1. Mass Indoctrination: We, Vegans, are out fucking gunned by the industrial and corporate food industries. The people providing us with all of this pathogenic meat, dairy, and processed food like substances have billions of dollars in advertising budges! Then, no top of that they get billions more in subsidies from the government, making the food both better promoted and lower cost for the consumers. These muthafuckas advertise to children, infants, on up. Vegan, Organic, non-GMO foods, foods that don’t fuck us up don’t have budgets like that and they don’t get government subsidies to off set the real cost of the foods. Shit, my ad budget for my Vegan, Organic, non-GMO baked goods company is $0 fucking dollars at the moment, we are running out shit on word-of-mouth, so how we gon go up against Little Debbie, or HoeCakes? “Every body love HoeCakes.”
2. Emotional Attachments: People are not only indoctrinated in to consuming a pathogenic, meat-based diet, they are extremely emotionally attached to their diets. Food is culture, unfortunately, the US and capitalism in general is a death-culture that gives us foods that not only destroy one’s health, it destroys our ecosystems (for profit); but this fact dose not make Black people any less emotionally attached to Soul Food, Grandma’s Fried Death Dish, The BBQ out uncles used to bang out at family gatherings, the lunch meat and white bread from our childhoods, or the candies we used to steal from the corner stores; hell I have fond memories attacked to this shit too. I remember the chitlins and hog mogs my Grandmother cleaned, boiled up, and lovingly served to me; and all of the good feelings attached to that. Hell, my Grandmother took me giving up her cooking than she did me giving up her Jesus, no lie. So we have some powerful emotional and cultural barriers to over come to bring Black folks to Veganism.
3. Misinformation: Just as the billions in advertising entices us to consume pathogenic foods, there’s also billions spent misinform the public about Veganism and the true nature and impacts of the meat, dairy, and processed food industries. If the people had correct and factual information, there would be no need work to change people, they’d give up on meat by and large. If they saw the feed lots, the slaughter houses, the irradiation of their foods, the amount of toxic substances the animals they eat injects. If they saw the lakes of animal sewage, the rendering plants, that tumors and the urine burns on the animals that make on to their plates, we’d have a Vegan Revolution on our hands without even working for it. But you will find that most people are ignorant of how food is produced, processed, and packaged in this system, they don’t know and they don’t want to know about where their food comes from, how it impacts their bodies, and their environment. Ignorance is not only Bliss, but apparently, it taste kinda good too.
4. The Health Care System: In the Black community, the most deadly weapons are the fork and spoon. Of the top ten major causes of premature death and injury 7 are directly related to our diets! Seven of the top ten killers of our people are chronic or acute diseases that we could greatly reduce and often eliminate if we just stopped eating the Standard American Diet! But our fucking doctors don’t tell us this, cuz then they couldn’t get paid selling us the drugs and treatments we need after a lifetime of consuming meat, dairy, and processed foods. Also, this medical system tends to hid the sick and afflicted away from the rest of society, we don’t see the final stages of diabetie, kidney failure, stroke, COPD, etc in the larger community cuz we hide the sick away. If we saw the full effect of what this food and lifestyle did to us, we’d be more willing to make changes, but we bury our sick in nursing homes, hospitals, and in our individual homes; instead of fully integrating them into the community, like we used to. So again, Ignorance is Bliss.
5. Vegans: That’s right, Vegans make it hard as fuck to wake our people up. We get too full of ourselves, we go off in to these specialty diets instead of keeping shit practical for the masses. I mean, if you wanna be a Raw Breathaterian fine, but don’t try to sell your people on that, not when they still eating that fatback. We gotta keep shit practical and down to earth. Don’t make false claims about Veganism either, like you will become more spiritual, you will levitate, you will never get sick, and have 10 hour erections. We don’t have to sell lies, just give the people practical information and practical support. That’s all, and make sure the fucking Vegan food you give them taste good, being Vegan ain’t enough, that shit gotta taste good, I’ve Vegans give the community some nasty ass shit and insist that they eat it cuz it’s Vegan, that will not work. We, as Vegans have to remain embedded in the community, we are not better or superior to the rest of the Hood, we may have some better practices, that we should share, that’s all. Don’t construct a Vegan bubble around your life, go to the cookouts, the family gatherings, and don’t always tear down what people are eating. You gotta use tact sometimes. And act like you got some damn sense.
That’s my top 5 excuses, or reasons why it’s hard to wake people up to Veganism. This best I can think to do is keep offering the best info and best quality and tasting Vegan food to folks I can; along with using the insights I’ve shared here. But it’s a hard fight, and will remain so.
As far as PETA, I’m glad they are out there doing what they do, I don’t even mind their tactics, as long as they target their own communities, it’s White Folks Business, not ours, we need our own organizations and methods rooted in our own culture and values. They throw blood on my aunts fur, and we have a problem, we can deal with our shit our way, and leave them to theirs. But beyond that; “keep it up PETA.”
