This blog was started (by me, Johanna, with the encouragement of some friends) to give a voice to vegans of color. Many vegan spaces seem to be assumed (consciously or not) to be white by default, with the dialogue within often coming from a place of white privilege. We’re not single-issue here. All oppressions are connected.
We are always looking for other vegans of color who might be interested in blogging here: get in touch!
i just found you. i love what you’re doing. as a multi-colored vegan living in the mainly white city of portland, sometimes i get a little frustrated, and i don’t have anyone to understand where i’m coming from sometimes. it’s a weird catch-22 about portland (and any alternative movement in general i guess), that it’s so dang open-minded and vegan-friendly, but very very not diverse. it’s like being on the outside of the outside. blah, sometimes it depresses me. thanks for everything.
Emiko — thanks for your comment! I’m glad you like the blog. If you ever want to blog here, let me know.
Hello – I also recently found you, by way of comments we left on An Animal Friendly Life’s post on Good magazine’s *grr* happy meat cover. What a great site and concept – I too am a vegan of color, in a non veg-friendly city. This is a great way to connect and stay afloat on issues affecting us all. I would offer to contribute, but I can barely keep up with my own blog, and am in the process of finding a job so I can get out of said non veg-friendly city. Please keep up the good work!
Word,
very interesting blog. I just found this and you’ve been linked to my blog (Afrikan Raw Vegan Talk) all this time. I’d def consider blogging here. I got other blogs – lionsroar.wordpress.com and hiphopdharma.wordpress.com. Let’s converse.
Meridith — thanks! I understand the busy thing… if you ever post stuff that you think would be relevant for this blog, feel free to shoot me the link & I can cross-post (or if you wanted to be added as an author of the blog so you could cross-post it yourself, either way).
Precision Afrikan — Actually your Afrikan Raw Vegan Talk blog is a fairly new discovery of mine.
I’m going to e-mail you about blogging here. Thanks!!
I stumbled across your blog and I’m interested in keeping up with your posts. Nice concept!
Thanks Mel! Glad to have you reading.
Nice blog.
Found you through a post on HappyCow.net
http://www.happycow.net/blog/?p=117
Myself –
Now eating only plants.
Not so colorful – quite white on the surface – ancestry – not sure about it – I have not had my DNA analysed – i believe part Burmese – approx. 1/512.
Hi Johanna,
Thank you for being a vegan voice. We need as many as we can get! Are you available for a short interview? Thank you for your consideration (and for your beautiful blog).
Aurelia
Hi Johnny — glad you found us!
Aurelia — thank you! I’d be willing to be interviewed… hehehe, I’ll e-mail you.
hey I just came across your blog and I’d love to join your team. I’m a totally tribal girl who has spent her adolescence being pissed off at the exclusive white representation (& presentation) of ‘natural’ living (which more often then not, features “wisdom” from non-anglo cultures)…. and that sentiment hasn’t tempered down one bit
If there are any openings, please email me ~
Mia-do you have a blog?
Hey! I’m Kaitlin and I’m excited that such a blog exists! I would love to contribute so please let me know how I can get involved!
Hey Mia & Kaitlin, I’ve e-mailed you both.
Great blog and Thank you for providing a space for Vegans of Color!
Black Vegetarians are sprouting up!
The Black Vegetarian Society of Georgia
Thank you Traci! If any of the people in your group are vegan & would like to blog here, please let us know.
You are saying some very important things, girl! Hope it’s cool that I added this blog to my blogroll. By the way, are you a student?
keep it up!!!!
Amara
Hi everyone,
I discovered this site when I was searching for a critique of Dr. Laurie Moore, “animal” communicator. when I emailed her asking if the dolphins in her $1,500 swimming with dolphins workshop were captive, and asked if she was a vegan this was her reply:
Captive? I am confused. All my animal friends are wild and free and come to swim with me when and only when they choose. My hawk friends
fly to me because they choose and the baby raccoons who nap by me choose and the insects who come in and out of my house to sit on my arm so when they choose.. I cannot imagine where you got the idea that anyone was held captive.
Is this an inquisition or are you a friend?
Love, Laurie
Dr Laurie Moore
The Miracle Ground
(831) 477-7007
http://www.AniMiracles.com
Needless to say when I emailed her to say that the response of they are happy to die for us was as ludicrous as saying that Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims were happy to be eaten by him, I have not heard from her again. Not only is she a coward, she’s a metaphysical coward.
Feel free to write to her maybe she will get the message.
I am a vegan of color of the hispanic persuasion, I must say I have never experienced racism from any vegan I’ve met.
Learned about your site in the latest issue of VegNews, which is the only “mainstream” magazine that I know that has had (so far) TWO Black women on its cover in the same year! Anyway – I’m on my path to becoming a vegan and as a Black woman, it’s nice to see this site. NOT because I feel that non-POC vegans are racist, but because it broadens the discussion of veganism to bring in POC issues. Thanks.
well, considering i’m best identified as an “other” in this country – i love this site! being brazilian-armenian in a family that spoke a mishmash of languages, growing up on the boundary lines of East LA and the (very Caucasian) OC was hard enough… then i told my parents i was vegan. my poor shish kebab and feijoada loving fundamentalist parents nearly had a heart attack… they keep waiting for me to go back in the meat and dairy closet but it ain’t happening. i got vegan pride! do i get a green triangle for that?
i actually took quite a feminist courses in uni btw, one of my favorites was “women of color in the U.S.” – one of the issues we learned that i can’t get out of my head is how the media tends to put women of color in animal prints on covers. we latinas tend to be put in red (because we’re y’know, “fiery” and “spicy”). the week we discussed this in class halle berry was on the cover of in style… in a leopard print dress.
ps. can anyone tell me of a site that sells vegan shirts that are actually cool? all the ones i see look pretty darn hokey.
When I first started considering veganism three or four years ago, I Googled every combination of “vegan” and anything related to black folks I could, and didn’t find much, which was incredibly disheartening to me.
It is so important that you’re here.
Thank you for this site.
Happened across you folks — excellent. About to start making my way through archives. Cheers …
I’m interested in becoming a “contributor”. Let me know.
thanks,
Breeze Harper
Sistah Vegan Project
A friend introduced me to your site. Thank you for providing such a fresh dialogue!
As a vegan of color(!) I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this blog. I wanted to let you know about a recent post that – while it’s not vegan specific – touches on many of the recurring themes of this blog:
http://peoplesgrocery.org/brahm/peoples-grocery/slow-food-nyt#more-213
ms. johanna,
how are you?
i dig the vibe of this blog. and the posts have much substance.
i’m an editor at opposingviews.com, and since we both cover animal rights, i thought i’d let you know about us.
we’re a debate website and we currently have a discussion on whether people should eat meat. our debaters are experts in their fields (such as gary francione), not just average joes.
if you’re interested, check it out here:
http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/should-we-eat-meat
if you’re into it, feel free to spread the word and participate. you can vote for your side and post comments on the experts’ various arguments.
we also have a new debate about whether people should own pets. francione says no, while the humane society says yes.
check it out if you’ve got a minute. shoot me an email if you have any questions.
thank you much!
Heya Johanna et al!
I just wrote a little post about the most amazingly scary & racist letter that my mother’s newspaper (she’s a journalist and wrote a long article on Obama recently) received. I don’t have the heart to unpack the many MANY levels of crazy going on in it, but in case any of you want to, here is the post: http://lagusta.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/obama-vs-the-jews-a-triple-threat/
Sadly and tragically, I think this person’s craziness is representative of a rather substantial group of far far right Orthodox Jews, which makes it hard to just dismiss it as the ranting of a crazy person – though it is that too.
My favorite line is that Obama is a “triple threat” to the Jews because he is “christian, black, and a moslem” (sic)!!!!!
This is an amazing site as a 18 y.o. aspiring Buddhist Vegan I am totally not like every other black person out there so just to find people who are interested can get sketchy even though i dont care what someones color is i still admire how there is a site for vegans of COLOR thats amazing i didnt even think there were out there since they make it seem like only white people care about the environment and animals which is so un true and i was truthfully starting to believe it until i first stumbled on the black vegetarians in new york site and then stumbled on this site by way of vegan.alltop.com its an excellent thing your doing and helps make me feel more comfortable as the person i am and that its ok and i will find more people out there who like the same things i like in all of the human color shades Thanks!
Hi Johanna,
Since you blog about animal issues, I thought you and your readers would like to know about a national animal event taking place this Sunday, October 19: a new round of Party Animals, centering on the theme of a “Humane Bloc Party.” This is a house party style fundraiser for the Humane Society Legislative Fund (www.hslf.org), which works to lobby for animal protection legislation, educate our supporters about animal protection issues, and elect humane lawmakers to public office.
Party hosts and their guests will dial in from all over the country to our conference call to hear from animal advocates about the importance of electing humane lawmakers. This round, we are pleased to have comedian and cartoon artist Dan Piraro join us on the call. As you may know, his internationally-syndicated “Bizarro” comic strip frequently features animal issues.
For more information about our Humane Bloc Party, please encourage your readers visit our website at http://www.hslf.org, or go directly to http://www.partyanimals.fund.org. It’s not too late to sign up to host your own party! (You can also search the site to find a party happening near you.)
If you have any other questions, please contact Colleen Crinion, Party Animals Coordinator, at 202.676.2314. Thanks so much for your time and attention!
I came across your site as I was trying to figure out if our next president to be is vegan. Can you imagine the next president of the free world being vegan, vegetarian or at least someone who eats vegetables? Amongst everything else about Obama, that would be very cool. I’ve added you to my blog roll.
Hi Johanna and everyone,
Lauren here, from Toronto’s ‘Animal Voices’ radio program and podcast. Would you or any of the contributors from the Vegans of Color blog be interested in being a guest(s) on the program? (We could have up to two people interviewed at the same time.) It would be an honor to have you on, and to promote the site!
If you’re interested, would this Tuesday November 11 at 11:15 am EST work for you? If not, would another Tuesday in November or December (before the 18th) be a possibility? Or we could do a pre-recorded program as opposed to the live show.
Thank you for your work!
Best,
Lauren
Oh! And I should mention, the email for the show is animalvoices@gmail.com
Thanks,
Lauren
Greetings,
…best of luck with your blog and making the vegan connection to all social justice issues and oppression. Meat and dairy are the root cause of world hunger, disease, poverty, energy crises, environmental devastation (including global warming, deforestation, and water and resource depletion), war and violence. These are issues discussed on my radio program GO VEGAN WITH BOB LINDEN. For stations and times, archives and podcasts, please visit http://www.GoVeganRadio.com. – open to your issues of concern – Bob@GoVeganRadio.com -VEGAN PEACE!
Hey fellow bloggers!
I’ll keep this quick: I’m currently writing a paper on blogging and feminist consciousness-raising and I’m contacting specific bloggers who I feel are important to have their voices included. So, I’ve come to you! If you’re interested or have questions about more details, please email me at .
If you decide to go through with it, we can then take care of the formalities (consent form), and send you the open-ended survey. Thanks so much for your time, and keep up the fantastic work.
Sorry, the email is
warwick.derek@gmail.com
Shouldn’t have put it in parentheses.
pattrice jones wanted to pass this message along:
I’ve got my composition students blogging and one has written a pro-vegan post. I wonder if it might be possible to mention her post on the VoC blog?
the blog:
http://readthisorelse.wordpress.com
Racquel’s post:
http://readthisorelse.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/vegan/
what I’m up to with all this:
http://readthisorelse.wordpress.com/about/
I’m a vegan of color and would love to blog for you. Keep up the geat work and never miss the opportunity to plug veganism, a kinder way of being.
Hello! I’m a vegan of color and I would love the opportunity to be a contributing blogger for VOC. I absolutely love the premise of this blog and would love to ad another voice of color to the vegan movement. Here’s what I do on my current blog The Vegan GuineaPig http://veganguineapig.blogspot.com/
Hey! I’m a vegan of color(Colombian/Venezuelan) who also happens to be a dude and I’d love to contribute to your slice of the blogosphere. Currently, I work as a sportswriter for an ESPN affiliate website which does not fulfill my vegan blogging desire. Feel free to grill me at your leisure, can’t be anywhere near as bad as applying for citizenship.
thank you so much for this blog. i’ve been searching for spaces where people of color who believe in and practice animal rights can share views, opinions and generally commiserate. glad to finally find it. i’ll be visiting often and i apologize ahead of time for any rants i will likely be going off on!
Hello Vegan of Color,
I just listened to Animal Voice and I enjoyed your interview. I always thought it is important to find a common ground to discuss and look at bigger pictures, in order to solve problems in front of you.
I am Japanese living in Tokyo. I often feel that it is hard to be vegan here, since there is no concept of, even, vegetarianism. The society expects you to be the same as the rest of the members, it is difficult to, for example, to attend business meetings etc. and announce that I am vegan. They look at me in a strange way and ask “you can eat fish with us, right?”.
I still stick with my belief, and say that I don’t eat animal products. But it is not easy sometimes.
I hope to introduce veganism and vegetarianism to Japanese people. (there are a lot of sites but there are not enough restaurants… )
I am honor to contribute to Vegan of Color, blog about what the norms with vegans or vegetarianism in Tokyo (and Japan).
So if need, please let me know!
I really enjoyed the show, again. Good luck and I will check the site regularly.
All best,
Maho
Tokyo, Japan
Hello Johanna,
How do you feel about cross-posting? I have a blog entry pending on L.O.V.E.’s site about relating as a POC with mainstream animal advocacy. I would very much like to share this with the community here. I can imagine more such entries in the future as well and would love to discuss with you the possibilities of dual-blogging when it feels appropriate.
Thank you for creating and maintaining such a wonderful, needed space.
Warmly,
Victor
Hello Johanna:
We just took a space on twitter at http://twitter.com/vegansofcolor . Is anybody interested in joining us on there? We are twitter newbies, and not even sure if we can emotionally handle the communication form on there. Or, is anybody of this blog interested in taking that space maybe???
Keep up the great work ladies! I added a link to VoC on my blog
peace:love:joy
Peace & Blessings,
Discovered your blog via Twitter…
Aris
Greetings and thanks for this great blog! I’m a former vegan of color, now just chilled-out vegetarian of color, haha… Anyways just wanted to share with you all a piece I wrote recently for Civileats.com. Cheers and take care.
http://civileats.com/2009/04/24/finding-a-model-in-japans-young-farmer-corps/
Dear Vegan of Color Admin,
I’m requesting you post my series of articles on Sex, Food & Health. I’m sure your readers would find these articles educational, as well as, entertaining. I am following you blog on twitter and facebook, Please feel free to subscribe to my feed.
Regards,
Carmela
Home Remedies to Rid Yourself of Danruff
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1719066/home_remedies_to_rid_yourself_of_dandruff.html
“Eat Your Sexy Back”. What you read might spice up your love life!
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1716463/do_vegans_have_better_sex.html?cat=22
Also read,
“Be Your Own Kitchen Pharmacist”
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1710537/healing_food_be_your_own_kitchen_pharmacist.html?cat=22
AND…..
“The Principles of a Natural Hygiene Diet”
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1709537/the_principles_of_a_natural_hygiene.html?cat=5
Don’t forget to get the Belly Fat MUFA Recipe..NUTTY BELLY-BUSTING COOKIE RECIPE
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1721646/nutty_bellybuster_breakfast_cookie.html?cat=51
BEACH BODY MUFA SMOOTHIE RECIPE
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1720042/beach_body_smoothie.html?cat=22
Here is the RSS feed for my articles. Again, it’s nice to connect with you. Have great week.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/rss/custom_496335_Articles+by+Carmela+Foster__article__.xml
Greetings. I was referred to this blog through a friend on facebook. I must say that this blog is a great idea and I would feel quite privileged to be able to contribute to it. I’m Filipino and I’ve been vegan for about seven years. Regarding my politics I consider myself to be a Marxist, but am by no means a dogmatic elitist. I support the liberation of the 3rd World as well as the destruction the white-supremacy, male supremacy, hetereosexism, and specieism.
In terms of what I usually blog about, tidbits of Ethnic Studies, western philosophy, and a lot of fru-fru postmodernist analysis of popular culture and political theory. http://50megatonpapertiger.wordpress.com
be healthy ya’ll.
This is a good resource for Vegans of Colour:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/myguide-monguide/index-eng.php
It’s a Canada’s Food Guide chart that you can customize with examples of vegan protein servings, and it’s available in English, French, Arabic, Chinese (traditional or simplified), Farsi, Korean, Russian, Punjabi, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, and Urdu. Your age and sex also factors into how many servings of each food group you need.
Hey Johanna,
Your blog is really interesting, and informative. I was wondering if you had seen our site? its http://www.human-animal-liberation.info? It ties together and compares different kinds of oppression facing humans and animals including racism, LGBTQ, sexism and animal rights. As well as several other related points of interest.
If you haven’t seen it, maybe you could check it out and maybe you could blog about it, or email me with some suggestions?
Thanks a lot and hopefully talk to you soon
Carley
hey! love what youall are doing in this blog. i wanted to bring to your attention (and your readers’ attention) a book which i just discovered today put out by ak press: it’s called “the little book of vegan poems” by benjamin zephaniah. the author is a vegan of color (a black man… and you can see his truly awesome (and funny!) picture by following the link and scrolling down to the back cover).
http://books.google.ca/books?id=bm1pIjcpPhgC&dq=the+little+book+of+vegan+poems&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=_TlQSovIOZaqtgf_uOW0BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
you also can read a few poems in the preview. keep in mind that, tho this book is for both kids and adults, he wrote it especially for children, and (judging from the preview) the poems have a sorta ‘nursery rhyme’ type feel. that doesn’t mean there’s no deepness, tho!
maybe someone might wanna do a review of this book in a future entry. or maybe someone already has. if so, sorry for the bother.
much love,
~H~
How do I get in touch with Johanna Palacios? Someone nominated this person to be profiled on a new resource tool
directing people to vegan websites, called Vegan Voices Around the World, seen here:
http://veganpoet.com/veganvoices/
Anyone else want to nominate those living a vegan lifestyle, promoting veganism in a non-violent way, please send them to me at veganpoet@hotmail.com
Johanna (me) & Joselle Palacios are two separate bloggers here. Which one are you looking for?
I run a site called Negotiation is Over (http://negotiationisover.com/) and am a pluralist in terms of my approach to abolition and veganism. As your site says, all oppression is related.
Currently, NIO is building alliances to try and break veganism out of the domain of the white middle class, as well as bridge boundaries between social movements.
Although I would prefer to communicate via email (camille@negotiationisover.com), I would like to invite you to contribute to my blog and use NIO as a platform to speak for vegans of color and the issues that are important from your perspective, some of which may be unique.
I would also like to know specifically, if you are interested in re-publishing this blog: http://vegansofcolor.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/for-as-long-as-my-skin-is-black-i-will-be-a-devoted-anti-speciesist/ on NIO.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Camille
Greetings,
I am a raw/ vegan of color and I have a recipe video that I would like to contribute.
Thanks,
Melba
Melba,
Thank you for your response.
I would love to publish your recipe. I’m actually thinking about going raw so I could kind of use all the help I can get anyway. lol
Please send me your blog at camille@negotiationisover.com and I’ll get it up within 24 hours of receipt.
I look forward to hearing from you, Camille
I am vegan and its quite an unusual thing in my community.
I am Native American and I doubt you will find a more meat driven culture than ours. I made the ethical choice to become a vegetarian several years and the recent leap into veganism. My reason being that as a society at large, we are very removed from our food and since I was not prepared to kill another living being,it was a logical choice for me.
I will state and this may be controversial with some vegans, that I cannot judge many traditional Indian people who grew up on reservations out here, dirt poor,who breed and slaughter their own sheep. I know many people who do this.
While I do not condone this practice, for many this is how they live, far from grocery stores and conveniences that most of us take for granted.
Alicia, I just bought your cookbook and my five year old and I cannot wait to heat up things in the kitchen this week.
Hello — not a vegan or person of color, but an editor for a scholarly journal: http://www.raceethnicity.org. We will be sending out our CFP (Call for Papers) in January of 2010 for our Summer 2011 issue on the intersection of race and food. Please feel free to look at our Website for updates this winter when the CFP should be complete.
Thanks,
Leslie Shortlidge
Managing Editor,
Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
The Ohio State University
433 Mendenhall Laboratory
125 South Oval Mall
Columbus, OH 43210
Tel: (614) 292-4817
Web site: http://www.raceethnicity.org
Blog: http://kirwaninstitute.blogspot.com/
A vegan website for those of us who exude some “color”, lol! I recently went vegan and I have to say the vegan world is mostly… colorless. I will bookmark your page.
Solar….
What a great site!
I’m a Latino who immigrated to the US at an early age, and I’ve always been the one person of color in white settings. From grade school to college, this has been the dominant status quo. With a few exceptions during college where I met, befriended, and did actions with several radical people of color, my experience even now has been to travel from white areas where I live and work to segregated areas where other people of color live and work. This is the reality of living in the Metro Detroit area. Due to the nature of my work, I have to cross that threshold of color, a literal line that in Detroit-area actually includes the occasional wall, weekly.
On top of it, being vegan is one more way that my otherness as a person of color is magnified. Like the previous poster wrote, I’m on the outside of the outside.
Navigating waters on the margins has become my specialty. I feel most comfortable here than anywhere else. When I go back to Chile, I’m not quite “Chilean”, and when I’m in the US, I’m not quite “from the here” either. I’m not quite like other vegans, and I’m not quite like other anarchists, and I’m not quite like other triathletes, or quite like other Union activists, or 30-something straight edge adults. I’m in the margins everywhere. I both hate that I rarely have the support that comes with belonging, but I relish the freedom it has forced me to learn by not being fettered to one identity no matter how much society tries to pin on me.
I would *love* to blog on here if given the opportunity.