Hello! So, over the past couple days, I’ve been mentioned in conversations about white veganism because I’ve made a few tweets about examples of it I’ve personally seen. I’ve decided to make a big concise thread of examples of white veganism so GET READY because HERE IT IS!!!

disclaimer 1: if you’ve read this and are about to go “not ALLLL vegans that are white!!!” please don’t. It’s obvious, it’s unhelpful and it’s like when there’s a tweet about how men are annoying and some dude replies “not allll guys, i’m nice!!!” like... just don’t lol

disclaimer part 2: i’m white. I debated making this thread as i benefit from white veganism, but we shouldn’t expect POC to always take the time and effort to educate us. An amazing black vegan who also speaks on white veganism is @zipthevegan so check her out :)

So, white veganism is veganism that’s not intersectional. It’s called “white” as many more white people than POC have the choice to not be intersectional. For example, unnaturalvegan arguing that vegans don’t have to support black lives matter, but if she was a black vegan...

it’s unlikely she would’ve even been having the debate on whether she should care about black lives matter because... of course she would as it actually affects her. She has the privilege to ONLY care about veganism, as less/no social justice movements are directly affecting her.

White veganism is saying “everyone can go vegan it’s so easy!!!” just because it was easy for you, and always seeing things like disabilities, food deserts and other difficulties as “excuses” instead of real life barriers that affect the day to day lives of real people.

White veganism is gatekeeping to an extent where it’s unrealistic for less privileged people. For example “you’re not vegan if you EVER wear second-hand leather” but someone has to rely on hand-me-downs or “you can’t buy non-vegan food for other people” but someone is a carer.

White veganism is having a saviour complex, seeing yourself as a benevolent saint when fighting against oppression of animals AND other types of opression, so struggling to take criticism from oppressed people about your activism bc you won’t see yourself as anything but perfect.

White veganism is seeing all cultures as the same, like saying “i had to give up black pudding!” to an indigenous person who’s scared going vegan means they can no longer embrace certain traditions of a culture that their ancestors were banned from practising in their own country

White veganism is choosing to not be intersectional. It’s refusing to understand not everyone gets to pick whether they want to be a single-issue activist who only discusses veganism because those issues you decided you didn’t want to promote are actually affecting their lives.

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been guilty of this. I’ve said “culture isn’t an excuse” without considering it’s easier to reject parts of a culture that no one tried to erase or take from my ancestors. I took for granted living in walking distance of 10+ vegan shops and cafés.

You can still believe second-hand leather is wrong and that culture isn’t a reason to continue hurting animals, and that’s ok. The difference is accepting that not everyone is in your pleather shoes and what seems easy for you might not be as easy for other people.

Fighting white veganism doesn’t mean having to give up what you think is right and wrong, it just means saying “leather is always wrong... when you have a choice” or “i understand i didn’t have the same barriers to veganism that you have... but i’ll help with whatever i can”

I hope this thread is useful to the people that have been sent my way for examples of white veganism and yesterday would’ve had to search through tonnes of bad memes to find my couple of random tweets on it lol, hope you all have an amazing day and i love you all