Think about it...

 “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”—CombaheeRiver Collective Statement, 1977

It's true that the destruction of the systems of oppression that harm Black women would likely (it appears that such is true, anyway) free all the human Earthlings...but...it's not so that such freedom would necessarily end oppression for all Earthlings. 

Some thoughts about fully ending oppression for all Earthlings are contained in this article: "Do you include an analysis of animal oppression or speciesism in your anti-racist work? Should we make justice for animals a central principle of Black Lives Matter movement? Aph Ko and Syl of Aphro-ism and Black Vegans Rock think so. In fact, from their perspective, it’s imperative that we do. As far these two black vegan powerhouses are concerned, anti-speciesism does not function apart from anti-racist activism. And your intellectual toolkit is incomplete without a radical re-imagination of “the animal.”"

It's interesting to think about the fact that resisting oppression directed at one targeted group (PoC, women, and so on) does not mean you necessarily are resisting oppression directed at all targeted groups (or that you're even interested in resisting oppression directed toward other groups). 

Nope, each manifestation of oppression must be grappled with one by one...no free passes in this sort of work although many of us (me included) fall into the trap of thinking that we're good to go if we recycle or something. It isn't that easy...if it were oppression would have disappeared long ago.

There is no "purity", no end point...while we're alive...we have to work at understanding and resisting oppression else we'll end up upholding it. 

Three black men

who advocated for greater freedom and justice were all murdered within a 5 year span (1963 to 1968) and before they had reached the age of 40.

Medgar Evers, aged 37.

Malcom X, aged 39.

Martin Luther King, Jr., aged 39.

I was transitioning from childhood to adulthood during those 5 years.

It should also be remembered that JFK (age 46) was murdered in 1963 and his brother, RFK (age 42) was murdered in 1968.

So, in that 5 year span, 5 prominent political figures were murdered...3 black men and 2 white men...and...each one of those political figures were (to a greater or lesser degree) advocating against oppression and for greater freedom and justice in the U.S.

And...they were all murdered...here...in the "land of the free".

Wakey wakey.

P.S. One way to think about these men is that they were all engaged in efforts to interrupt/disrupt white supremacy (JFK and RFK less so than ME, MX and MLK). Often (always?) when oppression is resisted, if that resistance is perceived as threatening...then violence is inflicted on those who resist. 

Time for a quote

"An astute colleague of mine once observed that liberal democracies in the West were generally run for the benefit of the top, say, 20 percent of the wealth and income distribution. The trick, he added, to keeping this scheme running smoothly has been to convince, especially at election time, the next 30 to 35 percent of the income distribution to fear the poorest half more than they envy the richest 20 percent."

pg 18-19, Two Cheers for Anarchism, James C. Scott.

Several years ago I very much thought this was good stuff...now...while it looks good (but is erroneous) it is very obvious to me that it was written by a white man presenting the thinking of another white man.

I seem to be getting into a place where I can usually tell what race/sex positions someone occupies by reading some of their thinking.

It's rather disorienting.

I've been

trying to figure out how to think about "identity" for a long long time. (and still am)

I ran across this quote from Patricia Hill Collins that makes it make better sense to me. She wrote:

Intersectionality has attracted  substantial  scholarly  attention  in the 1990s. Rather than examining  gender, race, class, and nation as distinctive social hierarchies, intersectionality examines  how they mutually construct  one another. 

A couple of years ago I was sort of stunned by reading the statement that there has never existed a woman in the U.S. who wasn't also assigned a race...or a man either nor has anyone, of any "race", who wasn't also assigned to the category of either woman or man. It's impossible to separate them. I'd never thought about race/sex that way...but the truth of it struck me immediately.

Dr. Collins' writing expands on and fills that idea out. The key operation here, I think, is the notion of mutual construction. Our "identity" is a project of mutual construction and thinking about it (them) without this in mind is misleading. No one floats around who is "just" their class or "just" their race or or or. There is no "just"...all these factors occur simultaneously and constantly.

But...thinking that way is really hard (for me anyway)...it's so appealing to thing about one thing at a time...it's also misleading as hell.

The English language is rather poor at assisting us in considering stuff like this. I'm beginning to think that's not totally accidental. The language itself works to make this invisible...or at least really really hard to comprehend and think about.

English is a language created by and maintained by western European white men and those are the folks who brought us the abomination of colonization. It would make sense for their language to make it hard to think about systems that support awfulness that 'benefits' white men. White men couldn't see themselves as "good people" if they thought what they were doing was bad...so...a language they created would, of course, make talking/thinking about this stuff really difficult and misleading.

In case you're wondering what in hell this has to do with veganism, it was those same white men (back in the "enlightenment") who came up with the idea of "race" and they also came up with the notions of "human" and "animal" and that somehow "humans" are superior to "animals".

All the systems of oppression are connected and mutually constructed.

Our "identity" serves to locate our position(s) in power hierarchies (systems of oppression) and our place in those hierarchies determines (or at least profoundly influences) how human society values us and interacts with us. (note: identity would include not only such categories like race, sex, gender, class and such but also species.)