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More than a free lunch: Many ways to give

Lydie Raschka’s article on her experience of helping serve dinner to homeless and hungry people at Thanksgiving raises issues that I think about a lot these days. Raschka reflects on her “thinly disguised slumming” and acknowledges that most of the white volunteers serving the black and Hispanic guests would go home and eat gourmet Thanksgiving meals.

Thanksgiving contradictions: Confessions of a volunteer

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and soon my church in New York City will be serving turkey with all the trimmings to over 400 people. I play a major role in this volunteer effort and sometimes I feel quite virtuous. At last, I tell myself, I’m learning how to feel useful during a holiday that is emotionally fraught for many. But sometimes the annual meal looks less like a joyful act of holiday giving than a thinly disguised act of “slumming.” Those of us serving the meal will be almost uniformly white, after all, while those being served will be mostly black and Hispanic. After the meal is over, the “out-of-towners” will go home and eat healthier, more gourmet Thanksgiving meals.

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