Animal Rights and Civil Rights
“I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other,
and it’s very important that we have a President who is mindful of the
cruelty that is perpetrated on animals.”
- President-Elect Barack Obama, 2008
In 1968, civil rights leader Dick Gregory compared humanity’s treatment of
animals to the conditions of America’s inner cities:
“Animals and humans suffer and die alike. If you had to kill your own hog
before you ate it, most likely you would not be able to do it. To hear the
hog scream, to see the blood spill, to see the baby being taken away from
its momma, and to see the look of death in the animal’s eye would turn your
stomach. So you get the man at the packing house to do the killing for you.
“In like manner, if the wealthy aristocrats who are perpetuating conditions
in the ghetto actually heard the screams of ghetto suffering, or saw the
slow death of hungry little kids, or witnessed the strangulation of manhood
and dignity, they could not continue the killing. But the wealthy are
protected from such horror...If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can
justify the conditions of the ghetto. I cannot justify either one.”
Gregory credits the Judeo-Christian ethic and the teachings of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. with having caused him to become a vegetarian. In 1973, he
drew a connection between vegetarianism and nonviolent civil disobedience:
"...the philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first
responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. I had been
a participant in all of the ‘major’ and most of the ‘minor’ civil rights
demonstrations of the early sixties, including the March on Washington and
the Selma to Montgomery March.
“Under the leadership of Dr. King, I became totally committed to
nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to
killing in any form. I felt the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ applied to
human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching,
assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals
for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike...Violence causes
the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the
same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.”
In a 1979 interview, Gregory explained: “Because of the civil rights
movement, I decided I couldn’t be thoroughly nonviolent and participate in
the destruction of animals for my dinner...I didn’t become a vegetarian for
health reasons; I became a vegetarian strictly for moral
reasons...Vegetarianism will definitely become a people’s movement.”
When asked if humans will ultimately have to answer to a Supreme Being for
their exploitation of animals, Gregory replied, “I think we answer for that
every time we go to the hospital with cancer and other diseases.”
Gregory has also expressed the opinion that the plight of the poor will
improve as humans cease to slaughter animals: “I would say that the
treatment of animals has something to do with the treatment of people. The
Europeans have always regarded their slaves and the people they have
colonized as animals.”
Since the 1980s, Dick Gregory has been involved in the anti-drug campaign.
Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
reported back in the '90s that under Gregory’s influence, Dexter Scott
King—head of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolence in Atlanta,
and son of the slain civil rights leader—and King’s widow, Coretta Scott
King, had both become vegans.
Peter Singer concludes in Animal Liberation that “by ceasing to rear and
kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that,
properly distributed, would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this
planet. Animal liberation is human liberation, too.” The animal rights
movement should be supported by all caring Americans.
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