Who is your veganism for, and who is it excluding?

Graphics by: Halima Jibril

Words by: Nilo Khamani

The world is on fire. It’s burning up and freezing down and then burning up again, all in a pace scary enough for people to make changes. These changes include reducing the use of single-use plastic, finding alternatives to travelling by plane and doing less first-hand shopping. But one solution is a little louder than the rest and claims to do the most good: going vegan. With the many environmental benefits, veganism brings, going vegan is encouraged, as dietary changes are necessary for the environment. So in September 2016, 3 years ago, I went vegan. Going vegan has been great, and I don’t have any plans of going back to actively consuming animal products anytime soon- but that doesn’t mean it has been 3 years without any struggles. Discussing the issues of veganism in general and in the vegan community, in particular, is opposed with no real reason. Veganism is made to be a shield that protects you from ever doing anything wrong, but if you’re anything other than the upper-class white kid who backpacked until they found themselves you most likely know it’s only an illusion. So let’s briefly discuss the flaws of the vegan movement and the community and ask ourselves: who is your veganism for, and who is it excluding?

For being a community that heavily relies on non-white and non-European food cultures, the vegan community sure knows how to disrespect people of color. Tofu, tempeh, seitan are recommended as good meat substitutes, dishes from countless of non-European countries are staples in many homes. While there’s nothing wrong with sharing knowledge of food across nations, doing it while blatantly disrespecting the people from the nations you got the food from is. Something recurring in the process of attracting non-vegans towards veganism is displaying the way animals are treated, and often comparing it to historical human events- mostly events affecting people of color. Pictures of black slaves or Jews in concentration camps are slapped beside pictures of animals, in an attempt to have the viewer think as poorly of the food industry as they do of the oppression of minority groups. While I see the thought process behind it, white vegans exploiting historical traumas for the sake of recruiting vegans doesn’t sit right with me at all- it makes me highly uncomfortable. You are not lifting animals to the level of humans, you are harming people of color. Do you really respect the victims of these historical events? Do you understand the aftermath of them and how these minorities live today if you can post pictures of them either dying or being dead on your social media platform without a second thought, just for the sake of your veganism?

The notion of who to blame for what the earth is going through is so messy that it’s straight-up confusing. Spending more energy on blaming individual meat-eaters instead of having people come together as a collective to demand change from corporations and people in power is slowing the movement down. As you probably see and hear every day- we do not have much time and white vegans waste time by playing a blame game and targeting people who cannot do much on their own, instead of holding the people in power accountable. The perception that every person has the same responsibility when it comes to climate change is false, and making complex issues into an issue of meat consumption erases the differences in responsibility, and makes it easier for big corporation CEOs to get away with their actions. On June 2nd this year, The Economist tweeted a video with the caption, “More poor people are eating meat around the world. That means they will live longer, healthier lives, but it is bad news for the environment”. Are we ready to let poor people- the people who have done the least to ruin the environment, and suffer the biggest consequences- fall ill or die for the sake of the environment? Is it really poor people’s fault, or is it the way corporations and consumption work today? 

We saw the issues shifting focus when the Amazon fires went viral. My timeline started flooding with people blaming meat-eaters for what was happening. While many of the fires were because of cattle ranching, going vegan would not stop those fires, because many of those fires were not for the sake of selling meat. Indigenous communities are specifically targeted, and harming the nature they live in is a direct and racist attack against them. The current president of Brazil, Jail Bolsonaro, has been outspoken about his hatred for Brazil's indigenous communities for years before he ran for president, and while running he spoke about abolishing indigenous territories, dismantling FUNAI (Brazil’s department for indigenous affairs) and has spoken about assimilation. To completely ignore this, to not see these fires as a threat to indigenous communities and instead make it an issue of meat consumption only is harmful, to the indigenous people first and foremost, and to the earth as a whole in the long run. 

I’m not advocating for meat consumption. If you are able to change your dietary habits- you should. But for the vegan community to blatantly disrespect the minorities it relies on, and ignore other minorities while discussing issues such as climate change is harmful to everyone. We cannot have it this way, because change will not come our way if we don’t. So if you are a vegan, especially if you are a white vegan, please try to widen your understanding of the issues you speak of, and try to analyze the way you think and speak about these issues. I myself still have many things to learn, but acknowledging it and actively moving forward is a start and maybe, with a more diverse set of knowledge, attracting people towards veganism will become easier.

By Nilo Khamani

(she/her)

Nilo is a First-Person and Opinions writer @ PARDON!

Read more about Nilo on OUR TEAM! page.