By Stevie Lynne
TRIGGER WARNING: This post discusses racism and includes racist and racially insensitive screengrabs.
Before we get this post under way, I want to make it absolutely
clear that from my perspective I would prefer that no nonhuman animal be
exploited or die unnecessarily. However, morality is rarely that straight
forward and there are other things I like to take into account before deciding
whether or not a campaign or an outcome is really the boon it seems to be on
first glance.
Australia took Japan to the International Court of Justice to
challenge its claims of whaling for scientific research. The ICJ has recently handed down their verdict
(12-4) that the current Japanese whaling research conducted in the Southern
Ocean is unscientific and must cease immediately under the International
Whaling Convention.
Amongst the cheer and uproar of my Facebook friends, I have my
serious misgivings about the ruling, not for the nonhuman animals but for the
hints of imperialism and racism that seems deeply embedded in the pursuit of
this case and its outcome.
I was watching the news unfold on the Australian public funded
news channel, ABC News’ Facebook page. It’s pretty safe to say that the
majority of individuals responding to this news are not vegan.
Part of the reason I think that the anti-whaling movement has
so much popular currency in Australia is precisely because it attacks a
non-white other.
Johanna over on the Vegans Of Color blog
posted an excellent blogpost about U.S. vegans attacking other countries and
other cultures. She writes:
...we in the West feel it’s our high-and-mighty duty to go & tell other countries, with which we have had an adversarial & racist relationship, what to do. Instead of listening to local activists & supporting them if & when they request it (& in the manner they request), US activists love to barge in, without thought to cultural context or self-determination & autonomy for folks in the countries they’re honing in on. (& yeah, go figure, the whole exotification thing makes it a lot easier to point fingers at OMG those weird savage people!)
This racist elements of the IJC decision were highlighted with
people wishing harm against Japan if they broke the ruling. One person had the
audacity to use a racial slur for Japanese people as well other disgusting and
dehumanising language in his comment. I reported it to Facebook and they
removed the comment.
Japanese Responses
Some Japanese individuals jumped on this discussion thread to
show their support of the decision.
However, other Japanese individuals were less enthused.
Katsuyoshi Kanahashi’s response shows further issues of
classism as well as imperialism present in the debate.
Even on this one English language thread, Japanese people are
shown not to be homogenous and have a diversity of views.
Japanese newspaper The Japan Times, which is published in both
English and Japanese, ran an editorial on the ICJ decision. But one thing
which struck me as significant was the following paragraph which neatly
surmises issues of Western imperialism as well as violence used against the
Japanese in pursuit of this imperialism:
Opposition to whaling on environmental or animal welfare grounds has often been viewed in Japan as an attempt to impose Western values in disregard of Japan’s whaling and culinary traditions. In recent years, Japanese whaling operations have been severely hampered by radical environmentalists’ violent sabotage activities.
This should jar with animal advocates. On the one hand we are
trying to end the oppression of nonhuman animals, on the other, we are perpetuating an
oppressive ideology backed by racism and fueled by violence.
Japan’s Whaling and Indigenous Hunting Practices
We see similar outrage and obsessions in Australia over
Indigenous hunting practises. As if to underscore the way in which opposition
to whaling and opposition to Indigenous hunting are linked, commenters
responding to the ABC’s Facebook post showed how they thought the issues were
very much intertwined.
These comments came as a surprise to an Aboriginal/Torres
Strait Islander identified individual who wrote:
For many of the commenters, their racist attitudes seem to
extend not just to the Japanese, but also to Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders.
We Can Do Better
It’s easy to see that growing up in a racist, imperialist
society can mar the Animal Rights movement. When I first went vegan, I held
onto my own white, racist, imperialist ideologies. But I see that like animal
oppression, just because everyone around me is doing it, just because it is
sanctioned by institutions and my government, doesn’t make racism and Western
imperialism okay to participate in.
Stevie Lynne co-hosts Team Earthling Vegan Radio, a weekly Australian podcast.
See also from this blog:
On Moral Relativism, Post-Racism, and Animal LiberationAnimal Rights and the Indigenous Fixation
