The Oregon Food Bank, a non-profit which annually receives millions in government funds, may be violating civil-rights laws by prioritizing racial and sexual minorities in the provision of food and the awarding of contracts to produce that food.
“We know that the root causes of hunger are systemic injustices — including the connections between racism, classism, sexism, settler colonialism and more — which continue the conditions that sustain hunger and poverty,” the Oregon Food Bank states on its website. “Understanding this, we commit to center those who most disproportionately experience hunger across our service area — Black, Indigenous and all People of Color, immigrants and refugees, gender expansive folks (including Two-Spirit folks), and single mothers and caregivers — in ways that honor and value each other and our lived experiences.”
The Oregon Food Bank states in an annual report that its “Community Grower Support Fund,” which was launched in 2021, “contracts with BIPOC, immigrant, refugee, trans and gender nonconforming and single mother and caregiver growers.” That year, the organization also established its “Policy Leadership Council,” whose members are minorities with “lived experience of food insecurity, systemic racism, gender oppression and other systemic inequities.”
“In partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), we invest significantly in anti-hunger efforts through local food purchases and grower support — including direct purchases from farmers and ranchers who are federally-classified as disadvantaged due to systemic racial or ethnic prejudice,” the Oregon Food Bank said in a statement to National Review. “These transformative investments have helped people facing the highest and disproportionate rates of hunger produce and distribute food in underserved rural, remote and urban communities throughout the state.”
According to an annual report, the Oregon Food Bank received nearly $20 million in government support between June 2021 and 2022. The previous year, it received just over $10 million in government support.
“The current interpretation of Title VI forbids of federal funding recipients exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment forbids of state and local governments, which includes intentional discrimination on the basis of race in programming,” Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, told National Review.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) announced an agreement with the Oregon Department of Human Services to work with the Oregon Food Bank.
In 2023, Oregon approved House Bill 5045, which provided $7.5 million to the Oregon Food Bank.
National Review asked the OFB for a detailed breakdown of its funding sources, be they state or federal programs, but the organization declined to elaborate. But the acceptance of any government funding at all, regardless of the exact source, requires the organization to comply with federal anti-discrimination law, Morenoff said.
“Entirely aside from whether the Oregon Food Bank is a federal funding recipient and therefore subject to Title VI, one of the surviving provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is universally understood — as amended — to forbid race-based contracting,” Morenoff told National Review.“So, if they are making contracting decisions based on race, they are in violation of a federal civil rights statute, regardless of anything else.”
According to a 2021 annual report, the Oregon Food Bank grant-making initiatives exceeded $800,000 for “organizations led by and rooted within Black, Indigenous and other communities of color.”
“We acknowledge that [Oregon Food Bank] has caused harm in the past by not fully centering people most impacted by hunger in our work and in the stories we tell,” the organization’s website states. “We acknowledge this with grief and humility, and understand we have much work to do.”
The Oregon Food Bank website also includes a “glossary of equity terms,” which states that “fatphobia” is “being overweight and/or fat is highly stigmatized in Western Culture” and “anti-fatness is intrinsically linked to anti-blackness, racism, classism, misogyny, and many other systems of oppression.”
“Privilege is the unearned advantages given to individuals and groups due to their proximity to whiteness and ability to assimilate to dominant, white supremacist and capitalist society, culture and expectations,” the glossary states. “These advantages exist to maintain the status quo of white supremacy and other systemic inequities.”
The president Susannah Morgan, a white woman, was paid an annual base compensation of nearly $200,000, according to a 2020 tax record.
The Oregon Food Bank lists Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad, How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, the TED talk “The Urgency of Intersectionality” by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and other materials as resources. It further endorses the “Nap Ministry,” an organization which promotes “the liberating power of naps.”
September is “Hunger Action Month,” a nationwide campaign established by Feeding America in 2008 to raise awareness about hunger. Roughly 33.8 million Americans lived in “food-insecure households” in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.