Race and the Soda Pop Tax

I think most of us can think of a commercial for Pepsi or Coke faster than we can think of any advertisement for fruits or vegetables. That's because the $115 billion dollar soda industry has done a lot to create sugary, addictive beverages that are available to everyone just about everywhere. So when a group of researchers released an article in the New England Journal of Medicine proposing a tax on sugary beverages in order to reduce obesity, you can imagine the kind of stir that was created.

On one hand, the tax seems to tackle some important problems: It discourages people from consuming large amounts of soda, in the same way that cigarette taxes have been used to cut back on smoking. It also seems to be an indirect way of tackling health issues in the country.

It confronts obesity by raising the prices of products that are lacking in nutritional value. And finally, the tax could provide money for healthcare reform. Hey, that all sounds great to me.

But there are also people who are questioning who will be the most affected by this tax: presumably, those that consume a lot of soda, i.e. people suffering from obesity, i.e. a huge number of poor people of color. Now this tax is starting to look more like a punishment against groups of people who are victims of larger systems of inequality.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the majority of people suffering from obesity are African Americans and Latinos.

These populations are therefore disproportionately at risk of "increased health-care costs, reduced quality of life... premature death... heart disease, hypertension and stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer." Will placing a tax on soda be the best solution for addressing these issues? How long will it actually take for people to buy less soda, let alone stop drinking soda? Has a cigarette tax stopped people from smoking entirely?

No, but it's helping. And that's a pretty big step in itself.

There is a larger question of race and class being raised with this issue: how can we offer equal access to nutrition, fresh produce and health education for low-income communities and communities of color? The solution lies in a combination of normalizing healthier lifestyles in these communities through a lot of local organizing, providing better access to healthier living and food options, and fighting against the targeting of marginalized communities by food and beverage lobbyists.

Until these needs are addressed directly, with race and class at the forefront of the conversation, a soda tax doesn't sound like the miracle solution.

Nina Jacinto is a freelance blogger living in the Bay Area whose writing focuses on issues of race, gender and media representation. She's a graduate of Pomona College and loves South Asian diaspora narratives, bargain shopping and the internet.