Got Milk? Make A Political Statement
A Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Sara Streeter, Faunalytics.org
May 2019

In recent year the alt-right is using lactose tolerance along with the cultural practices of animal domestication and meat consumption to support their world view of white superiority. This study examines the phenomenon.

Image of a cow on a 'dairy farm' - from AnimalsVoice.com.

The alt-right is using lactose tolerance along with the cultural practices of animal domestication and meat consumption to support their world view of white superiority. This study examines the phenomenon.

It may seem strange, but in recent years, milk has been chosen as a symbol of racial purity by the alt-right. The essay summarized in this article examines how lactose tolerance has come to symbolize white supremacy.

The author, Sara Streeter, notes that claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race and masculinity first surfaced in the 19th when England colonized India and the Chinese island of Hong Kong.

Colonizers eating a western diet believed it made them more masculine and therefore more dominant, enabling them to defeat and subjugate the ‘effeminate corn and rice eaters’ of China and India. This was a widespread stereotype of the day and not seen as racist. Meanwhile, the aura of so-called science lent respectability to the belief that the superiority of the English and other northern Europeans was the product of a more meat-centered diet.

This essay should be of interest to animal advocates because it demonstrates how a simple act such as drinking milk can symbolize an entrenched political ideology.

Read more at Got Milk? Make A Political Statement

---

Return to The Meat and Dairy Industries