Veganism of Color: Decentering Whiteness in Human and Nonhuman Liberation by Julia Feliz Brueck

Author:Julia Feliz Brueck [Feliz Brueck, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sanctuary Publishers
Published: 2020-04-27T22:00:00+00:00

Cited Works

Equality Labs (2018). Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste Among South Asian Americans. Equality Labs: http://www.equalitylabs.org/caste-survey-2018

Norris, J. and Messina, V. (2011). Vegan for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet. Da Capo Lifelong Books

Breaking with Tradition, or Tradition Redefined?

By Cina Ebrahimi

Growing up in a semi-traditional Iranian family with a fair amount of religious leaning, I was taught from an early age that nonhuman animals, like human animals, had rights and were entitled to respect. At the same time, however, this same belief system held that it was acceptable for humans to use nonhuman animals (for food, clothing, etc.) just as long as certain protocols were met in regard to how they were raised and killed.

Despite this, for as long as I could remember, part of me always felt that consuming other animals was wrong. Maybe not intrinsically wrong, but at least circumstantially wrong (I was not living in such a place that required me to kill other animals in order to feed or clothe myself). I always knew that nonhumans felt pain, and, since most humans have an interest in not being in pain, the only logical conclusion, to me, was that nonhuman animals also have an interest in not feeling pain. So, why were we so comfortable with inflicting pain on nonhuman animals when we know that doing so causes them the same feeling we humans try so diligently to avoid?

Fast forward to the year 2004— the summer before I started high school. I was just getting into “activism” by attending anti-George Bush rallies and getting into hardcore punk bands like Black Flag and Minor Threat. One day, as I was sitting on the flatbed of a pick-up truck full of friends in the middle of the backwoods somewhere near North Bend, Washington, Brad— another guy from our crew— came towards our truck and asked to ride along with us, since there was no room left in the other vehicles in our convoy. I can’t remember how it came up, but we started talking about vegetarianism. This is when Brad mentioned that he was actually a “vegan.” I had heard that term prior to this point in time, but I had always just thought it was a synonym for vegetarian. After he had explained what veganism was, someone else had asked why he made the jump to that after being vegetarian. He simply responded that while his reason for vegetarianism was due to guilt with what happened to nonhuman animals, the guilt did not stop there. He explained that cows were literally sexually violated in order to produce milk. That was the first time I had ever heard of that. However, like most things that I heard that bothered me, I simply said to myself how terrible it was and went back to life as usual.

In the following years, as I had gotten more politically active (as far as I could, for a kid still in high

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