Undeniable

Facing topics of difficult nature or controversial descent has never been of high priority for the human race. Tending to thorny, debated issues us often brushed under the rug, Why? Why does the species who claims dominion over all others fear facing simple truths and realities such as the undeniable parallels between human slavery and treatment of animals?

Torture of slaves and animals

The similarities between the lives of the slaves and the lives of animals is nearly irrefutable. According to Jeremy Bentham, there are two “sorts…of agents that at the same time that they are under the influence of man’s direction, are susceptible to happiness: Other human beings who are styled persons…and other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things” (756).


Chains are symbols of African American Slavery

Humans as a species as well as individual races around the globe are guilty of racism, “a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures” as well as speciesism, “a belief that different species of animals are significantly different from one another in their capacities to feel pleasure and pain and live an autonomous life” (762). Both of these superiority complexes thrive on the idea that their own species or race has the “right to rule and use the others” (762). Marjorie Speigel points out in her book The Dreaded Comparison the cut and dry, so obvious if they were snakes they would have bitten you, parallels between slavery-related sufferings of black people and the “ sufferings of animals lost in the machinery of modern institutionalized cruelty” (770). “…from the disruption of self-regulated reproduction; to birth and the consequential destruction of the familial structure; throughout life and the many cruelties, such as vivisection and hunting, to which individuals are subjected”, from an outsider looking in, the way that humans regard and unjustly rule over animals is the same way that white Americans (as well as many others from other parts of the world) unjustly treated their slaves (770). It is difficult to come to terms with these similarities, which is why it is so easy for them to be overlooked. Remaining ignorant about difficult conclusions is a simple coping mechanism that has been utilized for centuries and is continuously being maintained today regarding the treatment of animals. “There are many disturbing similarities between their (slaves’) treatment at the hands of white people in the United States and the treatment of animals at the hands of a large sector of the American population”, yet it is being ignored daily (765).


In “Am I Blue?” Alice Walker steps over the line of speciesism and gives animals the characteristic that specicesists claim that they are lacking. Walker gives human qualities to an animal, completely realisticly, voiding any justification of speciesism. Blue, a horse who lives next door to Walker, is described as being “horribly lonely and bored” with “depth of feeling one could see in [his] eyes” (760). As mentioned earlier, speciesism is based off of the idea that an animal’s lack of the capacity to feel pain, pleasure or emotions. In Walker’s work, she completely null’s this theory because she is exemplifying passionate feelings and emotions within an animal that are normally given to humans. Walker describes Blue as “a crazed person” with “ a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human…and to think that there are people who do not know that animals suffer” (760).

http://www.animalslavery.net/
http://veggiemo.com/factsandthoughts.htm