When I first started the Sistah Vegan Project, it wasn’t, “How can we convince black people that veganism and animal rights are the way?” It was more about me turning the lens onto whiteness. I noticed that mainstream rhetoric around veganism was very “postracial”—they didn’t consider things like the ongoing significance of structural racism, as well as socioeconomic class or geographic privilege on one’s vegan philosophy and consumption habits.

[Now it’s about creating a] platform to develop critical pedagogies of consumption. For example, if you look at how tomatoes are accessible to the North American consumer year-round through NAFTA, [and] you understand that NAFTA is contingent upon structural racism, sexism, and poverty, then you develop a literacy around commodities and capitalism. [You can question how] you maintain this as a person in the commodity chain who’s a vegan consumer. Even if you think what you’re doing is “cruelty free.”

September’s Sistah Vegan Conference discussed alternative foodways and health strategies to address race-based health disparities and injustice. How do these strategies speak to decolonizing our palates, bodies, minds, and spirits?

Just like there are many feminisms and they don’t all necessarily agree with each other, there’s no one set decolonial practice. For me, it’s questioning how capitalism has colonized our minds. Depending on what type of situation you’re in, most of us have given up that agency to so-called experts who don’t care about our health and care more about profit.

I remember there were times when I didn’t understand that certain things—like dandelions, nettles, and burdock—are not actually weeds. What are the politics of naming something a weed, and how do these social constructions benefit biopharmaceuticals? What does it mean for me to decolonize my mind and realize these are really cheap, accessible holistic herbs that I can use in place of toxic and damaging things that women or young girls are taught to consume when they have menstrual cramps? That I can do chamomile over Advil? Just thinking about these things is what it means to decolonize.

From that point, looking at my own specific geographical, social, financial location, how do I start to make myself healthy in a way that doesn’t support neoliberalism and neocolonialism? Which, of course, is not 100 percent [achievable] because by default, just being here, I do benefit from those systems. I think it’s about mindfulness and awareness: being aware of the extent I should take care of my own needs, but also not exploiting others, the environment, and nonhuman animals. I’m trying to find that balance.

How can mainstream veganism do better when it comes to intersectionality?

There’s a lot to be learned from the vegan hip hop movement. There are several black male vegan hip hop activists, such as DJ Cavem Moetavation, SupaNova Slom, and stic.man of Dead Prez, who talk about decolonizing our communities and our bodies. In part, they’re talking about veganism, but they’re also connecting it to all these other things, like that black and brown communities have more instances of pollution and environmental degradation because of racism and classism.

These activists also talk about how we can use urban farming and teach kids to eat healthier, and how this can be a way to take them off the track of entering the prison-industrial complex, and how the prison-industrial complex is connected to the military-industrial complex, which is connected to the food-industrial complex. I don’t really see the mainstream movements doing that as much as I see marginalized communities doing it. [These communities] have been making those connections since day one because they had to for survival.

How can those who are not black-identified or vegan be a Sistah Vegan ally? 

It doesn’t matter how you identify, whether you’re vegan or not, black or not. It’s important to leave your comfort zone and understand that you can learn from any experience, whether you agree with it or not. Ask, how does my particular social, racial, or geographic situation uphold certain structures and powers? What does that say about me, my access to food, and what I think is a healthy living situation? Sistah Vegan is not about black women vegans, it’s about using the platform of veganism to explore all those issues.