By Chief Saint
Any colonized person who is on the internet right now has, at one point or another, come across white veganism, an attempt to rebrand white power to mask its violence.
The Veganism social media movement originally started as African non men pushing back against medical malpractice and medication side effects by moving to a plant-based diet. The concept was a normal thing for colonized people across the world. This, like many of our long-held practices, has been colonized once again. The “light-hearted” side of white veganism can be laughed off when it comes to things like tweets and campaigns from PETA, but there is a much more sinister side to the movement that should be acknowledged.
What colonizers often refuse to acknowledge is how colonialism plays a huge part in how it makes the white vegan the slap in the face to colonized cultures that it is. Veganism has been practiced since before 3300 B.C.E by colonized people. It didn’t harm the earth because colonized people did so without endangering species and using fossil fuels.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
26% of greenhouse gas emissions are directly attributed to colonial capitalist food production and distribution. 5% of that is related to air travel in the united snakes, so the global impact is often dismissed. This doesn’t account for several ways that this lifestyle depends on colonized people’s lives and labor.
It doesn’t account for the fossil fuels used by a supply chain, forcing many colonized “essential workers” to transport and operate machinery. It doesn’t account for the amount of materials and gas emissions used by the amerikkkan department of defense to hunt down and attack workers at the fake u.s./Mexico border, the deportation, and incarceration used as terror tactics to keep labor costs cheap.
Add all of that to the fact that, per kilogram, produce transported by air creates more greenhouse gasses than poultry!
It is not an accident that pesticides and blatant species endangerment are omitted. The way that the labor and lives of colonized people are disregarded in the discussion of why white veganism is problematic is calculated and targeted. These all impact how greenhouse gasses alter the environment, but it’s easy to forget that your daily bowl of quinoa is destroying colonized lands to the point of complete land erosion when you can say that you’re not eating animal products.
Honey vs. Agave
A common debate amongst vegans is whether honey is ethical enough to fall in line with veganism’s beliefs. The main argument they use is that bees have brains and exhibit emotions. Hence, it’s unethical due to practices in the industry, such as industrial insemination and various other practices used to sustain the wasteful system of capitalism. Many of these practices are rightfully named as unethical or unnecessary, but for white veganism, that’s where it stops. There isn’t any true accountability for this because while there is a move to abstain from honey, alternate substitutes are made, and raw materials are once again being ripped from the earth by colonizers with the intensity of a toddler taking apart a small appliance. Agave, the main honey substitute, is being mass-produced to the point that it affects the local fauna. Fewer flowering agave plants mean hell on the native pollinators like bats.
If colonizers really cared about saving the bees, they’d destroy the system that is enslaving and massacring billions of colonized people and the planet!
Hammer City is the long-term answer to regaining self-determination for colonized people. It’s also a direct answer to reversing the atrocities the colonizer has committed on Mother Earth because it will address the environmental problem by its root. Colonialism.
So don’t fall for bullshit theories like white veganism; rather, make an impact in your community today by materially helping Colonized people by giving out PPE, food, coats, and building Hammer City. Join Black Hammer now and help be a part of liberation for all Colonized people.
Land Back.
