Vegan lifestyle articles that discuss ways of living in peace with humans, animals, and the environment.
Robin Scher,
AlterNet.org
March 2018
More people are connecting the health implications of a vegan diet with the struggle against race-based oppression.... This movement is reframing the way society understands our relationships to animals, food and each other....
Food is a key part of any culture. Take the USA: Could there be a more
potent symbol of all things Americana than BBQ? For many, to go against this
national pastime amounts to a form of treason. Which is why it should cause
little surprise to learn that a new culture has begun to take root among
African Americans: veganism.
In years past, this dietary decision was largely associated with being,
like, super white. In part, this could be due to the fact that avoiding all
animal products is seen as a bourgeois indulgence, enjoyed by the sorts of
people who like to proclaim that "All Lives Matter." That perception is
starting to shift.
"The black vegan movement is one of the most diverse, decolonial, complex
and creative movements," said Aph Ko, founder of the website Black Vegans
Rock, in a recent New York Times article. And Ko should know. Back in 2015,
she compiled a list of "100 Black Vegans" to highlight the fact that
veganism is more than just an animal welfare-based lifestyle choice. Listed
among Ko's cohorts are a diverse group of individuals such as civil rights
activist Coretta Scott King, neo-soul superstar Erykah Badu, the Williams
sisters, and comedian Dick Gregory.
The Times listed a number of other notable vegans: Kyrie Irving from the
Boston Celtics is just one of a number of professional basketball players to
stop eating meat, prompting Kip Andersen (director of the documentary "What
the Health") to proclaim in an article for the Bleacher Report that the
NBA should be renamed the National Vegan Association.
Animals and race
A number of factors account for this growing trend. The Times' Kim Severson
notes that the Black Lives Matter movement and What the Health have
helped expand veganism to "connect personal health, animal welfare and
social justice with the fight for racial equality."
"I always assumed 'Black veganism' was just white veganism experienced and
perpetrated by black people, and not a framework to analyze various
oppressions," writes Sincere Kirabo on BlackYouthProject. But after reading
a book Ko published with her sister Syl last year, Aphro-ism: Essays on
Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters, Kirabo
reconsidered this point of view. "Now I'm rethinking the entire way the
defining biases of our society create dehumanizing standards that not only
impact me as a Black person," he writes, "but also extend to animals, inform
our food options, and empower the anti-Black food industry."
What is the "anti-black food industry"? How can a diet be decolonial? Time
for a quick history lesson. A core element of both slavery and colonialism
was the promotion of an ideology that dehumanized black people. When Aph and
Syl Ko describe veganism as a form of liberation, explains Kirabo, they are
talking "less about meat consumption and more about the necessity of
re-framing racism to include the relationship between anti-Blackness and
anti-animal sentiment as codified into the white supremacist capitalist
patriarchy."
This is not a new line of thinking. Anti-colonial writers like Frantz Fanon
and Aimé Césaire first drew the connection between the colonial construct
that disadvantaged certain humans and non-human animals alike. By
understanding this historical context, the connection between racial
oppression and our carnivorous culture begins to make more sense.
This might be a cognitive leap for some, but consider the fact that both
racism and meat-eating are motivated by a sense of superiority. As such,
Kirabo writes, describing the Ko sisters' logic, “animality is a Eurocentric
concept that has contributed to the oppression of any group that deviates
from the white supremacist ideal of being—white Homo sapiens."
A means to an end
Another way to understand this logic is through the simple facts of health.
A 2012 analysis of national meat consumption showed that according to
averages delineated by race, African Americans were overall the largest
consumers of meat in America. This figure is no coincidence. As Nzinga Young
points out in the Huffington Post, due to centuries of entrenched systemic
poverty, black Americans have had to adapt to "making do" with what they
have. In practice, this has translated, Young continues, into "eating
everything from common staples like chicken and fish to chitlins, pigs'
feet, and other discarded animal parts our ancestors ate in desperation."
In other words, meat-eating became an essential part of survival.
Ironically, much of the foods that form part of this culture are centered
around unhealthy eating habits. In her article, "How Black Veganism Is
Revolutionary and Essential for Our Culture," Danni Roseman explains how
this situation has arisen from the fact "that the unhealthiest of foods were
the cheapest and most easily available to low-income, black and brown
families." The existence of food deserts, which are predominant in poorer
communities, have also contributed toward these unhealthy eating habits. As
a result, a number of diet-related diseases have become endemic to the
culture.
"Food is political," writes Roseman, adding how these unhealthy eating
habits have led to a rise in "illnesses that kill black people at astounding
rates." Roseman cites information provided by the CDC, which shows that
"over 40% of black men over [the age of] 20 have hypertension and 44% of
black women." That's not to mention that two of the three leading causes of
death in this community are strokes and heart disease.
"It's not just about, I want to eat well so I can live long and be skinny,"
said vegan-friendly chef Jenné Claiborne in an interview with the Times.
"For a lot of black people, it's also the social justice and food access.
The food we have been eating for decades and decades has been killing us."
In order to counter this trend, Claiborne has become a specialist in
vegan-friendly soul food. In her new book, Sweet Potato Soul, Claiborne
combines the traditions of Southern cooking with recipes from West Africa
and the Caribbean. The book is the latest in a series of similar titles
joining restaurants around the country that have helped bring about the rise
in black vegan culture.
(Other popular books that are part of this endeavor include Amie Breeze
Harper’s anthology, Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food,
Identity, Health, and Society; Tracye McQuirter’s By Any Greens
Necessary: A Revolutionary Guide for Black Women Who Want to Eat Great, Get
Healthy, Lose Weight, and Look Phat; and the Afro-Vegan cookbook.)
Diet as resistance
As Roseman points out, "if you're dead, or perpetually functionally ill, you
cannot march, you cannot protest, you cannot protect your family or
yourself." Framed in this light, a growing number of people are starting to
connect the health implications of a plant-based diet with the ongoing
struggle against race-based oppression.
For Kirabo, this goes beyond "people planting gardens and advocating for
animal rights." He argues that veganism is a "sociopolitical movement that
renounces white-centered definitions of the world" and through that process
"re-examines social norms imposed on us and calls out politics many of us
take for granted."
In other words, choosing not to eat animal products is a way of asserting a
form of independence. "[We] take back control of [our] own diet in a system
in which [we] are not in control of many of the things that we purchase,"
performance artist and activist Jay Brave said in an interview with the BBC.
In the Times article, Zachary Toliver, a PETA columnist who appeared on Ko's
original list of black vegans, said, "I no longer feel like an endangered
species out here." Instead, Toliver and the growing community he represents
are redefining what it means to be black and vegan. In the process, this
movement is reframing the way society understands our relationships to
animals, food and each other.
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