Black veganism
[3] The modern Black veganism movement takes inspiration from Rastafari, which developed a plant-based diet known as Ital in Jamaica in the 1930s, and groups like the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, which has advocated strict veganism since the 1960s, and the Nation of Islam, which specifically connected choosing a plant-based diet to fighting racist oppression.
"[7]: 149 In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Queen Afua played an influential role in promoting Black raw veganism.
[10] Syl Ko states in the presentation for The Brooks Institute, "we are not interested in the cosmetic diversity issue that's going on in animal ethics.
"[10] In 2017 Aph and Syl Ko published Aphro-ism; Corey Lee Wrenn in a review said it presented Black veganism as "a political protest against the oppressiveness of animality, Eurocentric hierarchy-building, and harmful foodways.
"[11] In 2021,The Washington Post, citing a Gallup report, referred to Black people as the fastest-growing demographic of vegans.
[4] It connects the use of non-human animals with other social justice concerns such as racism, and with the lasting effects of slavery, such as the subsistence diets of enslaved people enduring as familial and cultural food traditions.
[3][4][5][12] Dietary changes caused by the Great Migration also meant former farmers, who had previously been able to grow or forage their own vegetables, became reliant on processed foods.
"[15] PETA columnist Zachary Tolivar noted he had often heard Black veganism called "a revolutionary act" because it often involves rejecting both family tradition and systemic oppression.
[8] In 2014 Bryant Terry wrote Afro-Vegan; Mercer described seeing the two words juxtaposed on a book cover as having "disrupted everything the mainstream had ever shown me about veganism.
[22] According to hip hop artist SupaNova Slom, young Black people turned to veganism in response to their older relatives' diet-caused health issues.
This blog written in a style "borrowed heavily from African-American culture" and which had spawned book deals, was revealed as being authored by a white couple, Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway.
[2][24][25][26] Vice pointed out that the website and cookbooks were an example of how "you don't have to look very hard to find white and non-black people profiting off of what could traditionally be deemed black culture.
[27] Terry in 2014 described the blog and cookbooks as "whites masking in African-American street vernacular for their own amusement and profit", pointing out that the fact the couple had not identified themselves for two years was evidence of knowledge of the problematic nature of their behavior.
[28] After years of backlash about the name, in June 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, the organization announced it would no longer be called Thug Kitchen.
