I was happily cooking my dinner a few nights ago when I flipped over the packet of Gardein beefless tips I was about to pan fry only to be confronted by casual racism.
Check it out.
Can you spot it? Gardein placed an ‘Asian’ meal idea on the reverse of the package.
I wondered from which part of Asia this recipe was derived. Was it the edge of Egypt that constitutes one extreme of the Asian continent or was it the multiple islands lying just to the north of Australia? Or was it China, India, Thailand or Russia?
Gardein has compressed a population of more than 4 billion humans and more cultures than I can comprehend into one easy recipe.
Doris Lin is much more qualified to speak with authority and from experience on the topic of using ‘Asian’ as a blanket term and she kindly agreed to share her opinion with us when I asked.
Doris says:
Asia is not monolithic. In fact, there’s a joke that the only thing that all Asians have in common is geography and rice. Asian countries have a wide variety of religions, customs, languages, and cuisines. We never see recipes called, “European meal idea,” because mainstream western media recognizes that each European country has its own culture and cuisine. Using the word “Asian” to describe a recipe seems a bit lazy and a bit ignorant. It’s very othering because it implies that we don’t need to know anything more about something if it’s Asian. We don’t need to narrow it down to a country, because all that Asian stuff is the same. Seeing it in a commercial setting, like the back of a package, also raises questions about cultural appropriation. Someone is making a profit off of “Asian” cuisine without respecting the culture enough to figure out which country the dish might be from. If it’s a Chinese recipe, call it “Chinese.” Or better yet – call it by the name of the dish, such as “beefless teriyaki” or “beefless pho.” If you’re making up a recipe that doesn’t have any basis in any particular country, which appears to be the case here, it could be called, “Stir-fried Beefless Tips”.
Thank you, Doris.
I especially love your ‘European meal idea’ example. Can you even imagine someone using the term European to flippantly describe German, British, French or Italian food? It wouldn’t happen but this vegan company has casually used ‘Asian’ as a throwaway term that works to diminish widely-differing cultures and cuisines that have been established over tens of thousand of years.
Gardein, you can do better than this. You want to help animals but you should be able to do this without employing casual racism in your marketing.
You all can and should follow Doris Lin on Twitter.
I have re-written the introduction to this blog post seven times and I keep deleting it.
Nothing I can say will add to the power and importance of this video and I’ve realised I shouldn’t try.
Please watch, think and share.
Work to redress all oppression and injustice and inequity. How ethical is our plant-based diet when people live with poverty and illness in order for us to get the ingredients?
Have you been wondering how a vegan might consider that their personal choices and the language they employ can be linked to furthering or challenging a wide range of oppressions? Is this something you would like to discuss with other curious vegans in a supportive, safe space?
The vegan community in the UK does a lot of valuable outreach, education and activism with the goal of improving outcomes for non-human animals, but many of us are also coming to understand that our animal-positive activities shouldn’t stand alone from other oppressive concerns.
We can and should be considerate of how our activism can perpetuate negative stereotypes and oppressive forces in the world. We can challenge inequality and inequity related to sexism, queerphobia, ageism, ableism as we fight to improve outcomes for animals. We don’t need to choose which type of oppression we resist and fight to redress, we can work against multiple oppressions at the same time.
So what about a vegan anti-oppression learning collective?
I am hoping to find vegans who are interested in forming a collaborative group of people who want to meet regularly in London (and hopefully in other UK locations) to explore topics of connected oppressions and intersectionality theory via suggested readings, public screenings and meeting guest speakers.
Maybe there is already a group like this operating in the capital, so please let me know if there is.
There is a now a private Facebook group you can join where you can help develop the shape, intentions, shared content and outcomes of the collective. We can start to discuss a safe space policy for the group, how we would like the Facebook page to be managed and who will be willing to take on administration duties for the page and future real life meetings.
If you have been thinking about these topics, join the closed Facebook group to help commence the building of the collective.
VegFestUK London is hosting the UK’s first pro-intersectionality vegan conference later in 2016. Powerful voices from around the world will gather in London to speak of intersectional theory and how this valuable critical framework (highlighting how an individual can experience multiple, overlapping oppressions) can be applied to the realm of veganism and animal rights.
I once wrote a blog post for my buddy JL in which I explained how mainstream media and advertising made me feel like an outsider as I grew up in Australia.
You can read that original post here, but the main message was that the perpetuation of eating animal flesh as normal was inextricably woven into other hegemonic themes such as sexual identity, male virility and body perfection. The media worked to make me feel like a failure or not the best ‘man’ I could be. That’s right, the name Fat Gay Vegan was created as a counter to these negative and damaging forces.
Fast forward four years since I penned that post and how have things changed in Australia?
Well, watch this recent television advert and spot how many ways I (or anybody) could be offended.
Many of my readers are of course vegan so the attempt to portray the vegan as the non-sporty person, cowering on the floor on their own, will be the part of the advert that confronts on first watch. I’m not sure how to begin unpacking the scene where the military use a flamethrower to set the vegan’s coffee table on fire. Is that violence as a comedic response to someone saying they don’t eat animals? I’m struggling to see the humour.
The vegan is also the only person not ‘Australian’ enough to be considered worthy of being airlifted back for the national celebration. That’s some straight up bullshit.
OK, so we have the vegan-shaming out of the way. Let me get some other things off my chest.
The most excruciatingly offensive and upsetting part of this advert is the appropriation of Indigenous terms and language to promote Australia Day.
For those of you who don’t know, Australia Day is ‘celebrated’ each year on January 26. The date remembers the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson in what is modern day Sydney. This marked the beginning of the systemic brutalisation of the Indigenous people of the landmass that came to be known as Australia.
Not sure what I mean by brutalisation?
European forces took ‘ownership’ of an already populated land by poisoning, shooting, hanging, starving and massacring Aboriginal people who resisted (and many who didn’t). Women and children were raped and killed. Families were torn apart in the belief that Aboriginal children would never have a good life (or possibly as a deliberate genocide tool to force the ‘dying out’ of Aborigines). This forced removal of children from families came to be commonly referred to as The Stolen Generations and it is estimated that approximately 100,000 Aboriginal children were separated from their family unit. This happened officially until c. 1970.
So how does this all fit into the lamb advert you watched above?
The campaign to bring Australians back ‘home’ so they don’t miss out on eating dead animals on Australia Day is jokingly referred to as Operation Boomerang. Yes, that’s correct. A celebration of the arrival of murderous invaders that immeasurably altered the lives of generations of Indigenous people has been given the Indigenous name of a hunting and ceremonial weapon. A boomerang returns to the thrower, just like these Australian are returning home to eat lamb. Get it?!
Many Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians refer to Australia Day as Invasion Day and this ad campaign makes a mockery of the Aboriginal experience. It has completely disregarded Aboriginal perspectives, apart from stealing a term to serve its own message.
How many other ways can I take offence by watching this advert?
Let’s see:
to my eye, every Australian being ‘boomeranged’ back for Australia Day presents as white.
there are no overweight people being brought ‘home’.
sport is woven into the entire theme and the explicit link between eating meat, maleness and being Australian is undeniable. No women sportspeople were involved, because sexism is rampant in Australian culture and the contributions of women in sport is seen as negligible.
the advert is racist in it’s portrayal of Japanese people as business experts wrapped up in ceremony. Did you see that goofy, white Australian ‘bloke’ not able to get his head around their kooky custom of bowing? He didn’t know when to stop! LOL. Quick, get him some lamb to eat.
the militarisation of national identity is complete in this advert. The army/special ops are seen as enforcers of a narrow view of Australian identity. They will ‘rescue’ you if you are a white, sporty, lamb-eating man with a fit body… or a women who fits these characteristics but doesn’t rock the boat too much.
I often talk about the way in which multiple prejudices work together to perpetuate domineering and dominating forces.
This advert is almost comical in its outrageous attempt to paint a picture of what being Australian means. The advertisers are using anti-veganism, body shaming, racism/white-dominance, nationalism, sexism and military worship in order to sell a product that is violent at its core.
This is why we as vegans need to resist and challenge all forms of oppression. They are all connected and it is common for them to be used in tandem to perpetuate animal suffering, dominance, and privilege.
Extra note: it is somewhat heartening to learn that this advert has rapidly become the most complained about advert in the history of modern Australia.
