My dad went to seminary late in life, taking on ministry as a second (third?) career. He got his M.Div. at Emory in Atlanta when I was about three through eight years old.
I do remember certain things about childhood in Atlanta. I spent a lot of time in preschool and Bible camp during the days. It was a very integrated environment and I recall being one of the few white girls at my particular preschool, since my father believed very much in making sure I had that type of experience of diversity. It was a value that I’m fortunate he had taken out of the sixties and given in at least some portion to me. My own M.Div. was earned at Vanderbilt in Nashville. As an adult I had another opportunity to really engage in dialogue (especially of a philosophical and theological nature) with a diverse student body. I bumped up against my own white privilege many ways, and acknowledge it to be an active, life-long process.
I remember from childhood in Atlanta that there, MLK Jr. Day is a very, very, very big deal. There and in the South and, I hope, in many other places, it is a holiday where people are encouraged to go out and do some public service as a way to honor his legacy.
That brings me to my own act of service. Though this is, unfortunately, not the most divisive or violent or racist period in American history, it is a pretty rocky one. As my own day of service in honor of MLK Jr., I wanted to offer this blog. Obviously (I hope), I am not attempting to speak for African Americans about this topic. I am trying to use what platform I have to push the issue out into our human system, for my readers’ consideration. I’m attaching several resources here. If you only do one thing besides read this blog post, I suggest that it be taking an hour to listen to this workshop on Uprooting White Fragility by Dr. A. Breeze Harper.
If you’ve read more than a couple posts here you also know I am a vegan. I first learned about Dr. Harper’s work because she has been a strong and leading voice about the racism of American food systems and about the intersectionality between human and non-human (animal) rights. Again, I am not the one to lead in this discussion but I strongly recommend Dr. Harper’s book on the topic called Sistah Vegan.
There are at least two big branches in this river of a conversation. One is food systems inequality and “the colonization of diet.” Or, as activists like Karen Washington call it, “food apartheid.” In this discussion our attention is called to the ways cultural diets, often more plant-based and certainly including more healthy and homemade foods, have been destroyed in the creation of junk food “deserts” where especially Native, African, Hispanic folks have very little access to fresh and healthy foods, and are incentivized (if not forced) to eat low value, low cost meals.
I’m not trying to say that no non-white cultures ate animals. We know better. But the removal of cultural, localized diets has deprived folks of the beans, grains, fruits, berries, and veggies that their ancestors lived off of far more than animal products, leading to better health and more balance in the ecosystem. Epidemics of diabetes and heart disease in these communities are exposed as another form of genocide when explored to their logical conclusion. In recent years grassroots activism like that of Dr. Harper has reached many non-white communities, and may be a reason that there are currently more African American and generally non-white vegans in the US than white ones. This, despite the common dismissal of the lifestyle as elitist, and/or an eccentricity of white privilege. A really good cookbook dealing with the decolonization of diet from a Native American perspective is this one, which all we residents of the Americas may find particularly interesting. PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) also puts out free resources about Native American decolonized diet, and food desert activism, etc.
This conversation can be extremely fraught because speaking about food is every bit as heated as talking about other deeply indoctrinated aspects of our lives, like politics and religion. But, the even more tender aspect of this conversation is the contemplation of intersectionality between human rights and non-human (animal) rights. Many of us as women and sometimes men have been shamed, marginalized and bullied in various social settings by being called “cows,” “pigs,” “dogs,” “whales,” “hogs,” “monkeys,” etc. enough times to understand that it can feel like a default attack to be compared in any way to other animals. This applies much more so when you have actually been rounded up, transported, bought and sold or mass-slaughtered like other animals. Yet this is the recent and occasionally ongoing history of African Americans, Jews, Native Americans, any type of refugee immigrants (especially black and brown ones), and more.
“I think there is a connection between … the way we treat animals and the way we treat people who are at the bottom of the hierarchy.”
Angela Davis
The first time I encountered the intersectionality between racism and carnism (eating other animals), it was in the book, “The Dreaded Comparison.” I was most drawn to that book because Alice Walker, one of my fave authors, wrote the introduction and described her own reasons for vegetarianism. Since then I’ve found other resources like Sistah Vegan to be very helpful in becoming more aware of all the different aspects of dietary ethics that I had no clue about when I first became a ovo-lacto vegetarian and then, in 2011, vegan.
I’m not going to go into all the aspects of these issues because the wonderful, awesome, very accessible resources I am linking in are much better than what I could ever do. I am strongly suggesting that consuming some of this information is a very important thing for all of us to consider (food pun intended). Whether we are new to considering the intersectionality, the veganism, or anything in between it’s the job of the privileged to take on information about how to bring balance and equality. This applies to our relationship with the other living beings on the planet as well as other people. There, I want to get this info out quickly so folks have time to look at it on the holiday if they have that time free. If not, it’ll be there for you later!
Resources:
Dr. Harper is a great place to start at the resources already mentioned, her website and/or her first book Sistah Vegan.
The newest issue of VegNews is devoted to black veganism in the US.
A wonderful blogging family who are African American vegans raising a fam and keeping folks up to date on tons of vegan foods and resources are: This Infinite Life. Here’s one YouTube video of theirs, introducing their cookbook, to help you find them on their various channels.
PETA info sheet about civil rights activism and vegetarianism.
There are quite a few “vegan soul food” cookbooks out now, but this is the one I own so I’ll point you over here. I also like that the author Bryant Terry adds music playlists for cooking and eating every dish. It’s called Vegan Soul Kitchen. Bryant Terry also wrote the forward to the “Decolonize your Diet” cookbook I linked up above.
Circles of Compassion is a book of essays that came out of the World Peace Diet collective and deals with racism, heterosexism, sexism, and many other issues interacting with speciesism within intersectionality.
