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Anti-Racist Vegan Activism Part 2

April 14, 2008

The second part of my new anti-racist vegan activism series examines Unresolved Trauma from Experiencing Racism (and not experiencing it): Challenges to AR from Sistah Vegan. (To see the entire reading list, go here. To read the first part, go here.)

Edit: This is a learning process for both of us. I am not a teacher here, I am a facilitator. I’m processing these thoughts myself and inviting you to comment and critique.*

Here is the essence of “Unresolved Trauma”:

I’m saddened by how traumatized my loved one, a woman in her 60s, is from growing up in an intensely racist society. She was extremely emotional about why she didn’t think black slavery should be equated with non-human animal suffering. [...] For her, she saw the PETA ad as suggesting that blacks are “animals”. Her perception of “animal” is connected to being called or seen as “dirty” or a “nigger”. [...] my loved one [...] is stuck in the trauma of growing up as a black poor girl in the inner-city of Hartford, CT in a time of overt racism in America. It is absolutely impossible for me to explain to her the concept of speciesism because she has been so thoroughly traumatized by racism and what it “means” for someone to suggest that “her suffering” is the same as an “animal”.

For her, “animal” has a different “meaning” than it does for many people like myself. You should have seen the hurt, anger and sadness in her eyes as she tried to tell me why “animals” cannot be paralleled to the experiences of people who have lived through racism, genocide of their people, etc. [emphasis added]

I have seen this hurt in others when I’ve made slavery analogies, comparing groups of oppressed persons to groups of oppressed animals. I’ve said:

[PETA] started a campaign a few years ago that showed the similarities between slavery (and other oppression) and animal exploitation. The similarities are striking and they make a good case.

However, people who do not believe animals deserve liberation are offended by the comparison. Someone who thinks it’s OK to chain up an animal will probably not be persuaded that it’s not OK by showing them how we used to chain up people, too. [...]

Some people who think it’s OK to eat meat get offended when you use “human” words, like when you call ‘meat’ ‘flesh’ or when you call ’slaughter’ ‘execution’ or ‘murder.’ They are offended because they don’t see the similarity. They think there’s nothing in common between human forced labor and animal forced labor. They really, truly don’t get it.

A better argument [against comparing oppressions] is that because there are so many racists, misogynists, bigots and other people who do not believe in the liberation of any group of beings dissimilar to their own group, comparisons between enslaved, oppressed, disenfranchised, and otherwise non-powerful groups of beings possibly damages all liberation movements. People are naturally afraid of change. They tend to handle small, gradual change better than large, sweeping change. They tend to accept those most similar and then slowly extend that range of tolerance, compassion, and acceptance outward.

The rich, old, powerful, white guy who only just realized the systematic oppression of women after watching his daughter harassed at high school isn’t going to automatically apply that lesson to other groups of oppressed people and certainly not to animals. He’s more likely to see racy PeTA ads and think they’re exploitative of women than think “wow, there’s a connection between feminism and animal rights.” He just won’t get the animal rights message at all. For him, the ad only serves to promote mainstream anti-women ideas.

[...] Lots of people who ‘get it’ in one way don’t get it in other ways. It’s like they have blinders on and only see this or that section of oppressive behavior. We’re all guilty of it, actually. I write my blog from my own experience and my experience is white, middle class, educated female in the US. I’m not going to really understand racism the same way as a person who experiences it.

In the past, I’ve been on the fence. I will make the slavery analogy at times, but it’s rare indeed, because whenever I bring it up, it evokes tremendous anti-animal rhetoric as well as the hurt Sistah Vegan describes.

Some people understand it and for them the analogy is worthwhile: it can inspire animal-friendly lifestyle changes or animal activism, and it can inspire anti-racist or anti-sexist activism as well. For those who don’t understand it, the analogy might be useless. It’s difficult to tell because the exposure the this idea of connected oppressions, even if hurtful, might later develop into understanding.

They say our minds need to be exposed to a new idea multiple times before we actually consider it, so the first few exposures might not be productive, but the end result could be worthwhile. And, sadly, our minds remember vivid memories better than subtle ones, so the controversial and even sometimes hurtful exposures to new ideas tend to form lasting memories. That is, an exposure to a vivid sexy or violent PETA demonstration or ad is more likely to be remembered than exposure to a quiet, subtle, and polite vegan. Indeed the very reason the vegan stereotype is of a judgmental, self-righteous, loud, and rude person is because that particular minority vegan is more memorable than the majority of vegans who defy that stereotype.

The challenge, of course, is to turn those vivid and sometimes hurtful memories into something positive that benefits both humans and animals.

Sistah Vegan’s approach:

I tried to get her to go deeper into this; to suggest that we look at the meaning of “animal” in a way that hasn’t been tainted by her experiences with racism. However, it wasn’t successful and she is too damn scarred and traumatized and simultaneously too “stoic” and most likely embarassed to ever consider going to trauma therapy so she can move past her anti-oppression philosophies as “only for humans” and move into a philosophy of social justice for humans, non-human animals and the planet.

I can understand why someone with her trauma would not see the speciesism they are engaging in yet CLEARLY oppose human injustices. My loved one is fervently against sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, racism, classism– anything that has to do with making life “hell” for humans, she is opposed to. She “get’s it.” However, her own trauma with racism and the meaning she has applied to “animals”, shows me how powerful the trauma of surviving vicious racism can be in this country and how her own suffering from an unacknowledged trauma (and need for therapy with a black female specialist who “gets it”) prevents her from embracing compassion for animals and humans simultaneously. [emphasis added]

This is a true challenge. How to advocate for animals without causing new or remembered trauma?

Even animal advocates are traumatized. Purely the act of knowing and seeing animal suffering is trauma. I cry every single day for animals. Every day. When I write these posts here and at Vegan Soapbox, sometimes I cry. when I preview expose videos to post on Vegan Soapbox, I cry. When I think about animals suffering on factory farms, on death row in animal shelters, abandoned and locked in foreclosed homes, on fur farms, in canned hunts, in laboratories, in zoos and circuses, in exotic animal trade, and everywhere animals suffer. The knowledge of how animals suffer and the knowledge of the limitless cruelty of which humans are capable of inflicting upon both human animals and nonhuman animals alike is traumatic.

There is far too much trauma in the world for human minds to comprehend without compartmentalizing, prioritizing, rationalizing, desensitizing, and expressing. We ALL do it. From Sistah Vegan:

It is my belief that this is what absence of healing of trauma from racism (not to mention heterosexism, sexism, classism, ableism, etc) does to many who have the potential to “see” the interconnectedness of human, non-human animal and environmental suffering. Maybe the same can be said for many white identified people who have experienced intense trauma from witnessing non-human animals and the environment suffer from culturally accepted institutionalized speciesism in the USA, but are unable to “see” past non-human suffering. The result of this particular trauma seems to be an inability for many to reflect on how other traumas— such as surviving ongoing institutional and overt racism– prevent a group of other people from sympathizing and empathizing with non-human animal suffering.

Indeed, there are times when I’ve said (to myself, not aloud, this is a first) to people upset by comparisons between oppressions, Your trauma is emotional, it’s often memory or knowledge; the animals’ trauma is their reality NOW. I think animals’ suffering is more intense, thus I make it my priority. This is why I react more strongly to a white person who criticizes the slavery analogy than to a person of color who criticizes the slavery analogy, because the offense to the white person is, in my opinion, pretty superficial. The white person’s experience of racism is not nearly as traumatic as the person of color’s.

I haven’t said this aloud because I know such a statement evokes more trauma for people whose definition of ‘animal’ requires a hierarchy wherein humans are above all other species and thus any comparison between humans and animals is, by definition, a slur on humans. They often react like this:

[E]quating a hateful, violent organization like the KKK to the AKC [...] essentially trivializes the crimes of the KKK; it also trivializes their victims by equating them with dogs and trivializes their suffering by equating systematic hate crimes, lynchings, intimidation and discrimination with docking a dog’s tail.

Here the writer makes four mistakes:

1. Instead of viewing the ad (seen here) as raising the status of animals to humans, and acknowledging human status isn’t so great for a good deal of people, the writer assumes the ad lowers the status of humans to animals,
2. The writer doesn’t fully consider the implications of the ad: that the AKC (American Kennel Club) is not simply a “benign organization” that “judges pedigree dogs”, but rather an organization that supports, finances, and profits from puppy mills, which are an extreme abuse of animals,
3. Ignores the racial progress we’ve made that allows the negative social effect of comparing the KKK to any other organization; the mere fact that the KKK elicits such negative reactions in any decent human being shows the intent of the ad is to smear the AKC, not to smear people of color,
4. Intent matters. (It’s not everything, but it should count for something.) Even those offended by the ad can recognize the intent of the ad to help dogs. The intent is not to harm humans.

(All of the above commentary about the PETA ad is explanation, not justification. I’m not sure if it’s justified or not. Originally, I thought it was, but if more and more people say the ad hurts them, I’m just not sure.)

But more importantly, the reason I shouldn’t say animals’ suffering is more intense is because I am not in the minds’ of others. I cannot feel how they feel and I cannot rightfully compare sufferings of sentient beings outside of myself. I cannot know that the human experience of racism isn’t just as or more intensely felt than the nonhuman animal’s experience of speciesim. I cannot know that physical brutality is more damaging than emotional brutality. My experience is mostly as oppressor and ally. I am only in the position of the oppressed as a woman, past experiences as a poor person, and currently as a person with vilified perspectives (atheist, liberal, vegan).

So, while I often feel that animals’ suffering is more intense I cannot know it for certainty, partially due to the blinders of white privilege and partially due to the human condition of being isolated from the world by our own minds’ subjective experience. The same reason I argue we should be agnostic about animal suffering and there’s no need to prove that all animals experience pain in order to abstain from causing potential pain, for they are similar enough to humans not to justify oppression of them simply by differences, we should also be agnostic about the suffering in other humans created by animal activism. So we should take people who say they’ve been traumatized at their word and we should listen to their voices.

In all efforts for social change, as allies, we should listen to the voices of those whose lives we seek to improve.

Sistah Vegan concludes:

I am all about open-ended honesty to work through and abolish speciesism, racism, sexism, etc. Though my attempt is to understand all sides’ perceptions and reactions to “injustice”, I too am still healing from the trauma of racism and have A LOT to learn— or rather unlearn– about the anger, fear, hate, suffering, etc that drive the fragmentation of justice movements that could come together as one..

I too have a lot to learn and unlearn. Let’s do it together.

—

*Open to comment and criticism, however, commenters should be truly interested in anti-racist vegan activism.

I am NOT interested in hearing from people who aren’t involved in either movement. Likewise, I won’t tolerate discussions that sound like this “Well animals aren’t as important as people, so we should forget about animal activism and focus of racism.” That doesn’t help.

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