Sistah Vegan Conference Recordings Now Available!!! September 16, 2013

The Sistah Vegan Project

(Photo of Dr. A. Breeze Harper)

The Sistah Vegan Web Conference took place on September 14, 2013. It was titled “Embodied and Critical Perspectives on Veganism by Black Women and Allies.” (What, you missed the conference!? No worries, the entire conference was recorded and you can purchase the recordings by clicking on ‘CLICK HERE TO REGISTER’ on the conference page. Even though the conference has ended, clicking on this link will send you to the recordings purchase page: Sistah Vegan Conference Recordings)

It was a terrific 8 hours. Here is a small taste of what we learned, talked about, and shared:

• How veganism was healing for Black women’s reproductive health
• Black women, veganism, and the challenges of sizeism
• Patriarchy as problematic in the USA animal liberation movement
• PETA’s racialized-sexualized uses of the female body to promote ‘going vegan’ for animals;
• How the ‘white savior complex’ complicates and causes stress…

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[Video] Keynote Talk: Recipes for Racial Tension Headaches: Why Vegan Healing is Crucial for Racial [Trauma] Healing September 10, 2013

The Sistah Vegan Project

I gave a keynote talk at 330pm in Toronto on Sept 8 , 2013 at 330 pm for the 29th Annual Vegetarian Food Festival in Toronto. It was called “Recipes for Racial Tension Headaches: Why Vegan Healing is Crucial for Racial [Trauma] Healing.”  This was not vegan proselytizing, but rather, a way to show how I use critical race, critical animal, and critical food studies as methods to talk about how systemic racism and capitalism affect health and wellness.

Overall, the festival was an amazing experience. I truly appreciated the openness of the audience of my lecture, the diversity of faces, and the interactive discussion and Q&A session at the end. And yes, I will admit that it is less stressful to be in an environment in which so many people already have a critical race literacy for a post 2000 era that does not deny that systemic racism is still…

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Pathologizing the ‘fat body’ as immoral and then experimenting on non-human animals to find a ‘cure’. September 6, 2013

The Sistah Vegan Project

I just read an article on the NY Times, “Gut Bacteria From Thin Humans Can Slim Mice Down.” 

This is amazing to me. First, fatness is pathologized in the US. And then, to offer a cure, scientists conduct experiments on non-human animals to prove that they can cure the immoral fat body. I’m just shaking my head over this.  As usual, the lack of critical thinking around the new obsession over bodies that don’t conform to a BMI of 21 is disturbing. The lack of more critical thinking and compassion towards non-human animals being experimented on, in this article, is very sad.

I also started thinking about how fat-shaming and sizeism in the USA mainstream vegan and vegetarian community don’t really engage in critical analysis of the fatphobia in this culture. Even though most animal liberation oriented vegans don’t support non-human animal exploitation, this NYTimes article points to a…

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Critical Whiteness Studies Does Not Mean Being Anti-white against individual white people September 2, 2013

The Sistah Vegan Project

The other day, someone shared my post about the upcoming Sistah Vegan Conference. The post made it to a Facebook group page that promoted intersections of feminism and vegan philosophy.

After viewing my video about the upcoming Sistah Vegan conference, a ‘white’ immigrant identified woman had an interesting response to my use of the word “Critical whiteness” for the Sistah Vegan conference. She shared that she won’t be supporting a vegan conference that singles out a particular race of people.

Interesting interpretation. Especially since the whole conference is critical race, critical whiteness, critical animal studies, critical feminist oriented, with my keynote at the end talking about a Black feminist critique of Afrocentric veganism, such as its [un]conscious promotion of heterosexism and transphobia.

So, I decided to create this video to once again try to clarify my work as a social science researcher. Please watch the video BEFORE commenting.

The Sistah…

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My Sistah Vegan Twitter Account Was Suspended. Very Strange. September 1, 2013

The Sistah Vegan Project

If you have been a follower of @sistahvegan on Twitter, perhaps you noticed something strange…. I’ve been suspended, which means you can’t find me on there anymore. With no explanation, my account was suspended 3 days ago. When I clicked on the link that explains why accounts are usually suspended, they say it’s from aggressive follower behavior. I am not sure what that means, but the consequences of them doing this means I have lost over 1500 followers. I only tweet less than 10x a day, so I am not sure if this is considered ‘aggressive.’ My Tweets usually focus on the Sistah Vegan Project and/or critical race, critical whiteness, or critical feminist analysis of food, health, etc.

So, I am wondering if someone has reported me as being ‘aggressive’ because of my focus on race and whiteness in my analysis. I am curious, as I have been called racist…

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