Dear Clara,
Thank you for taking the time to look at my website. Before I deeply dig into your question, I'm wondering if you identify as "white"?
I receive similar responses from quite a few white identified people who have never: experienced being called "nigger", or lived through segregation, or experienced being survivors of tribal genocide of their indigenous people. I am beginning to wonder why one, who has never been a recipient of this terror, perceives that "race is a feeble matter."
Psychologically and emotionally, why would a white-identified person feel so strongly about "race as a feeble matter", versus people of color? For example, do you think "race is a feeble matter" still, after Jena 6, Don Imus' cruel comments about Rutgers Basketball team, the noose hung on the black Columbia University professor's door this past fall, or that black women suffer from fibroid tumors 3x higher than that of white women? These are CURRENT situations that are entrenched in the consequences of racism. My dear, these aren't judgmental questions, I just really want to understand how and why you perceive my website and work, the way you have.
Maybe you don't realize this, but my research questions and motivations come from many black identified people I have talked to, within the "ethical consumption" movement, who have voiced their concerns about health, food, identity and justice. When scholars in the academy do research, we investigate questions that come to us; [we look at] arising themes we see in those questions. The themes may or may not be something that you agree with, but I cannot ignore that after 5,000 email dialogues among black identified female vegans, they are expressing concerns that involve the need to address race and class within veganism and animal rights. This is how scholarship is produced, for a social scientist such as myself :-)
I am trying, with compassion, to figure out how to better explain to people, who have not necessarily been recipients of "racism" and "ethnic genocide", that all of the oppressions we are working against, are interlocking; one cannot understand animal rights without understanding anti-racism, colonialism, sexism, nationalism, etc. I understand that you're a high school student and may have not been exposed to other perspectives of life, thus far. However, I bring in critical race theory (which is the theory that race is a construct, but has had deep consequences in the USA, such as black health disparities, white privilege, and genocide) as an analytical tool in understanding how everyone's consciousness, in the USA, have been shaped by "racialization". Racialization is the social process in which race is created and maintained. Yes, race is a social construction, but it has VERY REAL consequences. For example, collectively, black people will associate the term "animal" differently, than the collective consciousness of white people in America. Why? Well, You may or may not know this, but historically, black people where enslaved and colonized. The term "animal" was given to them as a "negative" connotation and it was an insult used against black people, even until today. White [class privileged] people were never called "animal" and never socially placed as "animal = negative = inferior= justifiably enslavable". Therefore, if I need to understand why black people in the USA, collectively disagree with PETA's Animal Liberation Project (images of black slaves paralleled to non-human animals), I need to bring in the effects of racialization and racism on the consciousness of black people. "Animal" was associated with being called a "nigger" and "dirty" by millions of black Americans. If I say "animal" to a white identified USAmerican born person, it most likely won't "trigger" the same emotional responses that it does for my mother, a black woman who survived Jim Crow segregation. Like many black people of her generation, my mother has deep trauma from being called "animal", "nigger" and "dirty". She associates "animal" in a negative way that makes her remember extremely harsh and cruel racist times in her life. Though it doesn't excuse her omnivorous practices, it helps me to better understand the emotional barriers that a black woman in her 60s, has, when I try to explain to her the importance of embracing animal rights philosophy into alleviating suffering in the world. She can't get past the "trauma" of being called "nigger" and "animal". She is not being "logical"; she is being "emotional". That is what trauma and triggers do. Therefore, PETA's efforts don't work with people like her. I'm trying to figure out what does, but I know for sure, that I MUST understand how race and and racialization in the USA, have shaped ALL of our consciousnesses.
If I want to begin to create educational models about animal rights and veganism, I have to understand race (and class and gender and sexual orientation) in the USA. It is not a feeble matter for me, not for my twin brother who was pulled over twice in one week for "driving while black" in an all white middle class neighborhood (car was searched and he was handcuffed). Despite the fact that he was wearing business attire and was an Ivy league student( and an amazingly spirited human being), he was pull over while commuting to his Dartmouth College internship. This was no feeble matter and my brother was a very scared 19 year old boy, only a few years older than you, and couldn't understand why this happened to him twice in one week. The sticker on our parents car was "expired". However, think of it: If you were driving a car with an expired registration sticker on it, do you think YOU would be pulled over, handcuffed and accused of being a drug dealer? Yes, my brother was asked if he was a drug dealer. Clara, please ask yourself this. Ask yourself how much terror and confusion you would have. Ask yourself why and how it would be thought that you were doing these things (drug dealing), simply because of an expired sticker. This happens to black men all the time. If my husband were driving a car with an expired registration sticker, he KNOWS he would just get a ticket. My husband is a white middle class doctor in astrophysics. Policemen in this country do not automatically perceive white men in America as DESERVING to be treated the same way my brother was, just for having an expired sticker on the car.
Many people of color- involved (and not involved) in AR and veganism suffer immensely from racism in this country. I read my students' papers, from my Ethnicity and America class, throughout our term. They are mostly college freshman, a few years older than you, from America and around the world. We have them write about their social identity and experiences with racism growing up (as perpetuators of racism and recipients). You would think you were reading stories written in 1947, but it is 2007. It breaks my heart that these kids continue to struggle with prejudice against them and their families because they are not white. There are also students (white and not white) who admitted their OWN racism against people of color. Many admitted, "This was how I was raised; to fear Mexicans" or "To fear black people" or, "I don't trust black men." I have students who are Native American students in my other class, many who grew up in poverty and/or on reservations. Many of their families still live on reservations. They speak of the suffering and misery they go through, because the government still doesn't recognize their rights BECAUSE they are not white class privileged people; because they are seen as subhuman. Clara, they suffer so much. It is hard to explain over email, but legacies of genocide of their people and current USA laws for tribal and indigenous people today, hurt them so deeply. This one student literally cried through her entire presentation, the other day, because her people had suffered so much, due to racism against Native Peoples of USA. She told the class her relative was lynched for being "a native american in an all white town, after the sun went down." You may be too young to know this, but there are towns in USAmerica that had, until recently, laws that prohibited nonwhite people to be in ALL WHITE towns, after sundown. The people of color were allowed to be there as laborers, but had to leave by sundown, or face being arrested or lynched. These are documented and in numerous town's city records.
Clara, Post traumatic stress [and slave] syndrome and post traumatic genocide syndrome are the legacies of racism and genocide towards blacks and native americans in this country. Racism is still here, as you can see from Jena 6, the USA government's response to the Hurricane Katrina, and noose hung at the door of the black professor at Columbia the other month. Our trauma from this has been carried on, generation to generation and we experience the pain today, while still trying to deal with new forms of racism. I can't ignore this very real pain when I begin to create educational models about animal rights and veganism. I must be compassionate and understand that white middle-class privileged people in the USA literally PERCEIVE reality FAR differently than black, brown & red people who have ongoing pain and trauma from trying to survive through racism, slavery and genocide in the USA. Our way is not wrong or right; it's simply a different consciousness. I need to respect and understand this if I want to make change.
I hope this better explains to you why critical race theory is important to my work. If you're unfamiliar with this academic and legal based theory, I can send you a list of books that explain how race is far away from being "feeble" in this country-- and globally. I wish it were, but Clara, it is not. It hurts us deeply when people tell us that it is a "feeble matter" because we suffer in ways that you may not be able to imagine. Please open your heart and mind to educating yourself on why my reality is so different (not worse or better) from yours. Please let me know if I can share with you, memoirs and documents by people of color to help you with this. I guarantee you that understanding the intricacies of interlocking oppressions (racism, nationalism, classism, etc) can only make your work and passion for veganism and animals rights, even more holistic and compassionate-- and reach a larger audience and not just people from your own racial and class background. When I first encountered animal rights and veganism, I didn't know how it could change my world of anti-racism activism. Like your take on "race", I thought animal rights was a "feeble" matter and had nothing to do with "anti-racism". But, I was wrong. I hope, on your journey, you will eventually consider embracing uncomfortable and challenging ways of looking at how to make the world a better place-- even if to you, certain people's ways and methods, are a "feeble" matter. What is "feeble" to me may be sacred to you. What is "ridiculous" to you may be the root of my pain and suffering.
With compassion,
Breeze Harper
Thursday, December 6, 2007
“Race as Feeble”: Answering Clara’s Email
