Aphro-ism Quotes

“Animal' is a category that we shove certain bodies into when we want to justify violence against them, which is why animal liberation should concern all who are minoritized. As long as animals are oppressed, as long as 'animal' means something degrading, we will never be set free.”
― Aph Ko, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters

“Part of activism is finding yourself in a new space of confusion, allowing yourself to step into new conceptual terrain. When you abandon commonly held oppressive beliefs, you might not exactly know what to do afterward, and that's where more activists need to be.”
― Aph Ko, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters

“There's something ironic about a man like Ron Finley—who plants gardens in spaces white supremacy created to nutritionally and intellectually starve minorities—being celebrated by the mainstream white news media. The goal of guerrilla gardening isn't to make black folks look more peaceful and benevolent; it's to engage in a new type of fight in which we are taking care of ourselves in an era that's actively trying to poison and kill us. It's an act of survival. It's great that people like Ron and other urban farmers are engaging with DIY, grassroots activism to fight back. However, we need to watch how we frame their stories and most importantly, we need to watch out for who is framing these stories.”
― Aph Ko, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters

“Let's use our exclusion and invisibility as a power to create impermeable spaces for ourselves, unburdened by the ridiculous and biased premises of the dominant class. Let's use our erasure from this rotten-to-the-core Western notion of humanity to build up a different “new world,” one that is not defined in terms of dichotomies or hierarchies or emotional death—but centered on love: one in which we accept ambiguity and difference, grounded in an expansive, limitless “we.” We are at the center of a radical shift taking place in pro-animal discourse precisely because, upon self-reflection, we can see that our struggle is their struggle. I don't mean this symbolically. I mean this literally.”
― Aph Ko, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters

“If we use the existing framework or model—the established mindset—to articulate a “solution” to a problem that that model sustains, in what way are we “dismantling”?”
― Aph Ko, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters

“We need to stop expecting Eurocentric veganism to correct systemic racism. We need to let the oppressed folks articulate their own movements using their own voices. The self-proclaimed leaders need to stop trying to find their next Martin Luther King Jr. to manipulate black folks into being calm and “civilized” since what Ron and other guerrilla gardeners are doing has nothing to do with being peaceful and everything to do with survival and protest. Black folks who are vegan are a threat to white supremacy, not a subset of the depoliticized white-vegan movement.”
― Aph Ko, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters

“One of the shortfalls of representation rhetoric is that it advertises a simplistic blueprint for racial equality in which people of color are visually “included” in spaces regularly reserved for white people. The dominant thought is: If we just show more minoritized faces in the white marketplace, then progress is being made.”
― Aph Ko, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters