A new poll suggests black people have been disproportionately hit by soaring food prices, according to social commentator Jonathan Starling.Mr Starling said while the economic crisis and escalating cost of staple items have had a devastating effect on many blacks, many whites have been able to continue shopping at higher-end supermarkets.He was responding to a Mindmaps survey which showed 81 percent of blacks want Government to impose food price controls, compared with 41 percent of whites.“Our class structure is still very much conflated with race, and it seems to me that the poorer individuals of society, being overwhelmingly black, are more likely to be affected by rising prices of staple food stuffs,” Mr Starling told The Royal Gazette.“The more middle and upper class members of society, although affected, are only marginally so, and can still afford to shop at places like Miles or consume luxuries.“Rises in staples do reduce their income, in terms of costing them more overall, but the cost to them is, relative to the poor, quite marginal and nowhere near as serious a matter to them.”Mr Starling said the responses may also indicate blacks are more likely than whites to have been influenced by union leaders’ calls for food price controls.He said this would reflect a hangover from the days of segregation, when blacks were more reliant on communal support networks.Meanwhile, the blogger said men’s and women’s contrasting views on food price controls highlights the Island’s structural sexism which need a Big Conversation similar to the one on race.Seventy-six percent of women told pollsters Government should impose fixed prices on staple goods, compared with 57 percent of men.Mr Starling believes this indicates females are more likely to have witnessed supermarket prices soaring in recent years, suggesting traditional gender roles are still alive and well.“What particularly strikes me is the disparity between males and females which points, to me at least, to a continued structural sexism in our society.“Sure, I’m hypothesising solely on these results, but it seems that women are more responsible for purchasing foodstuffs for the household, and thus are more aware of the costs of staple foodstuffs in as much as this relates to their providing for the family.“I would also wager that there is a good chance that if the woman is the principal shopper for the family food, the woman is likely also to be the principal preparer of the food also.“I think that this sexist structure of daily life, disproportionate burdening of women with household labour, is a problem.”Mr Starling said the constraints of household work and child rearing limit women’s jobs chances and wages, leading to economic, social and psychological consequences.“I think a sustained and relentless critique of everyday life from an anti-sexist perspective needs to be done as a mandatory step to countering sexism in our society,” he said.In the past decade, the price of a loaf of bread has gone up 67 percent, potatoes have gone up 50 percent, rice 67 percent and milk 44 percent.The Royal Gazette’s The Cost of Living series highlighted how this, combined with growing unemployment and shrinking wages, has left increasing numbers of people unable to pay their bills.Premier Paula Cox has suggested food prices are not a likely option, saying prices can be kept more competitive through a free market.But Mr Starling said he would support price controls on food staples, adding they could be subsidised through a ‘junk food tax’ on unhealthy food and luxuries such as processed foods, sodas, steak and other meat.Additional revenue from that new tax could also be ring-fenced for health expenses arising from poor diets, such as diabetes, he said.The Mindmaps poll of 400 registered voters, which took place between May 2 and May 12, has a margin of error of 4.9 percent.