UC Berkeley Talk Part I: Queen Afua and Race-Gender Conscious Veganism

Part I: This the first part of a talk I gave at UC Berkeley, Nov 16, 2011. I read content from my dissertation in progress. I focus on what an Afrocentric vegan practice looks like, through the eyes of Afua, who feels that black female's womb health can only be decolonized through a khemetic vegan diet.


Last night I spoke at UC Berkeley, and explained the Afrocentric approach to veganism that is race-gender conscious, decolonial, and revolutionary black feminist. I did this because I wanted to explain that there are more than just Eurocentric philosophical 'ethics' behind why some people choose veganism. By Eurocentrism, I mean the philosophical canon of 'ethics and animals' that dominate the mainstream academic literature in the USA. While Eurocentric philosophy focuses on the 'ethics' of non-human animal consumption and non-human animal exploitation, Afrocentric veganism (through Queen Afua) focuses on how veganism becomes a decolonial tool against the unethical abduction and enslavement of Africans and the institutional of chattel slavery; an unethical institution that took away their original plant-centered dietary philosophy and "forcing" them to eat a carnicentric diet. This is what a vegan methodology of the racially oppressed can look like! Video of talk and Q&A :

If you comment in a way that is obvious you didn't watch the video, but are "annoyed" that I am looking at race, whiteness, and decolonial theories as a way to understand vegan consciousness, I will not post your comments. For me, it simply doesn't make sense to receive passive aggressive comments from people who don't know anything about my work, haven't watched the video, but then feel like they are "experts" on the subject matter and then wish to "educate" me about my "incorrect" 4+ years of dissertation research and 35 years of racialized-gendered bodily experience as a black female in the USA. If it's not enough that I have been "educated" at Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and now University of California, learned how to engage in qualitative research, and document ongoing themes in vegan cultural practices (themes that are influenced by race, class, gender, whiteness, neoliberalism), then what more can I offer? (I'm being funny with educated in quotations, because of the mainstream assumption that if you just "educate" non-white folk through the "proper" Western university educational system, they will "assimilate" and agree with the perceptions of the white middle class status quo. But if they don't, they must simply be 'irrational' and 'angry', and must be "educated more")

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Queen Afua
• veganism
• breeze harper
• sistah vegan
• decolonial
• decolonizing the womb

[sistahvegan]

I probably won't publish it into a book until 2013, but I should be able to file for graduation for 2012, and have it available online by end of summer, if my committee approves of me and I can afford to finish my education. Thanks for watching! I have a blog that has all my videos I recorded at universities, at my sistah vegan blog. Just type in Sistah Vegan blog in the google search, and it will come up. YOUTube won't let me post the url for some reason.

[drroberson4]

Your dissertation sounds so interesting!! When it is published I would love to read it!! I am a vegetarian and I can see why PETA does not interest me. I care about animals, but it is so much more than that to me. People in this world are suffering...if I can alleviate there pain in some way that would mean more to me. Great video and thank you for sharing.

[rhaineh2os]

Ohh simple wonderful! Thank you for the video...wish I was there!