the permeation of privilege

The appeal of western holidays has long since worn off for me; I make it a point to avoid anything resembling a traditional celebration of Thanksgiving and Christmas because, in recent years, the consumeristic, privileged, exploitative aspects of the holidays have far outweighed the joy of being around a table with friends and family.  I usually visit vegan friends during the holidays or use the time off from work to make art, take walks, or do other things that get neglected during the daily grind.

I thought that by spending this year-end with a posse of vegan friends, I would avoid the discomfort that often accompanies a gathering of my family members, whose unchecked privilege tends to permeate the discussions and the activities of a holiday weekend; as many of you can attest, it can be exhausting to face the continuous onslaught of questions and accusations that characterizes our time with non-vegans.  However, I found myself feeling very alone in a room full of people whom I would have considered allies.  It’s shocking, once you start peeling away the layers of privilege and committing to a fight against all forms of oppression, how much privilege actually affects our lives.

We were being shown a slideshow of a vegetarian couple’s recent trip to a Latin American country.  In it were photos of “exotic” locals doing such “photo-worthy” things as removing the chaff of some beans by pouring them from bowl to bowl; selling artisan handcrafts in an open-air market; mixing cement by pouring it into a hole in the ground (“they don’t even have cement mixers!”).  I appeared to be the only one in the room who was horrified by the notion of people from North America and Europe moving to these Latin countries and building mansions in the countryside for pennies.   It shocked no one else to see locals hired for dollars a day to build these “eco-friendly, sustainable” mansions while the town in which the mansions were located didn’t have enough money in them to make a level bridge that had railings.  None of the vegans in the room seemed concerned that materials were being carried up the hill to the building site by donkeys and burros — and some of these homes were being built for “animal rights activists.”

While I do grow tired of being the buzzkill in the room, I couldn’t help but wonder aloud how ethical it was for wealthy, white, supposedly compassionate people to move to an impoverished village in Latin America to gawk and marvel at the folks who have lived there for hundreds of years.  Maybe I lack understanding of the global economy, and maybe it can be argued that these American dollars will do wonders for the development of these nations — but it just seemed to me like privilege was being paraded around unnecessarily.  By vegans, nonetheless.

Until we change the rhetoric of the ”animal rights” message and begin to challenge all types of exploitation — and all systems of power and privilege — we will never create lasting change.  Until we embrace a definition of veganism that goes beyond a label on a box of veggie burgers, there will never be liberation.  And until we acknowledge the permeation of privilege into all of the work we do, we will never be able to create a just world.