I don’t think any of us have enough information to judge, but I agree with you that demanding equal salaries looks like a stretch. And union scales and procedures can be used to justify her treatment and lack of recourse. However, the fact that race is not explicitly written into guild rules does not mean that there is nothing racist about them.
One of the central tenets of systemic racism is that seemingly even-handed procedures can have the effect of perpetuating racist (or sexist, etc) inequalities, and locking them in place. Systems such as union scales and rules were designed by members of a historically preferred class, and will provide rewards and protections in a manner tailored to that class. Even if the designers were trying to be fair (and often they were not), they would define rankings based on desirable qualities found among their class, and will address grievances that they have encountered. They would either be ignorant of, or actively devalue, qualities and vulnerabilities possessed by people of other classes (who until very recently were at a massive disadvantage in accumulating mainstream credentials).
So when an outsider protests mistreatment, the “objective” rules are used to show how fair the system is to them, and how little merit they have. It is the very objective rigidity of the system, and the blind faith that people hold in its fairness, that locks in racial inequity and covers over racist treatment.
Why is it so important that a person had the title “food critic” vs “food writer”? That they worked for a prestigious paper or a lesser-known one? Obviously those can be indicators of sorts, but one would think that hiring and pay would not be hard-locked to surface indicators, but instead be based on the desirable traits that they supposedly indicate: domain knowledge, the ability to write for and attract a desired audience, etc.
Again, I have no clue how fairly or unfairly Patricia was treated. I would have to read a lot of her old writing. And, I dunno, interview her. Like for a job or something. But I wouldn’t put much credence in union pay rules as an arbiter of fairness.
Slavery is a strong word, but given the oft-ignored realities of people working at the foundation of our food production chain (a topic occupying more than half of this article), I don’t object to the use of shock language. And I don’t think some overenthusiastic capitalization is cause to dismiss an entire article and its writer.
Patricia’s own situation took up only one paragraph of the piece. Maybe some might think that’s one paragraph too many. But the short article drew together the different ways that minorities are systematically mistreated and devalued throughout the food production chain and in food media. I rarely see these things discussed in a common context.