What Pizza Taught Me About Racial Injustice
By: Jay Krasnow
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Racism, Culture, Homeless, Race

What Pizza Taught Me About Racial Injustice

Photo: mahyar motebassem / Unsplash / Irrevocable, nonexclusive copyright to use & distribute for free

On Thanksgiving Day this year, I had planned to meet up with a friend for a two-person charity event: He would hand out $20 bills to homeless people in the District of Columbia, while I gave them pizza.

But the night before Thanksgiving, my friend cancelled on me. Not one to be easily deterred, I pressed ahead with my ‘pizza charity.’ But I faced yet another roadblock to my plan: Every pizza place I called on Thanksgiving was closed for the holiday.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t give pizza to people who needed the most help on Thanksgiving, but I was determined to do it on Friday instead.

Why lead a ‘pizza charity’ event?

It’s worth mentioning why it was important for me to do this act of charity in the first place. Had my friend not proposed our two-person Thanksgiving charity event, I’m not sure whether I would have considered the idea.

In years past, I typically spent the holiday with my family in Connecticut. But with the pandemic sweeping the nation, I decided to avoid the risk of getting COVID-19. Now that my friend had nixed our get-together, I didn’t have any plans for Thanksgiving — a holiday that’s meant as a positive, secular day to celebrate gratitude with your family.

Previously, in times when I was alone or felt the blues, I took solace in the company of my cat, Rachel. But several years ago my allergist impressed upon me that my having a cat was as bad for my lungs as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day — so I was forced to have my feline friend rehomed.

In times like these, it made me more appreciative of the things I have — including my family.

Yet, empathy for the poor was not a lesson that I learned from my family growing up. When homeless people approached our car in New York City and other urban areas, my parents would roll up the windows and lock the car doors.

My father took a similar attitude towards Hare Krisnas, who sometimes knocked on our front door requesting charitable donations. Without so much as greeting the Hare Krishnas, my father would nonchalantly say “Goodbye,” then slam the door on their faces.

‘Pizza charity for one’ takes shape

Though I had participated in various charitable events as an adult, this was different. I felt a real urge to plan and lead my own one-person charity event; purchasing and delivering pizza to homeless people, who would soon have to weather the winter cold.

I put in an order for a dozen pizzas at Dominos the old-fashioned way: I called the store. Twenty-five minutes later I picked them up along with a dozen 20-ounce bottles of Coke, which the store threw in for no extra charge. Considering that I wasn’t going to eat any of this food, I felt like I was getting a pretty good deal.

As I began my 30-minute drive to the District of Columbia, I realized that I didn’t know where homeless people in the city congregated. Not knowing what else to do, I set my GPS for Calabash, a kombucha tea house near the Shaw-Howard University Metro, mainly because I like its kombucha.

While I was en route to Calabash, I found myself stopped at a traffic light, where I saw a man walking from car to car asking for the passengers to put money in a Styrofoam coffee cup he was holding. At that moment, I saw a flashback of my mom rolling up the windows of her car as a homeless person approached; I instead rolled down mine and handed the man a pizza and a Coke.

He took the pizza and thanked me, then left the traffic stop, presumably because he decided to eat his pizza rather than to continue asking people for money. I probably made the man’s day, but I didn’t see much glow or happiness in his face. Maybe he was too worn down to show gratitude on his face.

Above five minutes later I saw a homeless woman standing near the near a garbage basket on a side street in the district’s U Street/Cardoza area. I drove down the side street and offered her a pizza and Coke.

If the man who I gave the first pizza to seemed emotionally underwhelmed by my gift, the woman on the side street had just the opposite reaction. She walked away with the pizza whooping like her team just won the Super Bowl. That sure made me feel good.

As I continued to crisscross the District of Columbia, I grew frustrated in my inability to quickly find homeless people who needed pizza.

Yet, I was surprised with some of the reactions from the people to whom I offered pizza. One homeless man I found near Dupont Circle refused my offer, saying to me sternly, “No pizza,” while a woman in the same area responded to my offer with a simple “okay,” before returning to what appeared to be a trance.

Later, I offered two pizzas to two seemingly homeless men on 14th Street. One of the men pointed off to the left and said, “These are the people you wanted to give the pizzas to.”

I looked in the direction the man was pointing, and saw two young men — perhaps high school or college age. They had ripped jeans — but I couldn’t tell whether or not the rips were stylistic choices. Otherwise, the two young men showed no obvious signs of distress that were indicative to me of homelessness. I gave the pizzas to them anyway. They seemed grateful for my gift, which made me realize that I didn’t know their story, and that I was in no position to judge whether they were truly in need of charity if their neighbor on 14th Street said they were.

But what struck me the most from my experience were the demographics of the recipients of my pizza. Of the 12 pizzas I gave out, all but two of the people who received them were Black, and all but two of the recipients were men.

Statistics on homelessness

Nationally, Black people comprise 40 percent of the homeless population, despite being only 13 percent of the general public, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. In the District of Columbia, Black residents make up nearly 48 percent of the population, but 88 percent of the people experiencing homeless, according to the Washington Legal Clinic for Homelessness.

Yet, the number of people who were homeless in the District of Columbia declined by 24 percent over the past five years, according to a study the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments conducted this year. In other words, homelessness in Washington, D.C., is dropping — but not for Black people.

What’s next for me (and you)

When I told one of my friends about my Thanksgiving pizza charity event, she got excited about it, and wanted to come out with me for a Christmas pizza charity event with me. (The idea for the Christmas charity event was hers). I even considered a few Twitter hashtags that would encourage people in other cities to have their own one-person or two-person ‘pizza charity’ events.

My favorite hashtag was #pizzapipeline — but I found, to my great disappointment, that it was already taken. I crammed to come up with another, original, Twitter hashtag over the next several days.

But then, yesterday, my friend told me that her doctor cautioned her against participating in a pizza charity event until at least the summer, given the pandemic, because people are more susceptible to the virus during the cold weather.

Whether or not I do a pizza charity event for Christmas, it’s clear to me that this isn’t a one-time event.

If you have a job, and are living comfortably, you too, should try a pizza charity event. I wear a mask when I go out, and I don’t mingle with people outside the walls of my house. If you feel safe driving around in your car and delivering pizza to people who need them, you should do it.

If you don’t feel safe conducting a pizza charity event during the pandemic — either solo or as part of a group — find an organization in your area, such as a soup kitchen, that provides food and shelter to people in need in their difficult times.