There’s an old saying that if you’re more fortunate than others, it’s better to build a longer table than a higher fence. Loosely, that’s the principle on which the new website Equity at the Table is based; it describes itself as a “practical and proactive response to the blatant gender and racial discrimination that plagues the food industry.” The site’s founder, Julia Turshen, chose the name “equity” deliberately; it’s not the same as equality.
When she first had the idea for EATT, Turshen says, she thought something like it must already exist. “The more I looked, the more I spoke with colleagues and friends, we were all like, we don’t see this, but we want it,” she says. She put together an advisory board of colleagues and friends, and with the help of the board and other contacts, began inviting people to join the site before it officially launched. “It was important to me that when we launched, people could actually see the thing, not the idea of the thing,” she says. EATT went live April 3 with about 100 members and now has nearly 400.
She also recalls the frustration of seeing lists in magazines of chefs or sommeliers and noticing all the people who’ve been left out. “Looking at a list of all male, all white people—it doesn’t mean there aren’t other people in the professions, doing this work in new and interesting ways. I wanted a place where it was really easy and obvious and simple to find everyone. We’re all here.”
