Vegan is the new Black!

This Black History month, we celebrate Black veganism as a powerhouse in making the movement a fun and compelling one in the news and media.

As a Black vegan, a minority within a minority, I’ve had a lot of time to muse on cultures. Black culture I’ve had a lifetime of experience with, but my nine years of vegan culture is a little harder to pin down. It’s been morphing, twisting, and developing enough to give us all an abundance of food for thought, no pun intended. Health, ethics, environment, sustainability, anarchy, spirituality, libertarianism… veganism is all over the place, and that’s before we identify the stereotypes. I often find myself paralleling the two cultures and their merits, because intersectionality is just a powerful thing.

This Black History month, we celebrate Black veganism as a powerhouse in making the movement a fun and compelling one in the news and media. From former gangster rappers to pop stars, you can thank some of the top celebrities, entertainers, and athletes of colour for being a driving force towards the plant-based, ethical lifestyle that’s saving our planet. I can relate with pride as these influential people of colour do their thing; infuse ‘cool’ into a lifestyle arena that many people would brand restrictive, preachy, and pretentious.

The oldest example in my memory was that time in the late 90s, when Howard Lyman, a vegetarian and animal rights activist predicted on the Oprah Winfrey Show that Mad Cow disease was the threat it would later become. “[It’s] stopped me cold from eating another burger. I’m stopped.” Oprah declared, in a reactionary way. The comment she made stopped the presses, because the stock price of beef dropped to under two dollars a pound due to her influence, and the state of Texas slapped her with a lawsuit that went to federal court, charging her with false disparagement of a perishable food product, or what some might call, ‘dissing a hamburger’. Cactus Feeders Inc; the Texas Cattle Ranch, claimed they lost $10.3 million in business due to Oprah Winfrey’s one sentence. And that’s when I realised that Black words, like their lives, really mattered in the world. Representation doesn’t just come with Hollywood casting and sports heroes, it comes with values.

One of the most important reasons Black History is worth celebrating is for its influence on the world at large. As a Canadian from Quebec, my Black History education was practically a footnote, and the little I learnt merely crossed over from American media. Topics like ancient Egypt, the birthplace of architecture and mathematics, or influential freedom fighters like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Harriet Tubman and her underground railroad to freedom, Frederick Douglass, and the figures renowned for their civil rights and revolutionary acts. You’d hear of how George Washington Carver’s crop rotation revolutionised farming, and if you’re lucky, of inventors like Garett Morgan for the traffic light, Latimer and the light bulb, or Charles Drew’s blood plasma storage innovations. But this isn’t the culture I’m referring to, nor the culture I’ve been reflecting on.

The food for thought is the growing need to acknowledge that pop culture, especially in 2023, has a predictable pattern of being Black culture, essentially. This is less of a hot take than an astute observation. ‘Gen-Z’ slang is African American Vernacular English (AAVE) proliferated by social media and globalisation. Fortnite and TikTok dance trends? Predominantly Black dance studios and choreographers. K-Pop? K, it’s pop, but with hip-hop beats, urban fashion, and a rap verse whenever possible. Locs, box braids, high-top fades. You see the point I’m making in its broad strokes. Looking for the best reaction GIFs for chats and comments sections? Well, type an emotion into Tenor and Giphy and let the unsurprising gallery of black faces showcase how expressive we are.

And what does this have to do with veganism? While veganism is global and ascribes to no lone race or single ethnicity, if history and pop culture are any indication, Black people are the creatives and trendsetters that we can count on to normalize it. This might sound surprising, what with a culture of heavy meat-eating and fried foods, a demographic of high blood pressure, and untimely demises by heart disease. Those factoids mean nothing because what matters and dominates this Black History Month is the corroborated timeline of African and Black culture being the OG influencers, with the Midas touch of what’s socially acceptable. I posit and predict that Blackness will soon lead veganism to the progressive future it seemingly comes from.

Black people have been appreciated and appropriated for uncountable creations in seemingly infinite industries. But something interesting is happening with veganism, have you noticed?

Veganism was never necessarily Black, it’s been a global phenomenon for centuries, from East Asian Buddhist lifestyles and Jainism in India to Jamaican (Ital) roots Rastafarianism. But the track record of that little touch of melanin needed to season and spice anything it takes on is about to make itself apparent. Men and women of African origin and descent are adopting veganism and making it cool. Yes, we’re appropriating a woo-woo, flower-powery, healthy, and ethical lifestyle, and crushing statistics and stereotypes of exclusive meaty cookouts and their selective invites. I’m not saying that it’s Black people who will take veganism to the societal standard it should be, but who else? Actually, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And it has already started with the influence of wealthy celebrities and musicians.

Ten years ago, Beyonce and Jay-Z took on a 22-day vegan challenge, which they documented while promoting meal plans. To this day, the swarm of the ‘Beyhive’ has many people associating veganism with these magnanimous world idols. More recently, the Grammy-winning singer Lizzo pushes her veganism on social media at every opportunity, and we’re talking about an artist whose commercial hits are literally in television commercials.

Lately, Tabitha Brown’s reviews and cooking videos had her massive plant-based influence on grocery shoppers at Walmart, a leading corporate retailer also known for its array of in-house grocery and food options. Through Walmart, she sells books, recipes, videos, and accessories in one of their biggest brand deals of late.

Jaden Smith going vegan made an impact in 2017 because he came out swinging, opening a restaurant and giving free food to curb LA’s homelessness crisis.

Speaking of musicians, Mya and Jermaine Dupri of early 2000s fame went vegan in time to influence both their millennial fans and their children. And Kevin Hart may not be vegan, but he knows how to hop on a plant-based bandwagon when its wheels begin to turn. He launched Hart House, a vegan fast-food chain that made headlines when it opened last year to much fanfare. We love his ambition when he says things like “The goal is to see Hart Houses right smack dab in the middle of where you would see a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Chick-Fil-A, [and] a Wendy’s [so] people can have the option for a plant-based taste, as well.”

But those aren’t the only entertainers to add ice to the coolness of veganism. Snoop Dogg had a limited-time offer of a Beyond Burger named after him, which he didn’t hesitate to promote. As if it wasn’t enough for rappers The Lox (both Jadakiss and Styles P) to go vegan and open smoothie shops in New York 20 years ago, Ne-Yo discovered veganism when it cured his tendonitis in 2018, saving him from his inability to dance or rehearse. Also in 2018, Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas cured his tinnitus with veganism and screamed about it from the social media mountain tops, promoting the lifestyle and dubbing his fellow vegans the V-Gang. In 2019, A$AP Rocky became completely vegan, converting from vegetarianism. “Those chickens go through ****ing torture before they’re processed and s**t.” He said to Vibe magazine (in accessible, colloquial language).

We all know that veganism is an ethical lifestyle. Of course, the environmental and health benefits are a compelling argument for many. Yet those who are not hip to the game still identify veganism as a trend, and if that’s the color you want to paint it, you can count on Black history not to disappoint by making this trend as indelible as slang, memes, music and all the cornerstones of what interests people gravitate to. It’s a future to look forward to and personally, I’m proud to be a part of it.

Akil Goin is a teacher, traveler, and Trinidadian foodie who was raised in Montreal, Canada, earned his Bachelor's of Arts in English Language Studies in the Philippines, and lives in Vietnam. He has been vegan cold-tofurky since 2014 and spends his free time dabbling at creative plant-based recipes.

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