17 - Memoir

Summary

Introduction

According to 2019 Gallup data, people of color in the United States are three times as likely to adopt plant-based diets than white Americans. Nine per cent of Americans of color professed not to eat meat, while only three per cent of white Americans claimed the same. Besides health, environmental awareness was the key motivator for eschewing meat (Hrynowski). Animal agriculture is a leading contributor to the ongoing climate crisis, impacting communities of color more than white ones. Black and Indigenous communities and other communities of color experience greater negative consequences from pollution and environmental degradation, and industrialized animal farms and runoff are often in working-class, non-white neighborhoods (Harper 51). As public opinion surveys prove, Americans of color are more concerned about environmental issues than white Americans (Ballew et al.; Leiserowitz and Akerlof; Mohai; Pearson et al.).

Even though people of color in the US are more likely than white people to choose a meatless diet, veganism is generally associated with whiteness. This association is true not only for the wider public but also for communities of color themselves (Greenebaum; Wallach 155). Jessica Greenebaum suggests that this association is due to the over-representation of white people in vegan marketing and some prominent vegan groups’ seeming prioritization of animal rights over human rights (1). Animal rights and vegan non-profits like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have repeatedly antagonized marginalized communities (Pellow 261; Wrenn 197). PETA campaigns have compared the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust and enslaved Black Americans to that of animals without also acknowledging the lived suffering of humans during these historical instances. Human rights organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have criticized this comparison, arguing that defaming Jews and Black people as animals has a long history in “Western” societies (Balleck 14; Davis 479). While being called an “animal” is not necessarily offensive in itself, it can be offensive in the context of racism and antisemitism (Haslam, Loughnan, and Sun). White Americans and Europeans have likened members of marginalized outgroups like Black and Indigenous people or Jews to “inferior” animals. Such metaphors have been used to justify violence against them (Jahoda; Livingstone Smith).