Listening, Deconstructing and Reconstructing: Celebrating black vegans and centering their stories

You're listening to Animal Voices. I'm your host, Vic Mutroni.

On today's show, we're talking with Afko, blogger, performer, vegan, and independent digital media producer.

She was recently awarded the 2015 Anti-Racist Changemaker of the Year Award

from the Sista Vegan Project and the Pollination Project.

She is known for making fictional comedy web series that tackle social justice issues,

like Tales from the Cracker Tower.

It's about the diversity in academia and features of vegan black character

and black feminist blogger highlights the massive amounts of invisible labor in blogging.

Af recently launched a new blog called Afroism with her sister Syl,

where they provide critical analysis from a black vegan perspective.

After she wrote the first list that spotlighted 100 black vegans

who were doing incredible work to dismantle the stereotypes that veganism was a white person's thing.

Black Vegans Rock was created after that as a digital space that seeks to spotlight everyday black vegans

who are looking to get their work, art, music, restaurant, book, or other projects in front of other vegans.

So welcome to the show, Af.

I'm so excited to talk to you today about creating spaces where black vegans can share their stories.

So do you want to first introduce yourself in your own words?

Sure. I mean, I think you did a pretty good job, honestly.

So I'm Afko, and I just consider myself really to be an activist.

And I never really...

I never really always know how to explain myself because I'm always growing and changing almost like weekly

in terms of my own activism.

But for now, I generally like to refer to myself as an Afrofuturist

because I'm constantly creating and building for the future,

and I'm obsessed with tomorrow and how I can help build a better tomorrow.

So I tend to identify like that.

That's really interesting considering a lot of visionary fiction that has been coming out

and a lot of people have been, I guess, figuring out ways to...

create their own identities and figure out how they move around in the world.

And I did a show on animals in science fiction.

I was really excited to hear about Octavia's Brood, which is a collection of fictional stories.

So I'm not sure if you read that, but I feel like that fits into the realm of creating stories that we want to see in the world

and creating a world that we want to really live in.

Absolutely.

And for me, I think a lot of activists struggle with this.

But like you said, we try to figure out what we want to see in the world.

Absolutely. And for me, I think a lot of activists struggle with this. But like you said, we try to figure out what we want to see in the world.

We try to find our identity. We try to find a space where we can fit in.

And for me, I've always felt uncomfortable and even social justice movements,

I've always felt like something was missing or lacking.

And when I started discovering the term Afrofuturism, which has been pretty recent,

considering I actually don't ever talk about this publicly,

this is one of my first times talking about Afrofuturism,

that when I saw the word and I read about it, it was like my life changed.

It was one of those moments when I was like, oh my gosh, I feel like I've been an Afrofuturist this whole time

and I've never even run into the term.

And now and so right now I'm like surrounding myself in literature that deals with that and reading stuff online.

And I think you'll see even on Afroism and in some of the talks I give,

I'm going to be leaning a little bit more in that direction when it comes to not only animal rights,

but even black citizenship and how we can change the ways in which our tomorrow will be,

because right now we're oppressed peoples and we're trying to figure out ways out.

And I think Afrofuturism is a huge key to that.

Thanks for mentioning that.

I think our identity,

our identities are as strong as they are able to be flexible and be able to change.

So if we're like learning more like I consider myself a vegan feminist,

but I don't really consider that identity marker.

I consider myself more of a, I guess, media producer because that's what I do.

And I guess that's always changing.

So absolutely.

The values that we have are pretty consistent.

I think it's a good foundation to start.

Absolutely.

I agree.

Yeah.

It's always a good conversation to have about the weirdness of identity in this world because it's,

you know, it's always going to change.

Exactly.

I agree with you.

One hundred percent.

Yeah.

So I was really excited to center Black Vegans Rock today because the politics and critical analysis behind it

and celebrating the diversity of people of color who are vegan is an integral part of dismantling white supremacy.

And sharing one story at a time.

We see that complex lives of people around the world from chefs, doctors, musicians, artists, athletes,

who are all creating new frameworks for thinking about veganism and, you know, creating their own identities, I think.

So what was the motivation to begin such a celebratory project for you?

Sure. It's a good question.

So before I created Black Vegans Rock as a platform in June of 2015, I released a list that was titled Hashtag Black Vegans Rock.

One hundred black vegans.

One hundred black vegans to check out.

And that list was the inspiration for the whole website.

And I created the list out of pure frustration because I was watching this thing take place in the animal rights movement

where white people would be calling out other white people for being racist

or I'd watch white feminists call out white animal rights activists for not caring about Black Lives Matter.

And within these conversations, I kind of saw that black vegans were erased.

No one was mentioning black vegans in these articles.

And so it just felt like this almost ally performance that you're not, you know, I'm more anti-racist than you are.

And throughout this whole discourse, black vegans were erased.

And I was like, this is not OK.

So I read one article like that and it was my breaking point.

And I just want to either leave the whole movement or like do something or change it.

So I made this list and it took about three weeks to compile just a hundred black vegans because I really didn't know a hundred.

You know what I'm saying?

I only knew like five.

So I had to do a lot of research and reach out to a lot of different people.

And I made it.

And when I made the list, I made sure to not call it a blog post but a performance art piece

because I wanted to make a point that any time white vegans or any vegan wanted to talk about how racist the movement was,

take the time instead to spotlight a black vegan because we need the exposure.

And so and it started working.

And that was a brilliant part.

And that's why I love this list because people were able to,

like Barefoot Vegan Magazine based in the UK,

she saw the list, the creator of the magazine,

and she started pulling black vegans and interviewing them and giving them,

putting them on the cover and putting them inside the magazine.

And I was like, thank you.

You know, like that's, this is more productive than just critiquing.

You know what I mean?

I like critiquing but I also like building up.

So that was the inspiration for Black Vegans Rock because it was such a successful list.

And people kept wanting me to add on.

So to this day, even, I get emails from people.

Who are like, hey, you should add this person on to 100 Black Vegans.

But, you know, I have one million Black Vegans Rock lists because that would just be really overwhelming.

You know, so I decided to just make a new platform where I could spotlight them in more in depth and in their own words.

And it's tons of fun.

I'm constantly, I'm in the works so much.

Sometimes I don't get a chance to step outside of it and look at it from someone else's perspective.

But when I get those few chances, I think it's a really, really cool space.

I'm really proud of it.

And I'm just trying to grow it and build it as much as I can.

Awesome.

Well, I'm really excited to see it grow.

It seems like, I feel like what you said with, you know, doing, feeling frustrated and feeling motivated to do something about it.

It's a huge, I feel like a lot of people find themselves in that place.

And it's, it's really important, I think, for people who are white to really figure out ways and listen to other people of color.

Of like how they could help.

Instead of doing this thing called performed allyship where they just, it seems a little hollow and empty.

And you don't know where to start as a white person.

So I think obviously a thing is just educating yourself, figuring out ways to really celebrate the voices that are already speaking out against oppression.

Instead of really just contributing to this dialogue of, I've heard it and I definitely believe that the animal rights movement is very, very white centric.

And it needs to change.

But it's not, that's not the language.

It's not the landscape at all.

There are a lot of people out there talking about.

Absolutely.

If I, I just want to interject really quick.

Yeah, for sure.

Because I think that's also something for white vegans to do.

Because I think across the board in our, in our country, a lot of white people don't know what to do.

And I don't necessarily blame a lot of white people because there are a lot of conflicting narratives online.

Like people will be like, ask questions.

Other people are like, shut up and go Google.

And oftentimes there's this myth that if someone just Googles this information that they're just going to get it.

And.

And that activism is making white people understand that they're already working through a framework that filters the information so that they won't necessarily get it.

So part of the goal for white vegans is not only to decenter themselves from the movement, but also to kind of unpack what it means to be white.

Because that is a really important component.

And that is work that they should be doing because race work is always seen as something that's done on brown bodies.

And that white people just need to watch or listen to them.

And I'm, I'm urging white people to do.

To realize that they are a racialized body themselves and to unpack that and to understand when once, when they do, they will start to understand that vegans of color don't necessarily want to make the mainstream vegan movement inclusive.

Because that suggests that the framework is still white.

The authors are still white and we just have black and brown faces added in.

Part of the reason why vegans of color aren't apart necessarily.

I mean, there are many, but part of the reasons why vegans of color are frustrated is because the logic is Eurocentric.

So it's not just a representational issue.

That's more of a symptom of something deeper, which is the logic white people are using to structure their movements is wrapped around their own life experiences.

And so if they get to a point where they realize it's already racialized and it's already white, I'm like, that's okay, but allow us to have our own movements too, because they're happening.

You know what I mean?

I think that should be part of the work as well.

Yeah, for sure.

I definitely agree with all that.

In creating spaces to control the narrative of black veganism is super important.

Especially when we are doing a lot of our activism, like through online mediums.

And like too often we see mainstream framing of black veganism as simply black people planting gardens and being rehabilitated.

And often it's just like very one dimensional and it doesn't really go deeper and it doesn't really come from the perspective of that person.

It's speaking about, it's like from white people talking about this other.

Yeah.

But there seems to be an unfortunate era of like respectability politics emerging from mainstream stories about black vegans and other vegans of color.

And that's really alarming.

So to you, what are respectability politics and how do they prevent, you know, any radical change from happening?

That's a good question.

So I looked up a quote earlier to kind of help define it and it was from Media Diversified by an author named Maurice Dolberry.

And they said, quote, in short, they are an undefined.

This is about respectability politics.

What is it?

In short, they are an undefined yet understood set of ideas about how black people should live positively and how we should define black American culture.

And what happens with respectability politics is black people start to police themselves and each other because we know white people are watching and we want to put on like our best face.

And this is really violent towards people of color because we're policed in every sense of the word.

And so I was starting to see this thing pop up in a lot of white mainstream spaces, which I wrote about on Afroism.

That, you know, I think there are a lot of white people who are legitimately excited.

I have a lot of white vegan friends that I love and they're excited that, you know, these conversations about race are taking place in the mainstream vegan movement.

However, of course, there are a lot of white people who are trying to now, you know, dip their toes into it because it's marketable.

And so you can oftentimes tell when they don't really have an investment because the stories are still framed through a racist framework, which is really weird.

And so I started seeing this hyper obsession.

Hyper obsession of black guerrilla gardeners and black former gang members who are now vegan and like peaceful.

And it was really bothering me because it was like filtered through this idea that black people who are now vegan in the really, really white way, meaning we just talk about vegetables and animals only.

Now they're exceptional or magical Negroes is what the term is.

Right. And that's this racist idea that black people who are recognized for their attributes.

But for attributes associated with excellence are different from regular black people who are usually framed as a racist way of laziness.

They're deviant. They're illiterate. All these things that are kind of racist.

I just started seeing that narrative pop up.

And this is normally from a lot of white people who weren't even sharing, you know, black vegan theory, like people like me or Brees Harper or Syl.

Like there are a lot of us who are trying to actively change the ways we actually understand animal oppression.

And we've been attacked.

By a lot of white vegans.

So it's just really ironic that there's this idea that black people who go vegan are now peaceful when I know a lot of vegans who are white who are not peaceful.

They're attacking me consistently.

So I just don't like that idea of, as I said in the article, white people trying to find their next, you know, peaceful Martin Luther King Jr. type who's going to silence black people's rage because it's a justified rage.

And it's a misunderstanding of what guerrilla gardeners are doing.

Like they're not these peaceful folk who are just planting.

For fun.

Like it's a response, a reaction to extreme racism and classism.

It's like how this is like a feel good story can only happen right as of now in the U.S.

Only I just it's baffling and it's offensive.

And I just had to call it out.

And I didn't call any particular person out.

It was just this thing that was happening that a lot of other black people were seeing.

And they were like they were celebrating the article, which was really exciting.

I was really nervous to release it.

Because I didn't want to make it seem like I was bashing guerrilla gardeners or people who were in gangs and are now vegan.

Not at all.

But it's the white framing of these stories that I think is really, really dangerous.

Yeah.

People in the media definitely have a role to play.

And that could be very scary when their white supremacist framework is like the basis of those articles.

And it fits nicely into that about like how those people were rehabilitated.

And now they're like us.

Where like they're a good citizen.

And I think that's a really good place to critically analyze immigration politics and a lot of things about citizenship too.

About how a lot of people don't seem like they're the upstanding citizen because they have these certain traits.

So do you have any suggestions or resources?

I know that it could be a lot to ask.

So I appreciate anything.

I appreciate anything you might give our listeners.

When folks in the media are attempting to speak or write about black folks in relation to veganism.

And one quick comment.

I love the term you used, citizenship.

Because all my work right now is going to be revolving around citizenship.

Because even right now I live in the U.S.

And to have, when we talk about the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the idea of citizenship.

That when you become a citizen, you're like this upstanding almost white person.

Like you transcend racial stereotypes.

And people who are illegal, as they call them, quote, unquote, you know, immigrants.

They're like these, you know, dangerous, deviant children who haven't matured.

So I love the term you used, citizenship.

However, my best advice for especially white people who want to write about, you know, vegans of color is really to just reach out to them.

And they say this because there have been even articles written about the work that I do.

And no one's reached out to me.

And the framing of what I do is totally wrong.

You know what I mean?

And I have to.

And it's awkward.

Because it's cool when you're getting exposure.

But when it's not about what you believe in, it's stressful.

And so that's my best advice is to not only read our work extensively before you talk to us.

Like I know you did.

And I could tell you did through our e-mail conversation.

But I've talked to some people who have never read one article I've ever written.

And they've read some media coverage of what I do.

But they don't.

They've never read anything I say.

So when they talk to me, I mean, it's like they're talking to a different person.

So, yeah, just to read people's work and make sure to actually talk to them because that helps.

Yeah, that's a huge step that a lot of people could take in terms of speaking for other people.

I'm sure it could be really frustrating when you see your articles perhaps decontextualized, like with people constantly reposting.

Because that's a huge thing.

And it seems to be.

And that's a good way to get articles out there.

Yes.

At the same time, you know, you know how you have like a Facebook photo and it's always compressed every time it's reposted.

And by the end of it, it's totally it looks it's just warped.

I like that.

Absolutely.

I'm a white person.

Full disclosure over the radio.

I feel obligated to say so.

Obviously, people shouldn't assume.

But it's just it's important because it's a starting point of who I can and cannot be.

Yeah.

It's a starting point of who I can and can't speak for.

And obviously, like, I don't speak for all white people either.

But I've been vegan for a while and it's been interesting to find where I fit in this whole identity thing and figuring out what my skills are best used for, I guess.

And in the past few years, there has been local conflicts between indigenous hunters, the Haudenosaunee and white animal rights folks leveraging racialized discourses or narratives that ignore the painful and ongoing legacy of colonialism.

And there are many fence sitters, not just an us versus them scenario, who are indigenous vegans and white animal rights folks who support the treaty rights to hunt.

And this is just an example of trying to understand my place to further community dialogue and contribute to dismantling white supremacy and upholding, you know, indigenous sovereignty.

And it could be really overwhelming to figure out how to do that without speaking for other people.

And I think this goes hand in hand with how we frame our identity.

Yeah.

And how we frame our animal rights campaigns and how we initiate them.

You write that all too often white centered animal rights campaigns or vegan campaigns are thought of as only dominant way of doing things.

And you say that you are here to offer a new perspective.

And I see why this line of thinking is why projects like Black Vegans Rock are so important.

Veganism isn't just for white people.

It never has been.

Thinking or theorizing about animals and developing cultures.

Yeah.

I mean, cultures of plant based diets have been around a long time before white people started calling it veganism.

So what are your experiences like with deconstructing and reconstructing ways to look at veganism?

Because there could be so many ways of doing it.

It could be, yeah, it could be a lot of information to weed through to figure out how to, you know, put it together and share it with other people.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I want to say in a lot of my interviews, I use that term, the phrase rather, we need to not only deconstruct, but reconstruct.

And that's originally from my grad school advisor, Dr. Aisha Durham.

She does a lot of stuff around hip hop feminism.

And she really influenced me because I did my master's thesis with her.

And I was just doing a lot of critiquing of white spaces.

And she just was like, ah, it seems like you know how to what activism isn't and what it shouldn't look like.

But what can it look like for the future?

And I was stumped.

And this was during my actual defense.

You know what I mean?

So like this is.

This is my thesis.

I was defending it.

And she asked me that.

And after all that time and research, I didn't have an answer.

And I thought that was like the scariest moment of my whole grad school experience.

I was like, wow, I don't know.

So she's like, you have to build.

You have to envision what the tomorrow could look like.

You can't just expect other people to do it.

And that really came.

That has been in my head the whole time.

And so that led again to me creating the 100 Black Vegans list.

But again, I'm going to say that this isn't really necessarily a vegan thing.

This is more of a cultural issue that's been happening, which is why, you know, we have

that hashtag Oscars so white conversation happening.

We had the white feminism conversation happening.

We currently have in like body positive movements.

There are people of color who are fighting the white representations, especially on a

magazine where your voice magazine and urge people to check that site out because they

do a really good job with their campaigns.

So I think there's a paradigm shift taking place in all of our movements today, specifically

because I think people of color who have been organizing around these issues for a really

long time are realizing that they don't necessarily need white attention to make it.

And for a long time, white people were kind of like the gatekeepers to everything.

So you, to a certain extent, had to appeal to white people.

You had to appeal to their logic.

You had to appeal to, you know, your projects had to appeal to them.

And now I think that with all of these conversations happening at one time, there's this decentering

of whiteness.

It's really kind of cool.

So it's not kicking necessarily white people out because we can still organize with them.

But it's realizing that we don't necessarily, that we can lead our own things.

Like it's, we can do it.

And so that's why I still critique white spaces.

But I've been just hanging out in black spaces a lot online, like digitally.

So I don't just critique white work.

I move on because I think that when we only critique, it assumes that progress can only

be made when we diversify white spaces.

And that's really dangerous.

So the goal for me is always to build my own movement.

And to keep organizing and keep producing knowledge from my own standpoint and other

people's experiences.

So there's that Afrofuturism again that I will be getting into even more.

Thanks for that.

It could be really a weird thing to be navigating the world and feeling like when you become

radicalized, you start to critique everything, which is really important, but then you feel

like you might be anti-everything.

So it could feed into a lot of nihilism.

So I think that like building up positive things through like actually tangible community

spaces, art and music, whatever, like you have stuff online, you're doing so many projects.

I think that those are so tangible and they're rooted in these critiques, creating a different

perspective of looking at the world.

So that's definitely what I'm really interested in learning more about Afrofuturism when I

hope that our listeners are too.

Because it's often...

Because it's often not talked about.

And, you know, there's so many aspects we can critique about mainstream veganism.

And for me, Animal Voices has been a space to prioritize the stories of marginalized

folks and, you know, focusing on dismantling systems of oppression and figuring out ways

to build up better, more resilient communities rather than talking about health aspects,

vegan bodybuilding, vegan fashion.

And like, don't get me wrong, those things like have a place in a way, but they get already

so much coverage and there are far less spaces to discuss how power works in the world and

how to resist capitalism that continues to thrive off exploiting bodies.

And obviously, creating our own spaces to do that is a pinnacle of that in order to

have the deep complexity that we want it to when a lot of mainstream places don't give

us the chance, like BuzzFeed articles.

I noticed that you were critiquing a lot of those like Hollywood...

Yeah.

...fake buzzwords that are so low, clickbait that don't really add to the conversation

that much.

And you write that veganism gets super depoliticized when we only talk about our health.

So if you want to talk about how have you been able to center radical politics and your

projects that focus on veganism?

Yes, that's a great question.

So yeah, like you said, health, I don't want to discount it completely because there are

some activists like Tracy McIrter who runs By Any Greens Necessary or even Bruce Harper.

And they use health as a launchpad.

use health as a launching pad to get especially a lot of black people involved in politics so like

when we talk there are different ways health is talked about in the mainstream

the the tracy type folk don't get as much attention as more of the more basic health stuff

which i'm going to get to but yeah when um tracy for example talks about the ways that

you know black people need a strong immune system you need to be healthy in order to fight the

system to a certain extent so she kind of politicizes it that way and i think that's

kind of brilliant and same with breeze i think breeze is doing groundbreaking work as we all know

in um especially the food landscape and health politics she she has really opened up a lot of

our eyes to how political health can be however yeah whenever we talk about the white mainstream

i think i think the white mainstream just has this gift of reducing everything down to like

nothing it's it's kind of a brilliant gift i don't know how they have it or how it's possible

but they do it every single time with every issue and i think that yeah i i would say

this like again kind of the guerrilla gardeners there's this obsession with black bodybuilders

black football players who are vegan um even the gang member vibe there's just something like

almost comical about the ways that black people are continuously reduced to their bodies only

which is ironic considering that's how we're all so animalized so again it's it's this really weird

thing that's happening and i think it reminds me of i read this really cool article

like two years ago i don't know where and i need to find it but they were talking about the ways

that during um and um don sterling who owns some like black football team once came out and like

some like audio of him saying the n-word and being racist came out and everyone was like shocked

and um this one person wrote a brilliant article about the ways that we shouldn't be surprised

because sports culture itself our obsession or fetishization of black male big bodies on the

field um is a you know

existed in this long legacy of kind of talking about black bodies as like cattle or stock you

know and so when we replicate that in veganism this is again showing that the frameworks we're

using to understand veganism are from the same system that's oppressing animals it's ironic

um and again i i think it's dangerous especially when we do this to men because we're trying to

make men comfortable with their with this hegemonic masculinity they subscribe to we're trying to make

them comfortable with veganism which is the problem because hegemonic masculinity also harms

animals so if we're trying to appeal to that same framework in veganism we have to ask ourselves

whether or not that's effective or like who why or it seems like it's more about the dollar that

it's about you know animals lives or changing around people who are oppressed again it's i'm

so surprised but at the same time not it's the most basic thing on the planet to read some of

these articles or even like buzzfeed i'm glad buzzfeed is at least giving some attention to

veganism and black vegans but yeah they they tend to only join the conversation when it's already

white and then things have already been reduced down to nothing and then they join in for page

clicks which again it's almost like um that term gentrification of of of veganism that like there

are those of us who are actually you know people of color who are trying to control the narrative

and then white people come in and push us out and then they try to spotlight black vegans in really

basic ways or just the

bodybuilding types or they try to and it's just like i don't it's hard to do grassroots work in

this society because people will notice it think it's cool take literally just take it and go with

it and make money from it and then you're back to square one like okay cool you know like so it's

it's difficult and it's um i don't know it's i do agree that the health aspect and the really

depoliticized white health aspect makes a lot of mainstream people feel comfortable with black

vegans because they don't like to think of us as thinkers necessarily because that's scary

they like to reduce us down just to our bodies so that they can kind of control the narrative

and use us as pawns in their game to do i don't even know what they're trying to do so um yeah

i don't think white people know what we're trying to do either i don't think even like

top level politicians really know what they're doing at most times

yep i don't know if that makes me more more terrified yeah it is it's upsetting and i think

i don't sometimes i don't know what i'm doing i don't know what i'm doing i don't know what i'm doing

i don't think people in the dominant class are malicious i think that they

are also being taken advantage of too to a certain extent um which is why whenever i talk about white

privilege white privilege at the same time i think it's ironic we use the word privilege

because sometimes i think white people are more duped than people of color because they are

kind of you know exploited as well and they're not trained to even have a critical discourse

about it at least people of color even if you're not like an academic like you can tell when

something's not right or wrong and you're not able to do it you're not able to do it

when you're being excluded or when someone's being a racist and sometimes white people don't

i don't have the skill set to like notice it all the time or notice that they're being taken

advantage of in the media especially men so yeah it's just more and more people who are grassroots

coming in and trying to you know not necessarily become mainstream but like help people who are in

the mainstream and aren't satisfied turn towards our spaces and be like oh this is kind of cool

you know well thank you for that critique that's really well thought out it takes a long time to

unlearn these things i don't know what your experiences are as a black woman but i'm sure

your experiences have really informed your your politics which i think a lot of people white people

have you know there's like a dis there's a disconnect there because you know we grew up

like i'm growing up working class i had a really sheltered environment because of that as privileged

white person so i love seeing the more complex radical politics out there in the world in

different ways because it really stands out to me and i think it's really important to

speak to the reality that is going on to me it's important to you know engage through music and

art literature that people are producing and for you it's about merging digital media and social

justice and i'm really glad that you've been recognized for your work thank you in important

ways and i know that you were doing yeah black feminist blogger you had one episode about

the the labor involved with writing and

for clickbait websites and you know that labor could definitely be exploited so i hope that you

feel you know recognized in your work that you've been you've been doing outside of those frameworks

and i often think about what resisting capitalist white supremacy looks like to people to me it's

working against apathy and figuring out ways to use my skills and resources so what advice would

you give people who are trying to exist in the digital media realm of social justice sure so

for me i would say i would say capitalism point first so personally for me i don't know how i'm

resisting it simply because it's all i've ever known so i can talk about it in really pretentious

ways really quick like i can trust me but if i'm being honest i don't know you know i have a higher

education degree i myself i'm pretty privileged i live in the u.s you know so it's i don't really

know exactly how i'm consciously resisting it because it's it's difficult all i can do is read

them is work against injustice which i'm sure capitalism has worked into that for me the best way

digital media I argue at times that using your imagination as corny as it

sounds it's like I'm on Barney right now but using your imagination can be

helpful because I think part of the power of white supremacist patriarchy is

that it takes your imagination away and it just distracts you and feeds you the

way the world should be what it looks like and you can't change it and that's

how scripts happen like well boys will be boys and you know well I need to eat

meat for protein like all of these scripts that people have are simply

because we live in a world that has hijacked our imagination and so for me

that's why I'm obsessed with Afrofuturism and getting people to take that risk of

using whatever tools they can even if it's the internet to imagine how you

envision the world because number one my number one advice to even do that is to

take risk and I say this all the time especially to minorities because

you

know the digital landscape isn't you know equal just because you know anyone

can use it to a certain extent anyone can log on doesn't mean the rules apply

to everyone like it's governed by really racist and sexist norms which is why

women are normally like the ones who are being harassed and attacked and you know

that's not surprising but risk stops a lot of people from moving forward

there's this fear of like what people could say are you getting attacked or

you're not saying something right especially today in a call-out

culture like if you don't say it right you get people take screenshots and then

your life is over and so the goal is to just take a risk and put it out there

and put out your perspective and to not be afraid to press publish because for

me what stopped me for so long in terms of web series work as well as just

writing was I was terrified to just have my voice out there or that I wasn't

gonna say it right so when I you know began to learn to press publish more

normally and feeling really good about it it became

it just felt really liberating to get it out there so that's my advice is to just

take a risk and put it out there and imagine you can trust your imagination

and just go with it that's that's my advice yeah adding on to that I would

definitely encourage people to it's it could be really daunting to imagine

putting yourself out there and making a mistake but I think that in terms of

talking about ethics and politics radical politics that's the way to learn

and there's not one way there's one

there's not one framework for looking at the world so if you're you have a

something that you can add to the conversation or just like look at it in

a different way I think that's important and don't get discouraged with you know

more prominent quote writers or academics who are talking about these

things and they seem like they have they know everything I think that's a huge

thing of mine is really discouraging especially you know as a musician you

see other people they think you think that they have everything together and

they and they really don't and just like a name drop out of my out of my head like

Gary Francione has this like really specific way of looking at ethics animal

ethics and I think that that could work for some people and I really appreciate

Bryce Harper's analysis of these things a lot more and it speaks to how we're

very fallible as humans and we make mistakes and we all we could come to the

right conclusion in different ways and then you know everything becomes

you know ethical conclusions in different ways and they can't it doesn't

have to be this like rigid framework

exactly a lot of especially with the internet like just having a Facebook

account could be pretty traumatizing when you're trying to you know get your

name out there but your footprint on something and where you're trying to

contribute to a conversation and you let's not even talk about activism let's

account having friends and then this framing of people having the awesomest lives and you know

like everyone stops somebody so I'm always talking like old high school buddies or something and when

you see that people apparently have their lives together or like they have a job or like you know

they're like living or traveling and you know you're I'm like always in my apartment in the

dark like depressed watching other people's lives happen unfold in front of me and I used to get

really depressed and even when I would start my activism and write or do my web series I would

look at other people who were like so successful the New York Times and I just sit there and be

like whatever so I had to learn how to unplug to a certain extent you know what I mean like

to not watch all the time to celebrate people who were doing who are my friends doing great

things but to not get so bogged down or compare myself to what other people were doing because

that just eats up so much creative time when you're comparing yourself to other people's

because sometimes like

you said their life isn't necessarily the way you might think it is you know what I mean

absolutely and I'm always amazed in the punk ethics people display I guess you could call it

and figuring out ways to like do things for yourself or with other people and realizing

the power that you have in pursuing your own ideas and projects without the validation or

help from the mainstream or you know other people who have their their stuff together

and I think that the spaces that we create are really important because we might not see our

selves represented in that mainstream so we create but you know when capitalism rears its ugly head

it has the ability to co-opt ideas so quickly and we talked about this earlier on with the the

narratives of you know black guerrilla gardeners and they these a lot of these websites the click

baity ones that we've been talking about they kind of take them up and co-opt the idea and you know

drain them all of their political potential it's very important for people to find out ways to

make a difference while you go to work and if you have an issues or you can't work because you

have a technop notably because of your blackness you are not heard and you might be interested or

you might be not heard and you're not a capitalist and you said it could be hard to figure out if

it's even working like black vegan's rock you write that you aim to offer new frameworks for

discussing racism sexism animal oppression and you're dedicated to critical accessible

thought-provoking content and you know your web series black feminist blogger highlights some

massive amount of invisible labor and blogging and you also write that that like reflects the state of journalism and I thought we could talk about

it being a double-edged sword with getting your work out there and figuring out a way to have

your labor compensated while living under capitalism so i'm just wondering how you

navigate this and what your experiences are of with working to get your ideas and other people's

ideas out there it's a great question yes i don't even it's hard to answer this because it is i

think for any activist type of personality every day you're making negotiations when you are just

trying to make money because you know you have these politics that you're you know you want to

live your life by but you gotta make some dough so it's kind of hard to the the need to eat can

oftentimes trump a lot of things you know what i mean a lot of politics it doesn't you know

you're hungry you gotta get you gotta do um but yeah i'm always walking on an uncomfortable tight

rope because especially in um feminist blogging which i've kind of backed out a little bit of

blogging ever since i started aphorism like guest blogging rather

but

i used to work full-time for a space and i won't say what it is i used to work full-time and it

was an online position of um you know writing things and things like that and it was so

overwhelmingly about the page clicks and the traffic that i had never experienced anything

like that in my existence because i went into this position thinking that you know i was going

to change lives with my writing and when i was told that i had to monitor just the it was the

most extreme thing i've ever experienced

like monitor the page traffic daily and nightly there were times i was working from 5 a.m to

midnight like just putting out content and writing really basic things i never thought i'd be one of

those people to just write clickbaity articles that i was like crying as i was writing them you

know what i mean like it was so horrible but i was like well that's how i get my paycheck

and so after that didn't work out that position i made the web series because

i was so frustrated i was so frustrated i was so frustrated i was so frustrated i was so frustrated

every time i'm really pissed off i like to create things because it's just a constructive way for me

to deal with it or else i get consumed with anger so i made this web series where i played a

character latoya who works for a really white feminist magazine and of course she's experiencing

exploitation and as a result she's really depressed and is like an alcoholic on the side

and it's it's i really exaggerate a lot of the stuff in the show for me the best thing that took

place was when i realized i didn't have to go through white spaces to get my work done and so

when i started believing in my own voice i created my own space and i was terrified it took me months

to even launch afroism and i had so many conversations with syl and she really you

know supported the decision for it because i was like i can't do it i can't do it but i you know

when you once you get your own space out there you no longer all the hours you put in it doesn't feel

like exploitation it feels like you're working towards something that you really believe in

so yeah i don't know if i have an answer for that because i you

know i would be lying if i was like oh no i'm you know totally fighting capitalism because i can't

even locate where it is sometimes in my life it's just everything i've ever known about the society

has been capitalist so i don't know it's i try my best to have control over the narrative have

control over the space ensure that anyone who's working with me isn't being exploited and is really

using the creativity completely but i don't i don't really know if i have an answer for that

from being honest oh i wasn't expecting you to have a

clear-cut answer it could be just your own experience yeah it's really difficult figuring

out ways to keep your convictions while being able to make money because that's really important for

survival it's really hard to navigate and i respect people who make the best decision for

themselves even even in the um the vegan world i mean i'm critiqued i put a donate button up

on black vegans rock because it's a grassroots space so um even some white

big name animal rights activists were critiquing me and others for having a donate button when

they were had like you know six figure salaries and i was just like are you serious you know so

like i i try my best never to judge people for doing what they need to do even if it's

unethical even if i see other black vegans that i know who are kind of it seems like selling out or

taking money from certain weird organizations i you know there's always that moment of like

why are you doing that but at the same time i'm like i totally get it like i you need to survive

like that's the problem a lot of people in the mainstream vegan movement expect you know poor

vegans of color who are smart to just work for free and put stuff out there for free and then

they consume it and do what they want with it and it's like um this comes at a huge cost and it's

oftentimes a lot of us don't like to as activists a lot of us don't like to ask for money because we

feel like it's like compromising our goals but a lot of the times i'm like well i can't do any of

this if people don't donate or if people who are like obsessed with the project and asking me to

do it i'm like well i can't do anything about it i'm like well i can't do anything about it i'm

like well i can't do anything about it i'm like well i can't do anything about it i'm like well

how am i supposed to thrive right now basically you know so like i think i think that conversation

needs to come up more in in vegan spaces especially with like rich white vegans who

have the potential to be you know funding some spaces who and they're benefiting off some spaces

like mine you know and they're like just expecting me to put this work out and it's it's hard you

know like i do it for free because i i love it but the idea that you know people should be i remember

advisor told me this she's like the idea that just because you love something that excuses you

being exploited isn't a good reason you know what i mean we shouldn't be exploiting people just

because they're doing passion work especially because those types of people might end up being

minorities more than you think you know what i mean the passion projects oftentimes will come

from people who are oppressed so the idea that passion projects shouldn't be funded again might

re-inscribe sometimes racist or sexist ideals i'm just gonna put that out there you know what i mean

so yeah

for sure i always like the to ask the question of asking folks who figure out ways of resisting

oppression if you could even quantify it it's really difficult to do that how how to avoid and

treat activist burnout you know how to stay motivated yes that's a good question i i'm

finding that more and more people are starting to ask me that because i think burnout is a very

real thing in activist spaces and it's

the conversations burgeoning more and more in these spaces and i don't know i think i get burned

out really easily um and i get unmotivated very quickly i'm just one of those people and let's say

if i'm on the internet and i'm already having a bad day and then i read like a buzzfeed type article

or like a hollow article about black vegans that'll just set me off and then i will just have

to get off the internet or i vigorously just pull up a word document and start typing because that's

just how i cope with things i just type my words and then i get motivated and then i get motivated

to type my anger out and hopefully i can turn it into a blog post but i think this goes back to what

i said it kind of about facebook that when i'm starting to get burnt out a lot of the times

either i'm overworking or i'm watching other people in other spaces who are like

you know hyper succeeding and i get like okay i can't explain it it's like it's like

there was this one time this facebook video that came out with the white guy

acting in it and he was lying about his life on facebook like he was taking pictures of himself

in his backyard and pretending that he was in another country and i thought it was a really

funny video and he people were loving all his posts and then when he was honest about it on

facebook and he's like i hate my life my life sucks then everyone started unfriending him and

so i think there's a similar vibe that like um for me i get burnt out a lot when i'm online too much

which is weird because i do most of my work online but i make sure to unplug

and i have a really cool husband who will help me unplug because we like to go outside or

he likes to do activities other than just staying on the internet and that helps me

to talk with him and and i like talking with him as well not only just because he's my husband

you know i should like talking to him because he's not on online a lot like he doesn't have

facebook pages and do a lot of that stuff so if there's some weird drama happening online

and i tell him about it he oftentimes doesn't even know the characters that i'm talking about

so it kind of helps remind me that like wow this really isn't that big of a deal you know

what i mean so it's nice to surround yourself with people who have different

politics at times and who aren't online as much it really really helps with the burnout and

you know being like depressed or not being motivated because a lot of people online i'm

going to tell you are depressed a lot of the people who are the activists who are fighting

these systems are really depressed i know many and so that speaks to something larger that's

happening that you know this work is grueling sometimes and it's depressing sometimes and

we we shouldn't expect you know activists to be online all the time and to be

doing this writing blog posts and for example anytime anything happens in the world that deals

with white vegans people tag me in it and i know they're well-intentioned people and their friends

but they'll tag me in the problematic video just so that i can see it and be depressed and hopes

i'll write something about it for free you know and it's it's when those moments happen i just

need to log off because i get really pissed off but this happens i think that's something even

for white vegans to be mindful of if you have vegan of color friends to like be mindful that

we're really at times depressed and

and to keep tagging us in like videos of people being shot or which happens to me or people

tagging me in like can you believe this white vegan said a super racist comment and i'm like

yeah i can't believe it why are you tagging me in this um so i think yeah that's that's

one way i avoid it is by just getting off the internet that's really important to know that

those spaces could be a source of anxiety and obviously talking about it more and getting

it out there i feel like could reach out to other people so you could feel like less alone but it's

ironic because it would probably be in the space of the source of anxiety and yeah it's really

important to note that people should be more careful with what they're posting because it

could be really triggering for people especially if it could be like a video and you don't know

what you're clicking on yeah and it could just be really difficult to figure out ways to stay

motivated and and not apathetic especially really quick oh yeah because you said something that

yes that i failed to mention because it seemed like i was suggesting that people

should engage online and i'm not saying you said that i feel like i said that

so part of me with my burnout especially like i'm on striving with systems which is a different space

um where i have other contributors there's three other people and we are constantly in

conversation online and i think that helps when you have people that you can trust number one

because i'm going to urge people to be be careful when you're online

even if you're in these like private facebook groups with like you know a feminist group or

a vegan group a lot of people do that and that's why i like deleted my personal facebook account

because that's something that's really important to know and i think it's really important to know

what you're doing and i think it's really important to know what you're doing and i think it's really

important to know what you're doing and i think it's really important to know what you're doing

can be horrific i'm going to say that like as much as it can be spaces of um of you know

empowerment or spaces where you can connect or find friends you need to be careful especially

if you don't know who the people are because i have known many people who've been like people

taking screenshots of what they said and used it later or they got in a fight and bad stuff

happened so for me part of how i avoid burnout is by talking to people i know online like

some of them i've never met on my striving with system screen for example we're all really close

but we're all in this together and we're all in this together and we're all in this together and

we've communicated for so long that like we have built up a trust um and we're going to see each

other at the whitby intersectional conference but like be careful that's why i'm saying i both

unplug and talk to people online i talk to people i trust and i know and but i do not communicate

really with even if it's a fan or someone who's just like oh my god i try my best to avoid that

because i don't know who people are and like that can be really stressful so that's why i unplug as

well because just i need to offer that warning to people because so many people just get

sucked into the internet and we oftentimes forget there's like a world out here and we

like small things get turned into huge things and um fights happen and it's just so destructive and

toxic online sometimes so that's why i was trying to say it's um it's it's both it's both finding

people you can trust as well as getting off the internet for sure i think a source of my i guess

burnout could be just being around people all the time being on the internet or in real life

so uh figuring out ways to spend time more with

animals and in my with myself just away from other conversations is is crucial for that

yeah and also just wanted to tell people to be mindful of the labor that they might give out

for free and you know if you have ideas that you're spreading around the internet like maybe

start a blog so you don't have to give those ideas away and then you don't own them sometimes

i've had that issue where i've guest blogged um way before i started atherism

and part of the reason why i wanted to start atherism was because i was blogging on some

spaces and then when and this conversation is still starting to happen in activist spaces about

blogging and getting your work removed and i try to get my work removed from this one space and

it was hell and it was so weird actually yeah it was hell because it was they were my words

and i had written them but the space became toxic it wasn't what i thought it was so i was like oh

no i don't want to be associated with that and it was literal hell to get my work removed and i was

so tired of like having the drama over the ownership of my words which is so strange so

i'm like i just need my own space to do this because i'm tired of the politics of everybody

else owning my stuff and so yeah i'm going to offer that especially to young people who tend

to get exploited the most when they start out in this realm in this space like be mindful that the

people own you can own your words and so it's like if you don't that's why i have to start your

own space guest blogging can be advantageous because you have to be mindful of the space

people looking over your words for free editing for free giving advice and you oftentimes can

reach a larger audience but make sure to start your own space and grow it awesome is there anything

else you'd like to share other organizations or people you'd want to give a shout out to

where we could find your work and black vegans rock sure um for me i'm on afroism you can just

type it into google or black vegans rock and i'm gonna shout out to there's that organization

called vegan voices of color run by my friend

unique vance she's really cool of course sister vegan um striving with systems i love them um

christopher sebastian mcjutters is also a writer on there and i love him as stephanie brown um

we just recently became friends and she runs the intersectional vegan

um and she's she's really really really cool so those are some shout outs i would give