In the last few decades, a common stereotype about vegans emerged: that they’re white, care more about animals than people, and serve food that is bland and uninspiring. Such perceptions — some of which are reductive, while others hold a bit of truth — have created a toxic cycle where people of color often feel excluded from vegan communities, and because of the lack of diversity, these communities struggle to foster a coalition that can lead to real change.

“As a Black man in animal rights, I’ve definitely [been] — the only Black person at events or the only person of color — and it’s definitely a bit isolating,” said Christopher “Soul” Eubanks, a Black animal rights advocate in Georgia and Future Perfect 50 honoree. “And that’s why a lot of people of color that join this space may burn out, because they don’t see representation when they are here, and they’re just tired of having to correct people or weighing certain issues at the table.”

It’s 2024 — and so much change has happened in nearly every activist space. As the push to protect abortion access and combat climate change grows stronger, organizations like Black Girl Environmentalist and ARC Southeast, a reproductive justice support group in the South, have worked across race, gender, and class to assemble mass movements. Vegans and animal rights activists have made some major strides in recent years; restaurants and grocery stores carry far more vegan options compared to a decade ago, and the Supreme Court last year upheld California’s Proposition 12, a landmark law that outlawed the sale of many animal products produced using tiny, inhumane cages. But neglecting the voices of people of color for so long has meant there are obvious gaps amid these successes: There’s a lack of Black-led animal welfare organizations, food insecurity still disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic households, and harmful vegan rhetoric often inaccurately portrays Indigenous traditions.

“I’m tired of looking at the same events and seeing the same people speak, and there [are] barely any Black and Brown vegans or animal rights activists being represented,” said Isaias Hernandez, an environmental educator and activist. He also runs a popular TikTok and Instagram account called ​@queerbrownvegan to help raise awareness about how environmental justice should encompass issues of race, gender, and class.

The problem is wider than just representation politics, however: Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, and other communities of color are disproportionately the ones suffering from the ills of factory farming, whether it’s through water pollution that leads to higher rates of cancer or having to work in grueling farms that have few protections for people and animals alike. While not everyone turns to a plant-based diet because of animal rights alone, the plights of people of color and animals are very much intertwined.

White supremacy resulted in the mass slaughter of animals vital to Indigenous communities, the booming meat industries built on stolen Indigenous land, and the lack of land ownership for nonwhite farmers. These global, meat-reliant foodways have direct ties to slavery and colonialism, experts argue. Many vegans of color feel these connections have not been prioritized or well understood within the animal movement.

“The issue with the animal rights movement is that it still failed to acknowledge the role of white supremacy in creating these industrialized systems,” Hernandez said. “When I’m trying to deep-dive into industrialized agriculture, not just looking at how it affects humans, but understanding why these industrialized systems came about through colonization through chattel slavery, I think those conversations are then ignored, mainly because it challenges many of the dominant animal spaces — that are typically white people — to challenge their own power and privilege.”

According to the activists I spoke with, the key to making vegan activism more inclusive, as well as more effective in accomplishing its goals, is to “decolonize” it. That means addressing the longstanding harms left by colonialism — think segregation and climate change — that perpetuate other harms, like health inequities. Without untangling how race, class, and culture affects how and what people are able to eat, then we’re only left with what some call white veganism, which focuses on animal liberation alone.

“Intersectional veganism is needed, because it actually helps people understand that this isn’t just some whitewashed, hippie lifestyle, but rather an extension of understanding liberation,” Hernandez said.

As a Black vegan myself, I experience these tensions between white vegans and vegans of color all the time. I first dabbled in vegetarianism in 2019, after watching a documentary that piqued my interest. My curiosity was driven by potential personal health improvements and a desire to try new foods, but a conversation with my best friend about her growing interest in veganism was my sign to pursue the lifestyle change. At the time, her new career path included recipe development with a focus on vegetable-centric dishes, and I was eager to replicate traditionally non-vegan recipes like broccoli cheddar soup and birria tacos. Surrounding myself with other vegans that prioritize education, community, and accessibility started with her, and it’s been my blueprint for the last five years.

The suffering of animals wasn’t worth the decadent recipes we’d grown to love. As a Southerner growing up in the Panhandle of Florida, I was surrounded by fish fries, seafood boils, barbecues, and the most luxurious desserts you can imagine. Giving up soul food — or any cultural dish — is a loss I wasn’t prepared for when I first went vegan. I knew I was signing up for the isolation of being the only vegan at a family cookout or party, but I didn’t expect to rarely interact with other Black vegans at plant-based restaurant meetups, food festivals, and Facebook groups. I’m not alone in feeling that way.

But decolonizing veganism and ushering in a new era that integrates the lived experiences of all into animal activism is possible. That vision is burgeoning, from the chefs of color reintroducing dishes rooted in history to the activists fighting for more nuanced discussions in the animal movement, Black veganism empowers and centers those who’ve been failed by our food system while fighting for animal liberation. This is the combination we need to build inclusive communities, so that no one feels alone — and a unified community made up of a multiracial coalition is how we can win the fight against factory farming.

Aph Ko, creator of resource site Black Vegans Rock, alongside her sister Syl Ko, popularized the term “Black veganism” in their 2017 book, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. When I first read it in 2020, I struggled with the connection it drew between animality and race because of the historical dehumanization of people of color through terms like “nonhuman” and “animal.” But animals, they write, are just a category that we “shove certain bodies into when we want to justify violence against them,” and that dynamic should be concerning for minorities because “at any moment you can become an ‘animal’ and be considered disposable.” Their insightful examination of animal rights and its direct link to race and class left me with a stronger sense of solidarity as well as a curiosity for a stronger ancestral connection to my new dietary practices.

The history of veganism and vegetarianism within the Black community can be traced across the diaspora to Rastafarian culture and traditional West African cuisine. The holistic diet of Rastafarians has an anti-capitalist history, emerging in the 1930s by Jamaicans fighting colonialism. Most Ital cuisine — which is the dietary lifestyle rooted in Rastafarian culture — usually consists of cabbage, callaloo, legumes, scotch bonnet peppers, coconut milk, and kidney beans.

West African cuisine for centuries has had its own plant-based dishes like the peanut-based domoda in the Gambia, while East Africa’s extravagant Ethiopian plates included atakilt wat, gomen, misir wat, and injera. Caribbean and African food has been a form of sharing history among the African diaspora, preserving familial traditions, and transforming native crops into dishes. There’s a beauty within our plant-based traditions that have long been neglected, but now more and more people are rediscovering these dishes.

Some of the best meals that I’ve had in New York City have been at vegan Caribbean and African restaurants like Aunts et Uncles, HAAM, Bunna Cafe, and RAS Plant Based. At Bunna Cafe, a brunch platter includes a combination of crumbled injera with cooked kabocha squash, berbere, onion, ginger, and garlic, served with a side of dairy-free yogurt. The welcoming environment of each restaurant, down to the music, hospitality, and thoughtful dishes, is a sweet reminder of my upbringing. On the weekends, Bunna Cafe holds an hour-long coffee ceremony to “promote Ethiopian culture in a good light” and encourage their customers to participate in the weekly tradition, the restaurant’s co-founder, Liyuw Ayalew, told me.

I grew up in a Caribbean household with a Trinidadian father and Jamaican mother, so meals consisted of ackee and saltfish, curry chicken, and beef patties. With the absence of these animal-based proteins, I was inspired to read the cookbooks of Jenné Claiborne and Bryant Terry, two of the first Black vegans I followed at the beginning of my journey, to reconnect with my heritage.

As the plant-based liaison for my omnivore friends, simple conversations about my veganism has drawn curiosity about transitioning to a meatless diet. Genesis Butler, a teen animal rights advocate (and another Future Perfect 50 honoree), said she experiences something similar. Her Afro-Indigenous identity in addition to her passion for environmentalism and climate justice makes her more effective at educating others about veganism, she told me.

“Some people feel making veganism intersectional takes away from the animals, but I disagree,” she says. “I think I have more of a reach now that I am intersectional because I know how to talk about veganism in an effective way to people outside of the animal rights movement. This is so important because they are the individuals we want to reach.”

Butler’s right — for many people of color, earnestly talking to someone who shares your lived experience and can authoritatively speak to issues of food accessibility and intersectional veganism can be much more impactful than watching a documentary about factory farming. That human connection has led to tearful conversations that I’ve shared with friends about race and food, but it’s also shaped me to confidently recreate the best home-cooked meals that I never imagined making five years ago. I’ve evolved into the vegan that I desperately searched for in 2019.

The power dynamics within a predominantly white animal rights group are often apparent when there’s a racial discrepancy, such as an interaction with the police officers present at an animal rights protest.

When Eubanks — the Georgia-based animal rights advocate — was involved with street activism between 2018 and 2021, he was typically delegated as the police liaison for any protests that he organized. But “after one interaction outside of a slaughterhouse, when a police officer seemed to have one hand close to his gun throughout our interaction, I began having someone that was white co-liaison with me,” Eubanks told me. “That’s a rule that I’ve adhered to now whenever I participate in advocacy.” According to a 2022 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Black Americans are more likely to experience threats or nonfatal use of force from the police at an alarmingly disproportionate rate to their white counterparts.

These moments led to the creation of APEX Advocacy, a nonprofit that advocates for the collective liberation of animals and people. “We also acknowledge that the people that advocate for animals are also systematically oppressed,” Eubanks said. “So we consider that when we create our campaigns, activities, and programs.” APEX hosts Pre-Animal Activist Week (PAAW, for short), an annual immersive boot camp for social justice advocates of color with an interest in animal advocacy.

BIPOC-led animal and vegan advocacy groups, like APEX Advocacy and the Afro-Vegan Society, already exist to prioritize vegans of color. How can we replicate this throughout the remainder of the vegan community?

It begins with moving beyond dietary restrictions. If we want to create a world where more people of color want to become vegan, we also need to ensure that there’s an active, inclusive community to fight against the prejudice that exists within the group, which is necessary to confront not just for their own sake, but also because they help us build a stronger movement. “We can’t just talk about veganism as a diet or highlight the diet aspects of it, because for us to really decolonize, we have to look at it as a social justice space,” Eubanks says.

Black veganism inherently is about empowering people who’ve been failed by our food system at the same time as it’s about animal liberation — that’s how we get everyone on board. Take the concept of food deserts, for example. Food deserts aren’t natural, but created by policy. With this understanding, Black vegans believe that solutions for food apartheid — or the deliberate separation of affordable fresh food in low-income communities — must be nimble. A socially aware, yet still vegan approach to solving a local instance of food apartheid could look like monetarily supporting community services to offer accessible education about plant-based nutrition, free plant-based school lunches, and fully-stocked food pantries.

Animal rights activism also should be led by people of color, instead of a small percentage of tokenized Black and Brown faces. Much like APEX, more animal groups should be challenging the US’s complicity in the systematic killing and starvation of the Palestinian people. Unity among communities of color has been an ideal backbone for successful mass movements, such as the Rainbow Coalition in 1960s Chicago or the history of solidarity between Palestinians and Black Americans. When whiteness is completely decentered in organizing circles, there’s an opportunity to reimagine a future that prioritizes collective liberation.

If we’re not including the experiences of oppressed people and advocating for holistic anti-racist solutions, there’s no future that liberates humans and nonhuman animals alike. Veganism that consciously acknowledges race, gender, and class is key to ending our collective oppression, and it can start overnight by developing consistent compassion for all.