Black veganism facts for kids
Black veganism is a social and political philosophy as well as a diet in the United States. It connects the use of non-human animals with other social justice concerns such as racism, and with the lasting effects of slavery, such as the subsistence diets of enslaved people enduring as familial and cultural food traditions. Dietary changes caused by the Great Migration also meant former farmers, who had previously been able to grow or forage their own vegetables, became reliant on processed foods.
Sisters Syl Ko and Aph Ko first proposed and coined the term Black veganism.
By 2021, research showed that Black people were among the fastest-growing demographics of vegans in the US.
History
Veganism as a named movement historically was made up primarily of white people.
The modern Black veganism movement takes inspiration from Rastafarianism, which developed a plant-based diet known as Ital in Jamaica in the 1930s, and groups like the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, which has advocated strict veganism since the 1960s, and the Nation of Islam, which specifically connected choosing a plant-based diet to fighting racist oppression. It also has roots in the American Civil Rights movement; Dick Gregory, who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., argued that "Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike."
Aph and Syl Ko are prominent Black philosophers, together they contributed a philosophical framework for Black veganism. In 2017 Aph and Syl Ko published Aphro-ism; Corey Lee Wrenn in a review said it presented Black veganism as "a political protest against the oppressiveness of animality, Eurocentric hierarchy-building, and harmful foodways."
By the late 2010s research was showing that up to 8% of Black Americans identified as vegan, as compared to about 3% for the US population as a whole.
The Institute for Critical Animal Studies called Black veganism an "emerging discipline".
