Introduction

Animal Abolitionism is an animal ethics’ approach which has been substantially contested. Abolitionists have been routinely criticised for as taking an ineffective approach to animal issues, giving poor guidance for how to address normative issues in the real world and having racist implications (Harper 2010; Cochrane 2012; Garner 2013). In my article, ‘Animal Abolitionism and ‘Racism without Racists’’, I offered some arguments to defend the position that animal abolitionism has racist implications (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017). However, I did this from a new angle, using Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s concept of ‘racism without racists’ to illustrate the racist implications (Bonilla-Silva 2017) of abolitionism. My article did not contend that abolitionists are deliberately engaging in racism. In fact, I do think that they are concerned about engaging with or promoting racism. Instead, my article’s objective was to explain that if we accept that the racism without racists view is true, then abolitionism contains these kinds of implications. It is important to point out that if one endorses racism without racists, then potentially a number of behaviours, institutions and practices that initially may not look to be perpetrators of racism can then be understood as doing so. This is because racism is, from this viewpoint, and at least in some situations, an unintentional and subtle act that promotes racial-based power hierarchies (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2015, 2017; Bonilla-Silva 2017; Olivier and Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017).

In a reply to my article, Bob Fischer (Fischer 2018) defended that my diagnosis is mistaken, and that all my points about abolitionism can be refuted, presenting a variety of counter-arguments (see below) against my view. I wish to thank Fischer for his thoughtful and well-argued response to my paper. His arguments helped me to rethink my theory and refine it. Nevertheless, upon reflection, I disagree with his points and think that I can give an adequate response to all his objections. Thus, I will divide this article into three sections. In the first section, I respond to Fischer’s argument that racism without racists only happens when either (a) some group is suffering an unjustified burden and the other is not or (b) when there is a moral principle for treating individuals differently. In Sect. 2, I address his objections to my argument whereby abolitionism relegates racialised minorities to a lower moral status. In the last section, I argue against Fischer’s contention that the Global South would be better off entering into commercial relations with the Global North, and that the purchase of vegan products would undermine my objections against abolitionism (Fischer 2018).

Larger and Unjustified Burdens

The first argument in my previous article was that racism without racists is an implication of abolitionism because some racialised individuals would need to make a choice between food insecurity and their own subsistence. This is particularly so, if many members of racialised communities wish for a non-deficient vegan diet, as they may have to travel far distances to purchase expensive products, thereby, making their subsistence more difficult. This is because of the geographical location, low income of many racialized communities, as well as prices and geographical availability of vegan food, which means it is not readily accessible. On the other hand, I argued that if they do not travel distances and instead eat only local and affordable vegan food, they may have a deficient vegan diet, with all the health and life risks associated with that. I classified this choice as an instance of racism without racists because it sets up a hierarchy of power based on perceived race, to the extent that it blocks or disrupts the agency of some members of racialised communities to pursue important human needs (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017).

To contest this argument, Fischer contends that I fail to distinguish two concepts: larger/higher burdens and unjustified burdens. A larger burden is when it is more costly for at least one individual to undertake a certain action than it costs for another individual. To use Fischer’s example, all things equal, it is a higher burden for a poor person to abide by the moral rule ‘do not steal’, than it is for a rich person, because the rich does not need to steal to survive. Fischer adds that this kind of burden does not immediately cancel the duty to do something and someone may still be duty-bound to perform a certain action, even though the costs may be higher for this person than for others (Fischer 2018).

A morally unjustified burden, on the other hand, is when the costs of a certain action are so high that one cannot be reasonably expected to perform the action and, therefore, because ought implies can, the burden caused makes the action morally unjustified. For example, suppose that, in normal circumstances, I have a duty to save someone close by from drowning because the cost of doing so is very low (Singer 2011). Nevertheless, if I was on my way to the hospital in an emergency and would die if I stopped to help, then the cost of carrying out the duty to help would be my life. Consequently, because the cost would too high, my previous duty to help the drowning person would be canceled as it would be unreasonable to ask me to trade my life for someone else’s (Fischer 2018).

This distinction, according to Fischer, undermines part of my argument that abolitionism engages in racism without racists. Firstly, if the burden I am pointing to is a highly unreasonable burden, then it is also a morally unjustified burden; and if it is an unjustified burden, from an abolitionist perspective, there is no obligation to follow the rule; this is because abolitionism is not about asking individuals to do this, and deeming them guilty of racism without racists.

Secondly, and alternatively, Fischer argues that if the costs are not unreasonably high, then just the fact that they are higher than for other non-racialised groups is insufficient to classify the demand of being vegan as a form of racism without racists. This is because the mere fact that a burden is higher does not make it racist—to make it racist, it would instead be necessary that some groups have a moral claim and others do not to suffer those burdens or demand an unjustified burden of a certain group and not the other. By way of illustration, if there was a duty for Africans to pay taxes but not whites, this would be racist. Hence, at the heart of Fischer’s argument is the idea that, to be true, an accusation of racism without racists needs either be directed at abolitionism’s central moral claims or refer to an unjustified rather than higher burden (Fischer 2018).

To contest my reply that the burden is an unjustified burden, Fischer contends that the costs for racialised communities may be higher but not unjustified, giving some examples of how individuals can easily access vegan diets (I will reply to this in the next section). Fischer admits that there are, indeed, some members of racialised communities who are genuinely in a situation where they cannot find the right nutrients without consuming animal products (Fischer 2018). But he affirms this is not a problem for abolitionism, as it is not committed to the view that people should perish for the sake of animals, citing Francione and Charlton to make his point:

[the] position that we are arguing for here is [that] in any situation in which there is really no choice, animal use would be considered morally acceptable under the conventional rule that we should not impose unnecessary suffering. In situations in which there really is no choice, there is a sort of necessity that removes the conduct from the prescription of the general moral rule (Francione and Charlton 2013, p. 60).

I appreciate Fischer’s engagement with my argument; nevertheless, I think that his responses are unconvincing. Firstly, I disagree that higher burdens cannot be qualified as racism without racists. To recall, at its core, racism without racists is an idea whereby if the agency to access essential aspects of human lives is blocked or disrupted, then there exists a hierarchy of power, intentional or not, and when this hierarchy refers to groups perceived as races, then emerges this kind of racism (Olivier and Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017). So, if a perceived ethnic group is systematically put in a situation where their agency to access these goods is blocked or disrupted, then racism without racists exists. That is to say, if we take racism without racists seriously, higher burdens are also a form of racism if they systematically target a certain group and not just unjustified burdens (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2015; Bonilla-Silva 2017).

However, Fischer may reply that this is a very counter-intuitive concept of racism. Nevertheless, consider the following thought experiment to capture the idea that the example given is intuitively racist.

Suppose that during apartheid in South Africa, a machine had been built by the Boer government and placed in the entries to white areas, meaning that crossing that area had to pass by it. Further suppose that this machine could identify who was black or white and every time black individuals passed by they were slashed. Suppose that after 1994, with the end of the apartheid, the rule was now banished, but the machine stayed there. The machine was not removed because of a variety of factors: the costs involved in removing it, prioritising different kinds of investments, laziness of the power-holders, etc. In any case, more could have been done to redistribute the resources needed to eliminate the effects of the machine or to move it. Imagine, however, that instead of removing the machine, all that was done was to keep it there, while changing its workings a little bit, so that in passing, blacks received just a little rather than a harsh level of pain. Blacks still live in that area, but jobs are in the white area, so they have to pass by the machine there every day and suffer this light level of pain.

Most people would say that even though the light level of pain was not an unreasonable burden, especially if a job opportunity on the other side of the machine made suffering the burden worthwhile, this would still be racist. The fact that this historical injustice had remained could be read as a sign that the racist system was not yet eradicated. The reason why it is racist is because there is a burden given to blacks that blocks or disrupts their agency, by humiliating them, or even lightly giving them some indisposition. All this means is that blacks and whites are treated unequally. In fact, generally speaking, it is not the degree but the kind of burden that matters to classify something as something else (Phillips 2009). For instance, if an employer engages in micro-aggressions towards an employee, this may still be harassment at work because of the kind of behavior, even though the degree of it may not be significant. The power dynamics between employer and employee set the overall dynamic in a certain way which constitutes harassment at work.

Fischer could reply that this is not a sound thought experiment because the kind of burden that is suffered is an unreasonable one. So if this was his reply, then my thought experiment did not make the point I wished to make owing to the fact that I am still referring to unreasonable burdens, which he classifies as racist. But one can imagine and assume that while such a machine with an historically unjust past existed, current blacks did not feel it was an unreasonable burden to suffer its effects; this would still not make it unracist, however. Most would still feel that despite the fact of it being an reasonable burden, there exists a power dynamic based on perceived race which frames the example as a racist one.

This thought experiment can also help capture why Fischer’s criterion for racism is mistaken. His criterion, in short, is that either if there is a demand for an unjustified burden directed at a racialised group or is a moral principle prescribing different treatment, there is racism. If the unjustified burden explanation of racism were true, then it would mean that if the machine was intentionally placed there, and only to cause a little bit of pain rather than an unbearable amount pain or death, and not as a result of a moral rule but of some social circumstance, then it would not be racism. This view is, I think, extremely counter-intuitive and cannot be true.

Also, if the moral principle idea were true, then we could conclude that there is nearly no amount of racism in today’s societies, which is also extremely counter-intuitive. No legal code today is inscribed with explicitly racist moral norms, indeed, it is rare to see the general population openly expressing racist remarks. The reason for this is because racism had to adapt to the dominant social discourse of the post-World War II world, one of racial and legal equality (Olivier and Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017). Hence, it is expressed subtly in a way that is more socially acceptable However, it is obvious that racism still exists, but simply manifests in more subtle ways.

Moreover, the qualification of a norm as racist or not cannot be simply based on a reading that does not take context into consideration. If I lived in an unequal racist society and suddenly the power holders declared us all free and equal, but with historical inequalities left unaddressed (for example, possession of land, lack of education), then just being free and equal may be a way of perpetuating the status quo. Take the case of the African decolonisation carried out by Portugal; surely, this was a necessary process, but after all the damage done to African economies by the Portuguese empire, to simply grant independence without any further support seems a cynical way to say one is helping (Hardin 1997). Instead, a way that suggests genuine care would be about actively supporting decolonisation with affirmative action types of political and economic policies (Chabal et al. 2002; Bethencourt 2015). Thus, the context where some action or discourse exists is relevant in understanding its racism—it is insufficient to read the prescription by itself and its social implications in a certain context that are also determinants of the qualification of racism (Isaac 2006; Bethencourt 2015; Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2015; Bonilla-Silva 2017).

Regarding the point that Francione and Charlton are not committed to humans perishing for the name of animals, I do not disagree that this is their theory. However, my reading of their work is that they think there are currently no cases where it is justified to abstain from following a vegan diet. Firstly, as I cited in my paper previously, they affirm the following, whereby:

Veganism is not a matter of opinion, lifestyle, or particular circumstances. It is a moral obligation that binds us—all of us—just as do moral obligations that involve the fundamental rights of humans (Francione and Charlton 2015).

The emphasis on all of us duty-bound to be vegan and the idea that particular circumstances do not matter to us in following this duty is indicative of the view that there is no case where it is justified to not eat vegan. And, in fact, the only case I have read them arguing for that may be an exception is a hypothetical one, that is, if there was someone lost on an island with no food supplies. Indeed, this example proves the case in point: for abolitionists, there may, theoretically, be situations where being vegan is not required, but there are no real cases like this.

Secondly, their book Eat Like You Care is a critique of what they understand as the excuses individuals may give to eating vegan. They do not seem to think that these excuses are convincing and systematically argue for eating vegan against any possible real life reasons against it (Francione and Charlton 2013).

The Moral Underclass

The second way that I argued for racism without racists is because abolitionism offers some racialised communities a binary choice between being classified/considered part of a moral underclass or significantly burdening/risking their lives.

Based on empirical evidence, I contended that not all ethnicities have the same capacity to synthesise the necessary food supplements if they are not relying on animal products. So, if there is a universal requirement for all individuals to eat vegan, there are two possible outcomes. Firstly, if there is a universal standard and individuals cannot and will not follow, it this framework sets out the conditions for the formation of lowered self-esteem, negative stereotypes, and policies of dominance (George 1994a, b, 2000). If they do follow a universal vegan diet, but cannot be healthy by doing so, they are taking significant health risks that may have high costs for their health or their life. This, I argued, is a racist binary choice system to the extent that it either blocks or disrupts agency from the essential aspects of human life (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017).

In reply to this argument, Fischer presents four objections. Firstly, he contends that I jump too fast to the conclusion that racialised communities do not have a duty to be vegan, as there are other alternatives. According to Fischer, the proof of this is the fact that the research that I cited suggests different solutions from mine: particularly, that if individuals are educated in the right way, they can enjoy a vegan diet. Fischer adds that widespread access off on-line information also shows that it is a low cost burden to engaging in a vegan diet (Fischer 2018).

Secondly, Fischer contends that being vegan is part of the solution to racism, not a problem. Many racialised communities suffer health problems—especially cardiovascular ones—as a result of poverty, meaning they are pushed to eat non-vegan high calorie fast food which is cheaper. The racialised are truly disadvantaged by this, so if they ate a vegan diet, they would actually be better off, according to Fischer. Thus, according to this argument, veganism is actually the opposite of racism: it is a strategy for making individuals from racialised communities better off health-wise (Fischer 2018).

The third objection is that the argument of the moral underclass can be turned on me. This is particularly if I conceptualise individuals as unable to be agents, for I am infantilising them, failing to show appropriate respect for their moral agency and, thereby, conceptualising them as a moral underclass. Thus, depending on the situation, the moral underclass argument works both ways. From this, Fischer concludes that I should not use the argument as it can be used for or against my point.

The fourth objection to the idea of moral underclass is that I would need empirical evidence that abolitionism has led to negative stereotypes of racialised minorities as a moral underclass or be able to prove abolitionists’ intention to do so (Fischer 2018).

In response to the first objection, the solutions offered by Fischer and the authors I cited were only suitable for those not in the kind of extreme positions I exemplified. Access to education, on-line information and online mobile applications that allow for the ordering of vegan food are not really solutions for someone living in a township in South Africa, for example. People in these places may have to travel great distances to go to school and they either have poor or no internet access (Swartz 2009; Olivier 2015). Moreover, there various assumptions that Fischer makes about the reliability of services which are true for the Global North but not the Global South: indeed, remote areas are not covered by many delivery companies or internet providers and even if they are, in many places in Africa the delivery of goods may arrive one or two months after the date scheduled (Blundo and Meur 2009). The solutions are feasible if one lives in a place with developed and reliable services, but these are not the cases I am referring to.

Fischer wishes to argue that in the United States those solutions are feasible. However, reports demonstrate that access to vegan food, education, the internet, and mobile phones, is rather limited for those with economic difficulties, and these constitute the areas I was referring to. Indeed, urban cosmopolitan centres are significantly developed and all that Fischer mentions is possible there, but in rural areas and suburbs, especially poorer areas like Detroit, this is not the case (Barsh 2001; Park and Pellow 2004; Brulle and Pellow 2006; Mohai et al. 2009; Liu and Apollon 2011; Counihan 2012; Gottlieb and Joshi 2013; Pellow 2016).

About the objection of veganism being anti-racist, I do agree with this point and, indeed, I have already addressed it in my previous article. As mentioned there, Lisa Kemmerer and Breeze Harper make very similar points to Fischer (Harper 2010; Kemmerer 2016). To clarify, my dichotomy is not between vegan being racist and non-vegan being non-racist. As I argued, ‘requirements of diets ought to reflect the fundamental needs and social circumstances of the individuals involved. Thus, the guiding idea ought to be that a different diet should be prescribed to each according to her needs and circumstances, rather than universalising a diet that neglects specific needs and circumstances’ (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017, p. 756). What this means is that as racism is contextual, there will be situations where one norm is racist and other situations where it is not. Thus, there will be cases where forcing someone to eat meat or dairy is racist and others where forcing someone to eat vegan is racist. I do not, therefore, need to disagree with Fischer: there will be cases where vegan diets are the non-racist solution, but in other cases they are the racist solution, depending on the context.

Fischer’s argument about infantilisation is a serious and important one. I do agree that the argument could be used in that way and there are some historical examples of this. A recurrent racist theory existent during the Enlightenment to justify European dominance was that Africans had the minds of children, so it was better for Africans if whites took care of them (Fredrickson 2003; Bethencourt 2015).

Nonetheless, take the following thought experiment. Imagine a poor person who lived in a poor district of Detroit. She had no chance to go to school and gain skills, she had had to work since she was a child, and experienced routine abuse. This person then is not only in the position of not being able to acquire the skills necessary for an autonomous life (mostly job skills), but also because of experiencing abuse has developed limited personal and social skills. If I argued that this person may not have been given the context that would allow her to become a functioning social person or the skills or knowledge to get out of poverty, am I infantilising this person?

Most people’s intuition would be that I am not. The reason is because I am addressing objective facts with evidence and logical argument about the circumstances of this person that have objectively undermined her ability to function properly in society.

So when does infatilization occur? From the above thought experiment, it is possible to conclude that it cannot be when one points out objective or justified reasons for someone’s poor agency. Instead, it is when there are unjustified explanations to say someone cannot do something—just like using random criteria such as race, gender or sexual orientation. If in the thought experiment, my reasoning was something like ‘this person is gay, therefore he does not have the skills to find a good job’, then this would potentially be an infatilisation of this person. Thus, the difference between stating ‘X is gay, therefore X is unable to cook’ and ‘This person was systematically disadvantaged and therefore, unable to get out of poverty’ is that the first uses random variable whereas the latter does not. Therefore, infantilisation occurs when random criteria are used to explain an action, instead of objective ones supported by evidence and/or a sound argument.Footnote 1 To the last objection, I wish to first clarify and emphasise that I do not think abolitionists intend to be racist. Instead, I think they are genuinely concerned with racial issues, which has been demonstrated in some articles about Michael Vick, where the general focus on his crimes as racist has been criticised (Francione 2018a, b). However, racism is not about intention but is instead about power hierarchies. Therefore, showing whether something was intentional or not is not relevant in identifying racist dynamics.

The second point I wish to make is that my argument did not suggest that the cause-effect of abolitionism creates negative stereotypes about racialised communities. If this were my argument, I would need, as Fischer contends, empirical evidence proving so. Instead, my argument highlighted that the social-economic and political setting for this to happen is set up by abolitionist theory. The Republican perspective on freedom clarifies this. For Republicans, if a slave had a very good master and he could do all he wanted, but the law still gave power for the master to do as he wished, this individual would still not be free. The reason being because his freedom could be restricted at any moment. Being free, as Republicans contend, relates to structural independence—the condition of not being subject to the arbitrary or uncontrolled power of a master (Pettit 2001; Lovett 2018). Likewise, my point about abolitionism is not that there is empirical evidence showing it has disadvantaged racialised groups in the past; instead, my argument is that if abolitionism was applied it would set up the kind of structure that allows for the formulation of the moral status of racialised groups. Thus, a more desirable theory would be one where the implications of it would not be a minority being relegated to a lower moral status.

The Neocolonial Economic System

The third argument I presented to demonstrate that abolitionism engaged in racism without racists was that its philosophy, if applied, would favour a neo-colonial economic system in both Africa and Latin-America. What I meant by this was that, if abolitionism were to be applied, former colonial powers would maintain economic dominance over former colonies and thereby former colonies would lose their sovereignty (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017).

The reason why this would be the case is because neither the African soil nor agricultural development is suitable for a massive planting of the vegetables necessary to feeding their populations (Sant’Anna 2016). Contrastingly, animal production or a combination of animal production and vegetables seem to be more economically viable. Taking this on board, a switch to a massive vegetarian plantation would lead to an increase in imports and, thereby, less autonomy and food sovereignty. This would be a neo-colonial system to the extent that for Africans to meet the vegan moral requirement, it would be necessary for them to purchase goods from former colonisers rather than export them or autonomously produce them. African economies are already weak and in order to grow need to reduce imports and increase exports; increasing the imports would, rather than reinforce sovereignty, increase vulnerability and dependency on the market prices set by outside forces (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017).

In the case of Latin America, going vegan would require a massive restructuring of some Indigenous economies. For these hunter-gathering economies, a vegan plantation would not be possible without outside intervention to teach agricultural and environmental deforestation skills in order to create the right plantation setting. As a result, the Indigenous ‘would be highly dependent on neo-colonial powers to provide them with skills, technology and so forth, thus perpetuating hierarchies of racial power’ (Cordeiro-Rodrigues 2017, p. 754).

Against this view, Fischer affirms that I fail to see that free markets have been responsible for an enormous improvement in standards of living. So, it would be better for former colonised countries to commercially engage with others and this includes engaging in the vegan food market. Therefore, when I frame the outcome of engaging in market relations of vegan products as ‘a form of facilitating economic dependence’, I may actually be arguing against a possible solution for pulling people from these countries out of poverty. Fischer further clarifies that not all trade is fair, but his point is that entering in the larger economic system benefits members of the Global South (Fischer 2018).

In reply, I wish to clarify that my argument was not against entering the global market and favouring economic isolationism. Indeed, entering markets can, as Fischer points out, be a very good way to take populations out of poverty. Take the most paradigmatic example: China. When Deng Xiaoping opened China to investment this was certainly the first step in China’s economic growth and the rise of the Chinese middle class (Vogel 1810; Deng 1995). Likewise, the current opening up of the market by the current Chinese leadership has been equally beneficial in improving the life quality of the population. But taking this paradigmatic case, it is possible to see why this rise happened: China is a substantial exporter, and many countries have bought and still buy products from China. Part of the reason for China’s growth is how well it has developed its export industry (Vogel 1810; Deng 1995; Kueh 2008; Jinping 2015).

However, in the case of most African economies, what would be required from them, in the massification of the vegan diet case, would not be to export their products. Instead, it would rely on them importing products and passing the wealth abroad rather than others buying its products. African economies are in urgent need of exporting their products, at a fair price, in order to grow and gain a higher level of sufficiency (Rodney 2012; Akyeampong 2014; Jerven 2015). If, on the other hand, they are to increase their imports with goods that they could otherwise produce themselves, their economic situation would worsen even more. This is what would be required if Africans were to eat vegan en mass: a huge import of goods which are unable to be produced in Africa.

The problem is, therefore, about not entering the global market. This is, indeed, very much recommended for economic growth, with even some of the most radical African socialists like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere arguing for the importance of foreign investment (Nyerere 1971; Nkrumah 1974; Martin 2012). Instead, the problem is entering in the market in a way whereby one is vulnerable to buying products one cannot produce, thereby, increasing one’s vulnerability. Note, that this is a rule for all countries, but with African economies representing a special case: given the long history of exploitation and the damaging of African economies by the West, fair trade exports can be identified as embodying the most important economic policy for sovereignty (Rodney 2012; Akyeampong 2014).

Conclusion

Fischer has presented very persuasive arguments for contesting my thesis that animal abolitionism engages in a form of racism without racists. Despite the sophistication of his arguments, however, I have contested them in turn, contending that they fail to undermine my point that animal abolitionism engages in racism without racists. Firstly, Fischer is mistaken to conclude that higher burdens are not an instance of racism. Secondly, his definition of racism is counter-intuitive. Thirdly, I contended that his criticisms on my view of the connection between a moral underclass and abolitionism (1) underestimate the burdens some individuals suffer by eating a vegan diet, (2) engage in a mistaken concept of infantilisation and (3) misunderstand what racism without racist means. Fourthly, the counter-argument of Fischer regarding my point about neo-colonialism is formulated against an argument that I am not making.

In this article, I have presented arguments of whether the concept of racism without racists is a sound concept? However, further research should focus on debating this concept and comparing it with other concepts of racism.