Dear Black People,
I hope we are well…but I know we are not.
At any rate, I want to talk about this idea of compassion towards animals. Particularly, how we as black people feel that one should not advocate for animal rights while we as black people are struggling for civil rights. For many of us, the belief is an either or approach: either you fightin’ for the animals and thus don’t care about me or you fightin for me as a black person and you do care.
Well, I am here to tell you that you can do both!
As a black person, it is perfectly fine to advocate for our own rights. But why must we then stop at us? We can love all beings and love ourselves too!
It’s okay, I promise!
Now some of us get offended at the non-black vegans who invest a lot of energy into fighting for animal rights but seem eerily silent when it comes to our injustices. Though there are many who advocate on both sides for both civil and animal rights, some do not. However, this does not bother me. Mainly for two reasons:
One, we need different people focused solely on different battles (divide and conquer).
And two, it ain’t nobody else’s job to fight for me when I can fight for myself (dismantling the learned helpless mindset prevalent in the black community).
Everybody does not need to be front and center at every battle. That is not an effective use of man power. Those who are willing to stand on the front lines and fight for the animals, be my guest. Just like I can respect the LGBT community without standing on the front lines of their battles, vegan advocates can respect us as black people without standing on the battlefields on our behalf.
Which leads to the second point: because they shouldn’t be there.
We as black people need to fight our own battles and not wait around and take attendance of who all shows up. OUR fight can only win when OUR people declare what WE want and go for it. Not by us having someone serve us a prepackaged dish and then telling us how to eat it.
So, as a black person, don’t get mad at the non-black vegan who is absent on our struggles. You have to remember that it is not their fight. They are doing a great job of advocating for the voiceless, which we are not voiceless. We just have to get used to and comforted in the sounds of our own voices outside of a rap song.
With Blegan Love,
Doc 🙂