TELEVISION MAN

VN: A lack of representation in the mainstream vegan movement is an ongoing theme in many discussions being had in the black vegan community. Others talk about inadequate access to information and fresh, whole foods among certain communities in the nation. What do you make of these issues?

TM: First, I center myself in my own life, so any stream I swim in is the mainstream. Second, I entered veganism 30 years ago through black people, so my being vegan is founded on blackness. Third, black people are pioneers in the plant-based food movement in this country.

There’s Alvenia Fulton, a naturopathic physician who opened the first health food establishment on the south side of Chicago in the 1950s. She went on to influence Dick Gregory to change his diet, and she co-wrote his plant-based classic, Cooking with Mother Nature, in 1974. The longest-running raw vegan restaurant in the country is owned by Karen Calabrese in Chicago, and the father of gourmet raw vegan cuisine is Aris LaTham from Panama. And Soul Vegetarian restaurants were—until recently—the largest chain of vegan restaurants in the world.

That said, we still have a long way to go. We’re experiencing an enormous health crisis based on the unhealthful food the majority of us is still eating. It’s important to know that just as there were more than 300 extrajudicial killings of black people reported in 2012, there were more than 300,000 preventable deaths of black people in 2010 caused by diet-related chronic diseases.

This is not a comparison game, but a reminder that unhealthful diets are a social justice and human rights issue as well, since there are state-sanctioned reasons that low-income African Americans, in particular, do not have access to healthful foods. That said, we don’t want to be active participants in our genocide. I see a day coming soon when thousands more people will be actively organizing around #blackhealthmatters AND #blacklivesmatter.

Also, to the question about the white vegan movement: the fact that white vegan organizations and conferences historically and currently exclude, exploit, and/or tokenize black vegans is yet another unfortunate example of systemic white supremacy in this country. And it’s an injustice that black people have been and will continue to be organizing against. But it’s important to be mindful in the language we use and in our own understanding that black vegan spaces have existed and will continue to exist for generations for our own purposes—and not in reaction to white spaces.