The Immorality of “Moral Veganism”

freedominwickedness:

Those who advocate veganism as a moral mandate rather than a lifestyle choice argue that it is unethical for humans to eat meat or otherwise use animal products in any way because doing so causes pain and suffering to animals. A substantial number of mandatory vegans further extend this reasoning with the premise that distinguishing in any way between animals and humans is “speciesist” bigotry.

Moral veganism may sound compelling on first examination, but it is in fact an inherently oppressive and bigoted philosophy. It explicitly assigns the same moral value to animals as to vegan consumers, but implicitly assigns a much lower moral value to working-class agricultural laborers. Vegans declare that the suffering of animals is a social evil which must be stopped, but the suffering of human laborers is below their contempt. Furthermore, the working poor are told that they deserve to starve to death if they cannot afford a pricey vegan diet.

These hypocrisies are primarily functions of racism: virtually all vegans are middle-to-upper class whites, whereas both agricultural laborers and the working poor are primarily people of color. It is all too typical of whites to assume that “of course” everyone else has the same set of privileges that they do, so any option they prefer is something that can be strictly mandated for all. This is something that is also strongly seen with some organic food advocates, but moral mandate vegans take it to the greatest possible extreme.

Frankly, twisting social justice arguments and terminology to place animals over people of color the way moral mandate vegans do is disgusting.