I love it when the rich whites tell me, working class brown, that my diet is elitist and expensive.
This is a tactic that anti-vegan leftists use to make veganism sound reactionary so they can feel more leftist for supporting a form of oppression (speciesism) rather than less. I'm glad it's harder for them to use it against me specifically because I'm a black vegan. They'll go haywire the moment they can use it against a white vegan, though.
And for the wealth part? I'm making more money doing work now than I was before, but even then, I didn't need to be wealthy to be vegan. Even when I was poor and mostly relying on mutual aid until I could get secured in a job, not once did I think that I would have to purchase animal products when I got groceries. I was able to eat simple meals that were still nutritious, cheap, and ultimately delicious. Something quickly accessible always was hummus and veggie sandwiches, and the hummus especially helped with the protein.
If I needed to make something that's more of an actual meal, I'd usually take a protein like tofu, beans, and I'd pair it with a starchy item like rice/potatoes/pasta and a vegetable like broccoli/asparagus/carrots. Mushrooms go great with this stuff for a great burst of flavor too. None of these food items are even remotely expensive, and all of them are cheaper than what you'd need to make a typical animal-based variant of the meals that I ate. Hell, even B12 supplements are affordable!
It seems like this viewpoint comes from carnists seeing very expensive mock meats and thinking that those mock meats are the only way veganism can be enjoyable. After all, these are people who are okay with animal exploitation simply because of taste pleasure, so the fact that they think veganism can only be "worth it" if they have big bucks to always eat things that taste very similar to meat isn't surprising.
As someone who definitely grew up in a household that hold no shortage of meat, dairy, and eggs in our meals, the only way these carnists can stop making such silly arguments through a lens of "what about my taste buds tho?" is to actually understand the premise of animal liberation and understand it well, and if I could have come to understand it, I don't doubt that anyone else could do it so long as they genuinely have the capacity to care about animal lives beyond cats and dogs.
It reminds me of how NazBol dipshits tie themselves into knots trying to spin homosexuality as "bourgeois d-generacy." Like nah dude, you just hate gay people.
It seems like this viewpoint comes from carnists seeing very expensive mock meats and thinking that those mock meats are the only way veganism can be enjoyable. After all, these are people who are okay with animal exploitation simply because of taste pleasure, so the fact that they think veganism can only be "worth it" if they have big bucks to always eat things that taste very similar to meat isn't surprising.
It's gotta be this. The concept of meat-based diets being cheap and vegetarian/vegan diets being expensive was so alien to me when I first encountered it. Probably because of my immigrant background where the stereotypical "poor food" was lentils, rice, potatoes, bread. I'll confess total ignorance on the price of meat, but it seems inconceivable to me that it would be any cheaper considering the comparatively enormous input costs of its production.
I can only really speak to what I know, but I wonder if there's further layers to the class/cultural differences. I went vegan when I was 18 and had to cook for myself and reckon with the disgusting nature of meat. But if I had the money to blow >£2 a meal on ready meals, that wouldn't have happened. And in that case, it would have been financial privilege isolating me from the reality of my consumption. And being poor removed the possibility of that isolation. I dunno. But I do know that the idea of eating even imitation meat makes me feel physically sick after those teenage experiences.
I'll confess total ignorance on the price of meat, but it seems inconceivable to me that it would be any cheaper considering the comparatively enormous input costs of its production.
You'd think so, but meat production is also subsidized to hell so it's ”cheap”.
seems like this viewpoint comes from carnists seeing very expensive mock meats and thinking that those mock meats are the only way veganism can be enjoyable
It also seems to me like many Westerners don't know how to cook and eat processed garbage. Someone once argued to me that they couldn't afford to be vegan because Beyond Sausages are so expensive and for the same price they could buy a lot more meat product.
Could be that they want the avocado toasts for themselves?
"Oh, so you're telling indigenous people that their culture of meat eating is inferior to your settler culture? I eat meat in solidarity with indigenous people whose land I'm also settling"
I grew up in india where eating meat was considered both a sin and way too expensive for working class families to afford regularly. So whenever anyone tells me this argument, I just laugh.
Even here in the SStates, a vegan diet is objectively cheaper. It cracks me up because every time I see the argument to the contrary, it's some knucklehead bringing up Impossible and other plant-based meat substitutes. Like, I still eat those but those are more treats than anything else. Tofu, TVP, and beans are super cheap, and absolutely loaded with protein.
A lb of Tofu is about $2.15 where I am at, and a lb of ground beef is about $5-6. I mean, I can get a 25 lb bag of dried beans for like $15. It lasts forever.
seems to me that eating meat has been a rich persons past-time for a few millenia atleast and poor people ate meat when they could afford it, i. e. not often
but then again what do i know im so white that i shine in the sun
American settler culture is, of course, famously vegan.
Hey, where'd all these factory farms come from?
Hey, why does American law enforcement keep harassing and locking up animal rights activists?
Hey, what's with all the anti-vegan messaging in American pop culture?
In the US, Black people are way more likely to be vegan than white people are. 8% for Black people vs 3% for everyone else. Those numbers are 9 years old so I'm sure they're both higher but I'm also sure the gap hasn't closed, because 2021 numbers show that growth in veganism remains highest among Black Americans.
Always amazes me how many of those brainworms we have right here on hexbear
(because for some reason the admins won't site ban them when they spend hours on end shitting up the vegan comm with reactionary carnist shit)
