Location: Cape Town, South Africa
I asked her for directions (read: flirted) to Clifton Beach five days after unpacking my luggage: a muddied, yellow backpack.
Two months later, she's my girlfriend, and I'm the boy at her family's annual "braai," the word for barbecue in Afrikaans, the language of Dutch settlers in South Africa. Her Grandma was lounging in a chair, peacefully snoring on the porch. Enormous mugs of beer teetered in the hands of slightly tipsy people. A goofy German Shepherd was playing keep-away with my girlfriend's even goofier 7-year-old niece in the grass. And the "boom, boom" of Springbok Nude Girls, a popular South African band (seriously, that's their name) moved her aunt to put down the mug and dance.
And they had food. Sosaties (skewered meat), kebabs, "crayfish" or kreef in Afrikaans, marinated chicken, pork and lamb chops, steaks, what seemed like ten kinds of Boerewors (sausages) of different flavors and thickness, and five racks of something that looked vaguely like spareribs. A lot of meat. Maybe it's because I was raised on BBQ pork in Birmingham, AL, but it felt like, well, home.
And then I met Uncle Johan: "Do all those [insert euphemism for African-Americans] in America frustrate you?," he casually asked me. And everyone around us -- my girlfriend's dancing aunt, her sister, brother, and, disturbingly, my smiling girlfriend -- nodded... approvingly. "Na, all is good," I said. And then I guided the conversation back to those sausages on the grill. And the fun-filled braai rolled on past midnight.
I still regret my pathetic answer. Because to do nothing, is to do something.
The fairy tales of Apartheid, a system that smothered the values of many white South Africans, were entrenched in her family's story. Blacks are violent. Lazy. And filthy. This is common sense. Some segregation is necessary, otherwise we'll have "racial violence," my girlfriend once told me. It's normal. Her Grandma and pastor and teachers and friends and their families magnified the myth with more stories. And it's natural. Have you seen the new scientific study? Our brains are actually physically larger... Have you read our history? These are facts.
She was fed these absurdities since birth. And it sounds strange, and it's difficult to write, but: Were her perverse beliefs the result of a conscious choice? Wouldn't a choice imply the awareness of another approach? To her, Apartheid was like gravity -- it was an invisible and unquestioned truth. Bizarrely, she was raised inside the belly of a nation that made it easy for good people to support a system that was hostile to their deepest values.
And in that sense, she has some company. (Hint: look in the nearest mirror.)
Six years later, when I think of my first and only South African barbecue, I think about two things: Uncle Johan and all that meat. Today, in America, what often seems normal is nothing more than the stories all of us seem to accept -- without even thinking. Sound familiar?
And like my former girlfriend, and as equally bizarre, we're living inside a system that makes it easy for us to support practices that violate our most cherished values. We've been fed our own uniquely American absurdities. And we've been unconsciously digesting them since nursery school. Just ask your parents how many cases of Gerber Ham or Beef Gravy meals you slurped down as a baby? My Mom's answer: Laughter, and "a lot." Seriously, go ask them.
When we look at the sausages on the grill during our next family BBQ and see only dinner, we aren't really seeing reality anymore. We're seeing the fairy tales (red barns, straw hats, happy cows, and crowing roosters) we tell ourselves about where our food comes from. And when we casually ask, as I have many time before: "So, how long did you sear the meat?", the myth grows.
One minute inside one of the animal factories that produced those sausages or chicken patties, and yes, even that Gerber Ham Gravy meal would leave you shaken -- and sickened. And that is a big fact. And 99 percent of all animals eaten or used to produce milk or eggs suffer in this very American system of injustice. If you doubt whether you'd be revolted, you won't 10 seconds after you click here.
We might feel anger by the comparison implicit in invoking racism and animal protection. After all, Nelson Mandela didn't move the nation of South Africa to secure the rights of mother pigs or egg-laying chickens. Human oppression is wholly different, and maybe you're right. But we view the contributions of Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King too narrowly if we assume that they cannot stand against all forms of injustice. And make no mistake, there's a reason King's wife, Coretta Scott King, and his son, Dexter, are committed vegetarians.
No jokes here; let's call this what it is: When we eat food from these animals factories we're magnifying another myth and trashing our values. Is this what we want? Or is there something we want even more? Because our life stories, whether stories of apathy or empathy, are being written with every meal.
And to do nothing, is to do something.
Follow Josh Tetrick on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joshtetrick
The only reason some don't get that nonhuman slavery and human slavery are comparable is because we believe that other animals are lesser. We mistakenly believe this because we have been indoctrinated to believe this. But the truth is, that sentience is all that matters as to whether other animals belong to the moral community. Speciesism = sexism = racism = classism and so forth are are forms of discrimination. All cause violence. All "otherize" beings and make them an object of violence. If we truly believe in nonviolence, then we need to incorporate nonviolence into every aspect of our lives and that means we need to stop eating, wearing and using other animals. It's very simple. To deny that using animals is violence and is not problematic is just deluding ourselves. We cannot justify continuing this violence. We do not need animal products to be healthy. It's killing us and the environment.
Go vegan. It's easy. It's better for us, for the planet, but most importantly, it's the morally right and just thing to do. http://www.veganpamphlet.com
"The Effects of Animal Agriculture" http://bit.ly/cT620j
http://unpopularveganessays.blogspot.com/2009/05/on-environmental-disaster-of-animal.html
"On the Environmental Benefits of Being Vegan" http://t.co/wuzzx2o
As We Soy, So Shall We Reap http://t.co/tteqOyJ
51% Greenhouse gases are from animal Use industries and its by-products http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
"We need not be silent about the environmental benefits of veganism, but when we do address such benefits, we should imply or point out that, while great, they are very much incidental to the grave moral wrong of exploiting and unnecessarily breeding and killing the innocent." Dan Cudahy
Jeff Perz: GREEN MURDER: Eating Native Animals, Introduced Animals and Fishes
http://animalrightscommunity.com/abolitionists/post2716.html#p2716
If we were all vegan, only 5% of the land currently devoted to food production would be needed. http://bit.ly/hag8Bk
The fragile topsoil in the region of the midwest where the Dust Bowl occurred had been held in place by native prairie grasses, grazed by large herds of buffalo, for millenia. People moved into the area and began raising cattle, which caused no great harm. Then they turned to growing crops, primarily wheat. For several years they were successful, as the rainfall totals were higher than normal..then the weather went into a different pattern with less rainfall. The repeated plowing and tilling of many thousands of acres of prairie, when combined with dry weather, caused disaster. The top soil was no longer held in place by the native plants, and wind storms lifted the lifeless soil into the air and obliterated everything for miles around. No crops would grow, and people survived (barely) on meat, milk and eggs from their livestock animals, who were able to forage on any remaining native plants...once the animals starved people had to leave the area or starve themselves.
The dust bowl was caused by human folly...by people not understanding the limitations of the land and the climate. Plowing the land to grow wheat was highly damaging to the fragile ecosystem. If they had stuck with raising cattle in that area, the dust bowl would never have happened.
http://learner.org/courses/envsci/unit/text.php?unit=7&secNum=2
The following documents about land classifications used in Australia and British Columbia are also instructive:
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/189697/ag-land-classification.pdf
http://www.alc.gov.bc.ca/alr/ag_cap_details.htm
All REAL farmers know this stuff which is why MF is a faker, not a farmer.
From a Birmingham Jail, King wrote:
Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”…was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand I can do no other, so help me God.”….And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.”….So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?…Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Source:
http://avoluptuousgod.com/heretics/?p=205
Thanks!
I'm sorry the comparison bothered you. Entrenched belief systems, as you know, have a lot in common. And whether racism or patriarchy or bigotry, we can see how they are formed by society, and then seek to make the invisible forces that create those systems visible to everyone.
To compare the elements common to each of them is not equating all forms of human suffering with all forms of animal suffering. Thanks for reading. - J
"Jose Alberto Paniagua, 24, was born disabled and voiceless with a gaze permanently haunted by a look of terror. Jose's father and mother both worked at a plantation which used Nemagon. In the ’70s and ’80s, the banana companies Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita used a carcinogenic pesticide, Nemagon, to protect their crops in Nicaragua. Today, the men and women who worked on those plantations suffer from incurable illnesses. Their children are deformed. The companies feign innocence."
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2096/
"In June this year the democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was forced into exile at gunpoint, leaving a coup regime in his place. He was not a politician of radical left leanings but a ‘moderate reformist’. Nevertheless, the reforms he implemented, such as raising the minimum wage, had some serious opposition, not least from Chiquita Brands International."
http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/CommentAnalysis/CorporateWatch/chiquita.aspx
"In recent weeks, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against Dole Food Company on behalf of 73 people---survivors of murdered trade unionists and campesinos throughout the region of Dole's Magdalena banana plantations in northern Colombia."
http://intercontinentalcry.org/demand-a-full-investigation-of-dole-food-company/
"Dole Philippines Workers in Tough Fight as US Company Uses Military Force Vs Union"
http://bulatlat.com/main/tag/dole-philippines/
"At six in the morning, five children from 11 to 17 years old, huddle in a circle at one side of the Soyapa Farms packing shed. They flatten out and recycle the sheets of plastic which are inserted between banana bunches as they grow, to keep them apart. Children get 2 centavos for each sheet they save, making sometimes as much as 50 pesos a day "
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/philippines-banana-sub-contractors-for-dole-foods-hire-child-labor/
Not that we have to travel to the Philippines or Honduras to find slave labor. We can find it here in the USA.
"In the chilling words of Douglas Molloy, chief assistant United States attorney in Fort Myers, South Florida's tomato fields are "ground zero for modern-day slavery." Molloy is not talking about virtual slavery, or near slavery, or slaverylike conditions, but real slavery. In the last 15 years, Florida law enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women who had been held and forced to work against their will in the fields of Florida, and that represents only the tip of the iceberg. Most instances of slavery go unreported. Workers were "sold" to crew bosses to pay off bogus debts."
http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/572-Barry+Estabrook+Tomatoland
Nothing should ever stop us from helping all those in need of protection - human or otherwise - esp. if we have the power to help. If you are personally involved in helping victims of slave labor and have petitions, I'll gladly sign them. I'm for human rights and animal rights. The point is, it's better to do something progressive, no matter how small, than nothing at all. In the long run, it favors everyone.
Quite frankly, Martin Luther King taught non-violence; the message was clear. He was a man of great integrity. If he were alive today, he would take the side of a victim every single time.
"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
http://clarksummitfarm.com/
How about these cows?
http://mcclellandsdairy.com/PhotoGallery.htm
All animal agriculture is NOT factory farming, and all animals raised for food are NOT tortured and abused. Capice?
Modern monocrop agriculture takes as its starting point that the grower should essentially obliterate all life that currently exists in the area in order to use that entire ecosystem's resources for whatever privileged crop the grower is growing.* Pasturing does not require first annihilating the existing ecosystem before it can begin. So if I eat only pastured animals and you eat only monocropped vegetables, it's fairly likely that your diet results in more animal deaths and environmental destruction than mine does.
*Edited last sentence to make it clearer, then added following.