Implicit Bias in Animal Rights Activism

I have a confession to make. It’s about some of my own biases. I grew up with plenty of exposure to activism, specifically labor rights. As you can imagine, this didn’t help me win any popularity contests (it was the 80s and 90s and in the perceived safe distance from a fascist police state, activism hadn’t become trendy yet). I admired the people I met at rallies and while others idolized movie stars or other celebrities, I had a poster of Sam Gompers and Eugene Debs in my bedroom.

But it wasn’t until I got to college that I began to see other people my age who were passionate about changing the world. The more I learned about the intersections of various systems of oppression (from gender to race to class and eventually to speciesism, resulting in my going vegan far too late in 2015) it seems that the more I came to understand the manipulation and abuse of one segment of society, the more it became evident how oppression is a multiplayer game that requires our collective ‘buy in’ on every level. Successful liberation movements can’t, then, only focus on gains for one segment (as was the case for much of American history including white women getting the right to vote before black women or people of color and immigrants being excluded from early union participation).

My biases include assuming that everyone involved in Animal Rights is also concerned about and active in other liberation movements and in many cases this bias is confirmed by the presence of a diverse array of activists I’ve met who are tireless in…