#vegfest

Veganism as a named movement historically was made up primarily of white people, and the stereotypical vegan is white; Khushbu Shah pointed out in 2018 that not until the bottom of the third page on Shutterstock was a person of color included among the images for the search term "vegan person".[2] Omowale Adewale, founder of New York City's Black VegFest, argues that there is a history of Black veganism in the US, but said in 2020 that the recent increase in Black veganism is partially because "You love to see yourself represented. That's one of the main reasons why the Black community has really galvanised around the vegan idea".[3]

The modern Black veganism movement takes inspiration from Rastafarianism, which developed a plant-based diet known as Ital in Jamaica in the 1930s, and groups like the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, which has advocated strict veganism since the 1960s, and the Nation of Islam, which specifically connected choosing a plant-based diet to fighting racist oppression.[4][2][5] It also has roots in the American Civil Rights movement; Dick Gregory, who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., argued that "Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike."[3] According to Amirah Mercer, by the 1980s veganism had "settled firmly into celebrity and activist pockets" among Black people in the US.[5] The 1990 hip hop song "Beef" by KRS-One, according to Keith Tucker, founder of Hip Hop is Green vegan advocacy group, influenced many in the hip hop community to think about veganism and "meat in the slave diet".[6]

Syl Ko in a 2020 presentation to the Brooks Institute describes the development of the concept of Black veganism as an intersectional framework for political and social commentary, saying that she and her sister had in 2012 first discussed the idea that "animals are raced" and in 2015 started calling that idea Black veganism.[7]

In 2017 Aph and Syl Ko published Aphro-ism; Corey Lee Wrenn in a review said it presented Black veganism as "a political protest against the oppressiveness of animality, Eurocentric hierarchy-building, and harmful foodways."[8]