Abstract
Abolitionism is an animal rights' philosophy and social movement which has recently begun to grow. It has been largely contested but the criticisms directed at it have usually been articulated outside academia. In this article, I wish to contend that one of the criticisms directed at abolitionism—that it contains racist implications—is correct. I do this by defending the idea that abolitionism engages in what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva classifies as ‘racism without racists’—an unintentional and subtle form of racism. I present three ways in which abolitionism may be considered racist and then address some possible objections to my view.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The term ‘racialised groups’ refers to those groups that are ascribed an ethnic or racial identity. In the literature, the term refers to groups which are somehow disadvantaged in relation to the dominant group and, thereby, racialised refers to blacks, Latinos, Arabs, etc., but not to the white dominant culture. Thus, when I use the concept of ‘racialised’ it is a short for ‘disadvantaged racialized’.
Perhaps some of the few exceptions are A. Breeze Harper and Kathryn George.
Francione describes the abolitionist approach as a six-principle doctrine. The description I make here is faithful to the features of abolitionism, but the core characteristics described are those relevant to the topic under discussion.
See “Introduction” for a short list of fundamental interests.
Food security is defined as having the means to access sufficient and healthy nutritious food at all times (Gottlieb and Joshi 2013).
Kaffir is an offensive term, a slur, that carries with it connotations of ugliness and inferiority.
Freedom from neo-colonial domination is a fundamental interest because this freedom refers to individuals’ interest in autonomy.
This option has additional problems, including deforestation, which would exert a strong negative impact on many animal species, causing them to potentially die.
The following interpretation of abolitionism is not necessarily agreed upon by abolitionists, but my point is simply that there are philosophical resources available for formulating a response to some of my criticisms.
References
Adams, C. J. (1995). Comment on George’s ‘Should feminists be vegetarians?’. Signs, 21(1), 221–225.
Anderson, E. (2013). The imperative of integration (Reprint ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Balibar, E., & Wallerstein, I. (2011). Race nation class: Ambiguous identities (2nd ed.). London, New York: Verso.
Barsh, R. (2001). Food security, food hegemony, and charismatic animals. In R. Friedheim (Ed.), Toward a sustainable whaling regime (pp. 150–170). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Bethencourt, F. (2015). Racisms: From the crusades to the twentieth century (Reprint ed.). Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists (5th ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Bow, C. H., Cheung, E., Cheung, C. L., Xiao, S. M., Loong, C., Soong, C., et al. (2012). Ethnic difference of clinical vertebral fracture risk. Osteoporosis International: A Journal Established as Result of Cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA, 23(3), 879–885. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-011-1627-9.
Colin, A., Fuchs, P. N., Shriver, A., & Hillary, D. (2006). Deciphering animal pain. In M. Aydede (Ed.), Pain: New essays on its nature and the methodology of its study. Cambridge, MA, London: MIT Press.
Cordeiro-Rodrigues, L. (2015). Hidden and unintended racism and speciesism in the Portuguese animal rights movement the case of bullfighting. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 62(144), 1–18.
Counihan, C. (2012). Mexicanas’ food voice and differential consciousness in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. In C. Counihan & P. Van Esterik (Eds.), Food and culture: A reader (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Craig, W. J., Mangels, A. R., & Association, A. D. (2009). Position of the American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian diets. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(7), 1266–1282.
Deckha, M. (2013). Welfarist and imperial: The contributions of anticruelty laws to civilizational discourse. https://dspace.library.uvic.ca//handle/1828/5990. Accessed 20 Dec 2016.
Donovan, J. (1995). Comment on George’s ‘Should feminists be vegetarians?’. Signs, 21(1), 226–229.
Engels, F. (2013/1843). The principles of communism. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Francione, G. L. (1996). Rain without thunder: The ideology of the animal rights movement. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Francione, G. L. (2009). Animals as persons: Essays on the abolition of animal exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press.
Francione, G. L. (2016). Essentialism, intersectionality, and veganism as a moral baseline: Black vegans rock and the humane society of the United States. Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach. January 10. http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/essentialism-intersectionality-and-veganism-as-a-moral-baseline-black-vegans-rock-and-the-humane-society-of-the-united-states/.
Francione, G. L., & Charlton, A. (2013). Eat like you care: An examination of the morality of eating animals. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Francione, G. L., & Charlton, A. (2015). Animal rights: The abolitionist approach. Newark: Exempla Press.
Francione, G. L., & Garner, R. (2010). The animal rights debate. New York: Columbia University Press.
Fredrickson, G. M. (2003). Racism: A short history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gaard, G., & Gruen, L. (1995). Comment on George’s ‘Should feminists be vegetarians?’. Signs, 21(1), 230–241.
George, K. P. (1994a). Should feminists be vegetarians? Signs, 19(2), 405–434.
George, K. P. (1994b). Discrimination and bias in the vegan ideal. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 7(1), 19–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01997221.
George, K. P. (2000). Animal, vegetable, or woman? A feminist critique of ethical vegetarianism. New York: State University of New York Press.
Gilley, B. (2017). The case for colonialism. Third World Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1369037.
Gottlieb, R., & Joshi, A. (2013). Food justice (food, health, and the environment). Cambridge: MIT Press. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Environment-Gottlieb-Anupama-Paperback/dp/B010IKDOQI/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506405073&sr=1-3&keywords=gottlieb+food+justice.
Harper, B. (2010). Whiteness and ‘post-racial’ vegan praxis. Journal of Critical Animal Studies, 3, 7–32.
Harsanyi, J. C. (1955). Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility. Journal of Political Economy, 63(4), 309–321.
Hendrix, B. A. (2013). Where should we expect social change in non-ideal theory? Political Theory, 41(1), 116–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591712463201.
Isaac, B. (2006). The invention of racism in classical antiquity (New ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kemmerer, L. (2016). Multiculturalism, Indian philosophy, and conflicts over cuisine. In L. Cordeiro-Rodrigues & M. Simendic (Eds.), Philosophies of multiculturalism: Beyond liberalism (1st ed., pp. 133–152). London, New York: Routledge.
Kim, C. J. (2015). Dangerous crossings. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Kymlicka, W., & Donaldson, S. (2014). Animal rights, multiculturalism, and the left. Journal of Social Philosophy, 45(1), 116–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12047.
Liu, Y. Y., & Apollon, D. (2011). The color of food. SSRN scholarly paper ID 2594415. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2594415.
Marx, K. (2000). Karl Marx: Selected writings. In D. McLellan (Ed.). 2 edn. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K., Engels, F., & Hobsbawm, E. (2012). The communist manifesto: A modern edition (Reprint ed.). London: Verso Books.
Mills, C. W. (2005). ‘Ideal theory’ as ideology. Hypatia, 20(3), 165–183. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2005.tb00493.x.
Nkrumah, K. (1974). Neo-colonialism the last stage of imperialism (Reprint ed.). London: Panaf LTD.
Olivier, A. (2016). The place of philosophy in Africa. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 54(4), 502–520. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12203.
Oro, A. (2012). Afrophobia—The fear of being an African. Morgan Hill: Bookstand Publishing.
Rammohan, A., Awofeso, N., & Robitaille, M.-C. (2011). Addressing female iron-deficiency anaemia in India: Is vegetarianism the major obstacle? International Scholarly Research Notices, 2012(October), e765476. https://doi.org/10.5402/2012/765476.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Reissue edition. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness (a restatement). Belknap Press.
Ryan, O. (2012). Chocolate nations: Living and dying for cocoa in West Africa. 1 edition. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Sant’Anna, R. (2016). Major soils for food production in Africa. Ghana: FAO. http://www.fao.org/docrep/t1696e/t1696e07.htm.
Sawyer, S., Joseph, G. M., & Rosenberg, E. S. (2004). Crude chronicles: Indigenous politics, multinational oil, and neoliberalism in Ecuador. Durham: Duke University Press.
Sen, A. (2006). What do we want from a theory of justice? The Journal of Philosophy, 103(5), 215–238. https://doi.org/10.2307/20619936.
Stemplowska, Z., & Swift, A. (2012). Ideal and nonideal theory. In D. Estlund (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political philosophy (pp. 373–392). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195376692.013.0020.
Swartz, S. (2010). The moral ecology of South Africa’s township youth. Palgrave Macmillan.
Tucker, K. L. (2014). Vegetarian diets and bone status. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.113.071621.
Varner, G. E. (1994). In defense of the vegan ideal: Rhetoric and bias in the nutrition literature. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 7(1), 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01997222.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by 中央高校基本科研业务费专项资金资助 (supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. Number of fund: 1709107). I also wish to thank colleagues who were particularly helpful in the production of this paper: Professor Chen, Professor Kwak, Dr He, Dr Beaumont and Professor Metz. I also would like to thank my research assistant Wang Manren for her helpful dedication.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cordeiro-Rodrigues, L. Animal Abolitionism and ‘Racism without Racists’. J Agric Environ Ethics 30, 745–764 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9697-0
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-017-9697-0