The word human has been used to separate Homo sapiens from the other 1-2 million animal species of the Animal Kingdom in order to exploit and abuse these other animals. Saying ‘humans or animals’ is like saying ‘apples or fruit’ as if the former is not member of the later.
All Homo sapiens are animals. All Homo sapiens are humans.
Many people talk and think about themselves as if they are not animals and talk and think about certain people as animals in order to inflict abuse. Animalizing or dehumanizing people is a problem that can begin to be solved if we close and eliminate this human-animal separation and divide.
Many animal rights activists talk and think callously about some people as though they are not animals too and deserving of rights. This is another problem that can begin to be solved if we recognize that Homo sapiens are animals and when animal rights are demanded, people are included.
My mission is to foster comfort in embracing our collective animal status so that we can learn to treat all animals, including people, with respect, compassion, and justice. Join me in becoming a humanimal.
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The essay below was written by Carla Golden for Vegan for the People: Human Rights in a Compassionate World, Volume 1 Summer 2018.
A Case for Humanimal
The history of the word human is problematic because it has been used as a tool of oppression since the colonization of America. To define a human, one must also define all other animal life that is not human. It is this human vs. animal opposition, divide, or contrast that has created a scale where some people were less valued (by the creators, controllers, and benefactors of this human narrative) than others who then slipped down the scale toward voicelessness, objectification, ownership, and exploitation because they were considered more like animals than like people. Modern reluctance to regard all animals, not just wild and companion animals, as sentient beings with the ability to suffer has negative implications for the wellbeing of animals as well as for the wellbeing of marginalized people. It is critical and in the best interest of all sentient life for people to dispose of their ‘human identity’ as a deliberate action toward dismantling the human vs. animal divide. It is critical to the health of all people, all other animals, and the planet that none of us regard ourselves more worthy of moral consideration than any other living, conscious being. I am proposing that we normalize the use of the word humanimal to replace human.
“Once perceived as beasts, people were liable to be treated accordingly. The ethic of human domination removed animals from the sphere of human concern. But it also legitimized the ill-treatment of humans who were in a supposedly animal condition. In the colonies, slavery, with its markets, its branding and its constant labor, was one way of dealing with men thought to be beastly.” Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery
When we talk about animals, we are talking about 1-2 million different species in the animal kingdom. One of those animal species is Homo sapiens, an 18th Century scientific term that loosely translates as “wise earth dweller.” The English word human predates this scientific classification and drew its etymology in the 16th Century from the Latin word hūmānus which is thought to come from the same root word meaning earth that gives us the word homo.
Before scientists classified the animal kingdom, it was widely accepted that people and animals were different and separate. Many religions taught that people were created in the image of their god and that people were given dominion over animals. Dominion was largely regarded as domination and ownership rather than protection or stewardship.
As people dominated and domesticated nature and animals, wealth and power grew during the Age of Agriculture in the Old World. Slavery of people was rare among hunter-gatherer populations yet became common as population centers and economies were established and grew.
In the New World, in what was to become the United States of America, colonies were largely serviced by European indentured servants. As demand for cheaper labor grew, slaves were forcibly brought to the colonies from Africa. It was during this time that people were categorized into groups or races in order to demarcate and justify the subordination of Africans through chattel (derived from “cattle”) slavery. Because men of European origin were the dominant rulers and power-holders by self-governed patriarchal design, being fully human came to mean being fully white and fully male. Anyone of any other color (race) or gender was culturally and politically regarded as subordinate, inferior, subhuman, nonhuman, beastly, savage, primitive, or animal. Colonial laws reflected this hierarchy of domination which directly benefited the ruling class of wealthy white men.
“What separates the “human Others” from the “Ideal Human” and what distinguishes the human Others from each other is their ranking on the human-animal scale. I don’t think it’s apparent to most of us that the notions of “human” and “animal” are racially constituted. The racial hierarchy tracks not just a color descent but also a species descent. At the top of the hierarchy sits the white male human and at the bottom sits the shady and necessarily opposite figure of “the animal.” These two poles signify two contrary moral statuses – the closer your category is to the white male human, the more you “matter.” The closer your category is to the shady, vague “animal,” the less you “matter.” The organizing principle for racial logic lies in the human-animal divide, wherein the human and the animal are understood to be moral opposites. With these poles set in place those who authored this system placed themselves in the former position and from there divided humanity along a spectrum that went all the way “down” to the “animal.” This model of the human is still in use today. So in black reappropriation movements, activists effectively begin to disrupt the modern, imperialistic understanding of humanity. But because they leave the foundation untouched, the dismantling can never be complete. We need to go beyond the racial categories and subvert their anchor: the human-animal divide.” Syl Ko in Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters
It is this socially constructed legacy of the human-animal continuum of domination and oppression that has laid the groundwork for how white supremacy and speciesism exist and intersect in modern day America. Maligning people with animals is one way oppressors justify actions of power, moral disregard, and exploitation of people. In order for the animalizing and dehumanizing of people to be effective, we must first have collectively and culturally agreed to objectify animals and regarded them unworthy or unnecessary of moral consideration.
We’ve slowly learned over time and with advancements of scientific inquiry that all 1-2 million different species of animals possess unique and complex lives. Animals with a central nervous system are understood to have pain receptors and the ability to suffer. Yet when the ruling class was categorizing people by races, it was still thought that animals lacked consciousness and could not experience physical or emotional pain. In the minds of many people, animals were unfeeling animated objects. It is a relatively recent development to acknowledge the suffering capacity of animals, and still not all people believe this to be true.
When colonial oppressors maligned people with animals, abuse and exploitation was considered justifiable because it was commonly thought that mistreated people couldn’t suffer like the oppressors themselves or “real” humans. Human exceptionalism paves the road for animal abuse and the animalization of people. In other words, human exceptionalism gives rise to speciesism and white supremacy. This domination mindset is what allows us in contemporary America to cage people of color and poor people “like animals” in prisons and detention facilities, callously separate and destroy families, tolerate homelessness and unemployment, provide inadequate education and healthcare, terrorize and kill by police force, provide substandard food as main sources of sustenance, and withhold economic opportunities.
Speciesism is the assignment of different values, rights, or moral consideration to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership. It is speciesism that allows a person to love and protect a dog like a family member while consuming a cow. It is speciesism that allows societies to protect wildlife and companion animals while disregarding the abusive practices required to render billions of animals into food in factory farms and slaughterhouses. It is speciesism that allows people to disregard the sentience of other animals.
The mental and moral gymnastics that permit a person to treat one animal species with kindness and another species with indifference is a prerequisite for treating one category of people with kindness and another with indifference. These prejudices and discriminations are arbitrary and culturally created. Prejudism requires us to relate to and value some individuals and to consider other individuals as different, unlike us, or “other” based largely on physical appearance: facial hair, stature, skin color, eye shape and color, nose and lip shape, age, ability, hair length, texture, style, and color, clothing and bodily decoration, hygiene, religious accessories, dental health, and other strictly observable features.
White supremacy is an ideology based on the belief that white people are superior to people of other skin colors or races. This belief perpetuates and maintains domination for the advantage of white people on individual and collective levels. People of color are wholly or partially disenfranchised and excluded from systems of social, cultural, economic, legal, educational, and political freedom and power.
Intersectionality is the complex interplay of macro- and micro-hierarchies of domination and the resulting direct and indirect compounded forms of oppression. Intersectionality can describe the experience of an individual or the machinations of systems. White supremacy intersects with human exceptionalism and both share a core oppression of domination. For example, our enormous industrial capitalistic food system (capital deriving from “head of cattle”) results in food disparity (1), negative health outcomes (2), environmental injustices (3), domestic and substance abuse (4)(5), and economic slavery (6) at rates disproportionately higher for people of color and the poor because the commodification and consumption of animals and the disregard for certain people flow from a common domination mindset. As long as we maintain a demand and appetite for exploited animals, we will uphold intersecting systems of domination such as white supremacy. Human exceptionalism or supremacy becomes white supremacy when moral consideration for all sentient beings is ignored or denied. Human surreptitiously becomes code for white.
“Yes, my brothas and sistahs in the United States, even if you’re one of the many human beings on the planet who aren’t concerned with nonhuman animals rights at this point in your antiracism and antipoverty praxis and spiritual path, your consumption of unsustainably produced animal products may not only be increasing your chances for cancer, obesity, and heart disease, you may be (in)directly oppressing and causing suffering to people who look just like you. I was astounded to learn that the poor and people of color have a much higher chance and likelihood of suffering and dying simply because they don’t have rightful access to clean water, water that has been polluted and/or misused for our American addiction to flesh foods.” Dr. A. Breeze Harper in Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society
As one explores veganism as a lifestyle and political force, one may begin the journey with altruistic intentions for all animals. This may segue into personal health benefits from improved nutrition and a desired reduction in individually generated environmental pollution and destruction. Pursued further, the tenants of veganism eventually intersect with most of all life including the equal individual rights of all people. When we value all animal life, we improve the wellbeing of the interdependent web that encompasses Earth, nature, all people, and all other animals. The health of all people is inextricably interconnected to the health of all animals on the one planet where we all reside. When we are inculturated and desensitized to the disposability of living beings, we become dangerous to animals, ourselves, and other people.
“By placing humans at the top of the planet’s food chain, our culture has historically perpetuated a particular worldview that requires from its members a reduction of essential feeling and awareness – and it is this process of desensitization that we must understand if we would comprehend the underlying causes of oppression, exploitation, and spiritual disconnectedness. When we practice eating for spiritual health and social harmony, we practice making certain essential connections that our culturally induced food rituals normally require us to block from awareness. The practice is an essential prerequisite for evolving to a state of consciousness where peace and freedom are possible.” Dr. Will Tuttle in The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony
When we feast on tortured animals, we perpetuate the torture of all life. When we feast on enslaved, raped, caged, mutilated, and slaughtered animals, we become less sensitive to these actions taken against people. As long as we objectify, confine, and abuse animals, we will animalize, dehumanize, and abuse people. As long as we legally hold captive traumatized individuals who have been stripped of their bodily autonomy, we will see mirrored patterns in systems that process animals and people alike whereby normalizing violence such as racism, speciesism, and sexism. The domination of people by people is a natural outgrowth of dominating other animals for food, entertainment, experimentation, and clothing. Liberation for all people demands that we liberate all animals. And liberation for all animals demands that we liberate all colonized people. Either sentient life is worthy of protection or it is not.
“”Animal” is a category that we shove certain bodies into when we want to justify violence against them, which is why animal liberation should concern all who are minoritized, because at any moment you can become an “animal” and be considered disposable. If the dominant class is lying about black folk – telling everyone that we’re lazy, that we have no culture, and so forth – imagine what they have invented about animals: that they can’t feel pain, God put them here for us to eat, they have no culture, and so on. As long as animals are oppressed, a long as “animal” means something degrading, we will never be set free. The inferiorized should be the authors of the change because we have an intimate understanding of what it means to be the subhuman aggregate.” Aph Ko in Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters
In a world where all people are not yet able to choose an animal-free diet or lifestyle based on access and/or affordability, it is imperative for those who can choose a vegan lifestyle to help create an equitable food and goods distribution system that helps more people choose fewer animals to eat and exploit. It is the responsibility of those who can choose to live vegan to educate and understand the unique challenges other people face when seeking a more compassionate choice. It is imperative that vegans who defend animal rights not become violent toward other people.
Our capitalistic culture depends on keeping people ignorant of how animals become food and products, otherwise we would all be taught in school and other institutions of education the truth of factory farms and slaughterhouses. Waking up to these realities can be traumatic for many people. Until the power brokers who control the current cultural narrative are phased out and replaced by people who are ready and willing to reveal the truth, seismic change will happen slowly and intimately, person-to-person, and by the work of relatively small groups of activists.
In the work to generate more awareness, liberation, and peace we as individuals and groups need to be mindful not to activate shame, denial, or despair in people. A movement that exists to increase compassion must operate with compassion. In order for more people to morally consider the plight of animals, people must not feel as though their wellbeing is less important than that of other animals. An interconnected, interdependent, and intersected case must be provided so that people feel that their ultimate liberation is dependent upon the liberation of animals and that both liberations matter. The message must be that we must free the animals and spare the planet in order to liberate ourselves. And we have to remain mindful not to promote the physical, financial, or social caging of people as we aim to physically uncage animals. Our justice work must be intersectional in all directions for all species.
“Veganism of color rejects speciesism in addition to anti-blackness, colorism, racism, xenophobia, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and all other -“isms”. Consistent anti-oppression, inclusive of nonhumans and anti-speciesism, in the social justice spectrum is a must if we are going to successfully create a just world.” Julia Feliz Bruek, Veganism in an Oppressive World: A Vegans-of-Color Community Project
It was humanitarian Dr. Paul Farmer who said “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” When we value some lives, be they people or other animals, less than other lives, we eventually destroy life for everyone directly and indirectly. It is only an imaginary amount of time before dominate oppressors destroy themselves too. We are all connected for better or for worse, for justice or for injustice. Let us actually live as “wise earth dwellers” and show solidarity with all of our fellow Earthlings. One day perhaps the human-animal divide that arose during a period of colonial violence will be seen for the tool of oppression that it is and be retired or phased out. Perhaps one day we will all be comfortable with viewing ourselves as animals and celebrating our similarities. Individual rights for people – that all beings are created equal, and have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness – are ultimately animal rights too. Choose vegan for the people and animals because liberation is good and necessary for everyone. We can practice a plurality of compassion by choosing and orchestrating decolonization and co-liberation for all sentient beings.
It is for the case stated above that I encourage us to refer to ourselves and other Homo sapiens as humanimals. Please join me.
Citations
1. Food Deserts by the Food Empowerment Project
“Food deserts are most commonly found in communities of color and low-income areas (where many people don’t have cars). Studies have found that wealthy districts have three times as many supermarkets as poor ones do, that white neighborhoods contain an average of four times as many supermarkets as predominantly black ones do, and that grocery stores in African-American communities are usually smaller with less selection.”
2. Biased Food Guidelines Ignore African Americans by Dr. Milton Mills
“The consequences of weak and racially biased dietary policies are not just higher health care bills, but also preventable suffering and lost human potential. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans must be much stronger and sensitive to the health needs of ethnic and racial minorities.”
3. Environmental Racism by the Food Empowerment Project
“Typically found in communities of color and low-income communities, industrial polluters such as landfills, trash incinerators, coal plants, and toxic waste dumps affect the well-being of residents. The food industry, with its factory farms and slaughterhouses, can also be considered a major contributor of pollution that affects the health of communities of color and low-income communities, because more often than not they locate their facilities in the areas where these people live.
Among the corporations that harm the environment and the health of communities of color and low-income communities are those that run industrial pig farms. Research has shown that these pig farms are responsible for both air and water pollution, mostly due to the vast manure lagoons they create to hold the enormous amount of waste from the thousands of pigs being raised for food. Residents who live near these factory farms often complain of irritation to their eyes, noses, and throats, along with a decline in the quality of life and increased incidents of depression, tension, anger, confusion, and fatigue.”
4. Slaughterhouse Workers by the Food Empowerment Project
“Like other divisions of agriculture, slaughterhouse and “meat”-processing workers are predominantly people of color living in low-income communities. Historically, a significant percentage of the workforce has been African American. In recent decades, an influx of Latin American workers has been seen across the country, partially due to active recruiting by the corporations. Today, approximately 38% of slaughterhouse and “meat”-processing workers were born outside of the U.S..”
5. The Psychological Damage of Slaughterhouse Work by PTSD Journal
“Slaughterhouse workers face a variety of physical strains and dangers on the job, but there is increasing evidence that mental suffering occurs as well. These employees are hired to kill animals, such as pigs and cows, that are largely gentle creatures. Carrying out this action requires workers to disconnect from what they are doing and from the creature standing before them.
This emotional dissonance can lead to consequences such as domestic violence, social withdrawal, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and PTSD. There is also evidence that this work leads to increased crime in towns with slaughterhouse factories.”
6. Poor Health: When Poverty Becomes Disease by Claire Conway at the University of California San Francisco
““So, cyclically, poverty leads to poor health and poor health leads to poverty,” says Bibbins-Domingo, who holds the Lee Goldman, MD, Endowed Chair in Medicine. “If that cycle happens across generations, then you are talking about major, seemingly intractable effects on communities living in poverty.””
Bibliography
Spiegel, Marjorie. The Dreaded Comparison Human and Animal Slavery. Mirror Books, 1997. ISBN-13: 978-0962449338
Ko, Aph, and Syl Ko. Aphro-Ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. Lantern Books, 2017. ISBN-13: 978-1590565551
Harper, A. Breeze. Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society. Lantern Books, 2010. ISBN-13: 978-1590561454
Tuttle, Will. The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony. Lantern Books, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-1590565278
Brueck, Julia Feliz. Veganism in an Oppressive World: A Vegans-of-Color Community Project. Sanctuary Publishers, 2017. ISBN-13: 978-0998994611
