It's lonely being vegan in a world where ninety-nine percent aren't.1 Most people neither know nor care what vegan means, and even those who claim they do more frequently do not. Still, for many of us, there is no other option. We're in it for the revolution, for the liberation of animals.
The world can be even lonelier for a vegan when you're Black and female. Imagine the small numbers of us there must be. We're unique beings for sure, so we're isolated. And our culture, if not cultures, are typically far from supportive of the life we have been called to lead. So we find our vegan selves existing in states of duality, conflicted and torn, wearing masks over our faces as we try to fit in, even as we do not. This, in addition to the dual states we already exist in as regards our race, our gender, and our sexualities.
Involvement in animal-rights issues as a Black woman for me means injecting myself into a subculture where Black women are rare. It means going to protests and holding signs decrying abuse of animals and wondering why no other Black people are there, also raising their voices. It means going against the grain of my own cultural norms to participate in the bigger social issue of eradicating animal torture. It means using my one Black voice to try to sway an entire Black Nation, in one fell swoop.
The duality exists in that my own Black popular culture, as fed to me through hip-hop and the media, tells me that I am neither good enough nor Black enough unless I am exploiting animals (women included). I must be ever-rocking the chinchilla coats (i.e., chinchilla animals as fabric products rather than as living, breathing beings), ever-sporting the finest leathers (i.e., killed cow carcasses as outerwear), and ever-welcoming of Black women shaking their ass for cash or to have a credit card swiped down its crack (as in Nelly's “Tip Drill” video). Further, I should go onstage pulling Black women bound in chains and call myself a Dogg (i.e., Snoop). And I should be dissing, if not totally ignoring, anyone who dares to call me out about my choices (e.g., Beyoncé when confronted by PETA). I must do these things or I am less than Black. I must do these things to maintain my rep, my swagger. I must support Black sneaker manufacturers (like Russell Simmons) by buying the leather wares that he peddles, and I must do this while ignoring the fact that he refers to himself as a “vegan.”2 Because, after all, Russell is Black. And to be Black in the greater hip-hop culture is to be notoriously nonvegan.3
Before we delve deeper into these and other examples of what is nonvegan, let's clarify and define its opposite: vegan. Vegan is a word that was invented in the United Kingdom in 1944 by Donald Watson and Elsie Shrigley, founders of the Vegan Society.4 This couple defined veganism in a memorandum:
[T]he word “veganism” denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practical—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”5
The goal of the Vegan Society is to provide advice on living free of animal products for the benefit of people, animals, and the environment.6 To vegans, anything that does not meet this definition of vegan is not vegan.
Thus, we get back to nonvegan Black culture and the co-opting of the vegan label by those with their own agendas, with disregard to the true meaning of the word and what it entails. The problem with many Black women who label themselves as vegan, in my experience, is that they aren't. They may claim to be vegan but they are merely concerned about avoiding certain animal products for superficial health or so-called spiritual reasons, paying little to no attention whatsoever to the detrimental impacts of their consumption decisions on nonhuman animals and on environment. For example, many of these so-called vegans eat honey, saying it's good for them and listing ways in which it benefits their health. Never do they mention, or express any concern over, the fact that honey is derived from an animal (the bee) and from the raping and exploitation of bees and their hives. Many Black so-called vegan women will also wear wool and leather. But you're not a vegan if you embrace wearing wool and leather, no matter how many tofu dinners and steamed vegetables you eat.
In addition, it is common to find a desire by people in the Black community to avoid what they call “swine,” meaning the flesh of pigs. While many Black people come from a slave culture that gorged itself on things like ham hocks and chitlins, it's very common these days to find Blacks who will eat anything under the sun, except “swine.” If vegan was the name given Blacks who ate anything but swine, the percentage of Black vegans in the world would be astounding.
In the movie Mandingo, a Black enslaved field hand is cooked alive in a cauldron at the end of the film. The film is about slavery and how Black men and women are bred on a Southern plantation. Modern viewers of this time period would be appalled at the behaviors portrayed in the film. Beings are given no choice of mate; they are forced to engage in sexual activity with one another while their “master” watches, to live in separate quarters from loved ones, and to give birth to beings who are promptly taken away and sold to other plantations. They are forced to suckle beings not their own for the benefit of others. Yet when situations like this occur each day to farm animals, where is the outrage? When birds are de-beaked and scalded alive so that brothas and sistahs on the south side of Chicago can eat them some fried chickens in KFC, where is the outrage? What makes a chicken's life any less valuable than a Black human life?
The word to describe the difference and displacement in value is speciesism. The term speciesism was coined by Richard D. Ryder in 1970 to denote prejudice against animals that is similar in kind to sexism and racism.7 As Black people, we need to struggle to eradicate speciesism in society as fervently as we work to overcome racism. We have our NAACP, but why not a NAANA? (National Association for the Advancement of Nonhuman Animals). Along with PUSH, how about a PUSS (People United to Stop Speciesism)? When we as a people learn that “isms” are interrelated and that oppression of any being of any kind is tied to our own oppression, then we can begin to overcome those oppressions for the benefit of all. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and homosexism are all interconnected.
One thing that prevents Black people from being considerate of the plight of animals and how they are tortured, beaten, abused, raped, and exploited, is the way that animals are portrayed in the media—particularly in media by Black producers of popular culture. You can't turn on the radio or watch a music video these days without either hearing or seeing animal abuse and exploitation. Black women especially are complicit in this degrading behavior. We like to make a big deal about women shaking their asses in music videos and how damaging that is to Black culture, but where is the outrage when Beyoncé Knowles sings adoringly about murdered chinchillas (“She goin' be rockin' chinchilla coats if I let you go”),8 or when her boyfriend, Jay-Z, raps longingly with her about it (“My texture is the best fur, of chinchilla”),9 or when Mary J. Blige preemptively lashes out at PETA, an organization committed to the end of animal exploitation, regarding any attempts on their part to educate her about how animals are brutalized and exploited to manufacture the coats that she wears?
Those PETA people don't want to mess with me, they don't want to throw paint on my coat because it's not just going to be throwing paint. It's going to be Mary in the news the next day, you know what I mean? What gives them the right to destroy someone's coat because their opinion is that you shouldn't wear animals? Understand what I'm saying?10
Beyoncé has also been confronted by PETA about her penchant for fur wearing and promotion, to which pleas she was nonresponsive.11
Part of the fear that Black women have in caring about the plight of animals that causes them to distance themselves from nonhuman animals is that for so long, Black women have been likened to these beings and thus subjugated as such by speciesist racists. So there is frequently a gut reaction against being referred to in any way that recalls that subjugation. Saartjie Baartman, commonly referred to as the Hottentot Venus, was one historical Black woman taken from her African home and put on display in Europe for the size of her buttocks.12 She was essentially treated as a modern-day zoo animal or sideshow freak, for voyeurs. According to Patricia Hill Collins:
Animals can be economically exploited, worked, sold, killed, and consumed. As “mules,” African-American women become susceptible to such treatment. . . . It is no accident that racist biology, religious justifications for slavery and women's subordination, and other explanations for nineteenth-century racism and sexism arose during a period of profound political and economic change. Symbolic means of domination become particularly important in mediating contradictions in changing political economies. The exhibition of Sarah Bartmann [sic] and Black women on the auction block were not benign intellectual exercises—these practices defended real material and political interests. Current transformations in international capitalism require similar ideological justifications. . . . Publicly exhibiting Black women may have been central to objectifying Black women as animals and to creating the icon of Black women as animals.13
Mass numbers of Black women will not become vegan unless other enlightened Black women lead by example. This leadership entails enticing those who are vegetarian to make the transition to veganism as well as inducing those completely outside of the veggie box to convert to veganism outright. One key Black female role model is Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple and other acclaimed literary works. Walker is well known within the vegan community for her foreword to the book The Dreaded Comparison by Marjorie Spiegel, in which she writes:
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than Black people were made for whites or women for men. This is the essence of Ms. Spiegel's cogent, humane, and astute argument, and it is sound.14
Media are key to how vegans are perceived in the world. The lack of images available to compete against the likes of the Beyoncés and Mary J. Bliges of the world is problematic. We need to see more vegan-identified Black women in the spotlight. Alice Walker spoke openly about her past romantic relationship with singer Tracy Chapman in an interview with the UK Guardian newspaper.15 But Tracy is not vegan; she has been noted to have given up on veganism and started to eat fish due to a so-called challenging spell of eating on the road while on tour.16 One might ask, do Black women vegans have a responsibility to partner with other vegans as a way to strengthen the vegan movement?
The challenge in being a Black female vegan is in standing tall about what we believe in and being a guiding light for others, being somebody else's impact. It is a difficult position to be in but one that we must embrace and claim proudly. We must use every pedestal given to us to advance the cause of veganism and increase societal awareness of the issue. We have to let the world know that pro-animal advocacy is not a “white thing” but a RIGHT thing of which people of all colors and backgrounds need to be a part.