u/gaygirlgg - originally from r/GenZhou
Yes, I fully agree.

But that’s a strawman of the position.

The vegan, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist position is a critique of that tendency. This is from black vegan and indigenous vegan perspectives. It is the opposite of comparing people to animals.

It would be absurd to hear someone be like “wow I felt like an animal in a cage when I was in prison!” and someone to say “wow swetty, I can’t believe you just compared people to animals!”. Or to say “Black people have been called apes by racists” and then have someone call you racist.

Many people can’t conceive of the idea that if people didn’t mistreat animals, that people would be treated better. This is due to the proliferation of colonial and capitalist ideology. If there were no devaluation of animals, there wouldn’t be a devaluation of people through animalization.

For instance, if you glance at the wikipedia of the book proposed in the book club, it mentions Descartes, who believed animals didn’t feel pain, they just had “response to stimulus” as they didn’t have minds. Black people have been dehumanized through race science for centuries after Descartes. There is a still widespread perception in the medical field that black people do not feel pain as much as other races. For this reason, black people are under-prescribed pain medication.

There is also an idea along the same lines of black people being animalistic, and therefore of reduced will/agency, so a disconnect between black people’s thoughts, emotions, and reality. “Instinctual responses to stimuli”. This connects to why black people are fatally medically neglected (“They are just making a big deal about it”).