“First, the USA’s mainstream perception of life is based on the bodily experiences of straight able-bodied white middle-class people of European descent. Hence, bestselling books such as Omnivore’s Dilemma and Skinny Bitch actually come from that perspective. I’m not bashing these books, as I know they’ve been very helpful for many people. However, there is an absence of critical reflection of what it means to be white and class privileged and to easily adjust one’s diet to local and sustainable (Pollan) or whole food veganism (Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin). Not that this is Pollan or Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin’s task (to reflect on race and class privilege), but there is a general lack of dialogue around such privilege (or lack there of) and how this impacts one’s access to “healthful” foods- or even how the discourse of “healthful” foods has been constructed. A legacy of colonialism is structural racism which created racialized uneven development and placed the collectivity of white class privileged people in socio-economic and physical locations that enabled them to have more of an opportunity to access “healthful” foods; non-white racialized people such as working class black people were collectively placed in socio-economic and physical locations/situations that made it nearly impossible to have the same types of opportunities for optimal health care services and culturally appropriate healthful food. As a matter of fact, I have found that “race doesn’t matter anymore” white rhetoric is very typical within the mainstream vegan USA movement.”
- Revisiting racialized consciousness and black female vegan experiences: an interview « The Sistah Vegan Project
- Revisiting racialized consciousness and black female vegan experiences: an interview « The Sistah Vegan Project