated with Islam and masculinity, while Whiteness was attributed to Christianity and femininity. In viewing the state of gendered Black identity in the mid-twentieth century, the Nation of Islam argues that Black men had become emasculated, impure, lazy, and were confused by White supremacy. Black women had become promiscuous and neglectful caretakers of Black children, inhibiting the advancement of the Black race. The sacred dietary customs were designed to help treat these shortcomings. Engaging Doris Witt, I explain how the diet ironically disempowers women. While Professor Elizabeth Pérez does not explicitly employ Witt’s argument, I find her research useful in understanding Witt’s reasoning. In the soul food tradition, it is the Black woman who takes pride and is recognized for her recipes that provide care and life to her family. Black Muslim women lose this recognition because they are no longer using the recipes passed down from their grandmothers. Instead, they are using the foodways instructed by Allah, which takes the pride women would receive for their unique abilities in the kitchen, and credits it to Him. Placing food studies authors Jennifer Wallach and Psyche Williams-Forson in dialogue with one another, I conclude that the Nation’s foodways aids in their formation of a separate community. Muhammad’s distinct dietary guidelines forged social connections and enhanced group unity in the same way that sharing a common diet strengthened camaraderie amongst Blacks outside the Nation of Islam. The Nation’s food habits redefine Black health for its partakers, making it a communal concern, as members identify with each other through sharing a healthy and sacred diet. Avoiding the unhealthy foods attributed to the soul food, nationalistic eaters demonstrate ideological fidelity and physiological allegiance to the Black nation and loyalty to Allah.
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