Center for Regional Food Systems

This annotated bibliography offers a foundation for learning and communicating about structural racism in the U.S. food system. Now on our 10th edition, the first iteration of this publications was published in 2015. 

This edition includes 588 publications and 66 videos—for a total of 654 references—that explore structural racism both across the national food system and in specific food sectors and geographies.  Updates this year include 137 new publication citations and 6 new video resources. ( Share your feedback! )

Structural racism in the United States has been defined as the “normalization and legitimization of an array of dynamics—historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal—that routinely advantage Whites while producing cumulative and chronic outcomes for people of color.”

This resources identifies literature that links the social construction of Whiteness and its intentional or consequential impact on structural racism within the United States’ local food movement. It is focused on recent peer-reviewed and gray literature* materials that are national, regional, and local in scope that included significant references.

The annotated format is useful for food systems practitioners, policymakers, researchers, educators, scholars, activists, and students. We suggest it be used as a companion resource for training or education sessions on structural racism in the food system.

Most references in this and previous editions were crowd-sourced – collected via a nationwide request sent through food systems networks. Our intention is to update this resource on a recurring basis. 

Using Zotero

A Zotero group library is available for the references cited in this document. Zotero is a free software that lets users easily save, manage, and cite sources. You can create an online account at zotero.org or download the free desktop application, which allows you to sync with the group library and save documents to your computer. All the citations in the 10th edition are tagged in Zotero so that the user can filter the resources.

Below is short tutorial video demonstrating how to use Zotero to access the citations.

Suggested Citation

Kelly, R., Pirog, R., Carr, K., Guel, A., Henderson, J., Wilcox, K., Wimberg, T., García Polanco, V., Babayode, D., Watson, K., Nelson, E, & Burnstein, S. (2023). An annotated bibliography on structural racism present in the U.S. food system (10th ed.). Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems. https://foodsystems.msu.edu/resources/structural_racism_in_us_food_system 

We want to hear from you!

We are proud to share the 10th edition of An Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism in the U.S. Food System with over 650 listed citations. This resource has grown significantly over the past few years, and we hope to make updated versions more user-friendly. This is why we are requesting feedback to improve future editions of it. Please fill out this brief, anonymous survey to provide feedback. You will have the option in the survey to provide your name and email address if you would like to be contacted for additional follow up. Thank you for helping us improve this resource!

Share your feedback!

DEADLINE EXTENDED! Feedback is requested by Tuesday, October 10, 2023.

To share feedback or suggest a resource for the next edition of this publication, please contact Rachel Kelly at kellyra2@msu.edu.

*Gray literature is the general name for scholarly or substantive information produced outside traditional commercial publishing and distribution channels. Common publication types include: theses and dissertations; technical reports; working papers; evaluation reports; conference proceedings; publications from NGOs, INGOs, think tanks and policy institutes; patent, and preprints.

This work was supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.