Read about this in more detail over on the APHRO-ISM site. This graphic offers a brief summary.
I'm really eager to see this effort get underway and am looking forward to the content that will be presented. Excellent!!
Context is necessary for understanding why works like this are absolutely critical and for that some reading will be required. First you should read the piece called "#BlackVegansRock: 100 Black Vegans to Check Out" written by Aph Ko. It is a tremendous resource and one that I will be continuing to reference and learn from for a long time. It is an amazing piece of work. The comments located on the page include additional useful information and references to more black vegans and their efforts.
Once you've spent some time with that article you should read a follow up piece that was written by Aph Ko regarding some of the reactions that followed the sharing of her article by The Vegan Society on their facebook page. While Aph Ko references this bit of writing in her follow up...I'm linking to it specifically because I think it is an important bit of elaboration about some aspects of these sorts of efforts...especially if you struggle with the mystification engendered by memes like "post-racial".
I'm really looking forward to the launching of this new website and I'm grateful for the efforts of all who are contributing to it.
2 comments:
You know I never really gave it much thought about race and veganism, but you are right that veganism is mostly associated with white people though I admit I did not make the connection until you pointed this out. I can’t imagine this is intentional, at least I hope not. Veganism also appears to me in the main to be dominated by young people, many people of my generation wouldn’t even know what the word meant. I really do wish we could all learn to live together and define ourselves as human beings and leave it at that, but I guess it is easy for me to say that as a white person. Racial prejudice is rife despite efforts to make us think otherwise. Sadly there are so many prejudices and discriminations and segregations. Veganism was around long before the white man coined the word, the religion of Jainism, one of the oldest religions in the world, for instance. Members of this religion are vegan and avoid harm to any living being in ways that may seem extreme even to committed vegans - they even do not consume certain plants that involve killing the plant and cover their mouths to avoid consuming tiny creatures.
I can understand black people, or any other race or group, wishing to highlight their own achievements if it is felt that they are overlooked in a discriminative way, which unfortunately appears to be the case.
Thank you for commenting Christine. Your reference to intention(s) meshed well with a re-training that I'm working on with myself and that is to de-emphasize the notion of intention and place much more focus on impact and/or outcome. There's an aphorism that's been around a long time that references an aspect of this: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Which suggests folks have known that intention is sort of deficient in terms of figuring out whether something is desirable or not. We can do great awfulness with "pure hearts".
You're quite correct...white folks didn't invent the notion of avoiding harm to others. :-0
Post a Comment