The Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)
Weekly Newsletter from Christian Vegetarian Association CVA - April 1, 2020
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)
1. Activist Feedback
Regarding leafleting at Winter Jam in Wichita, KS (before social
distancing), Rick Hershey writes:
Diane, Chip, and I handed out 1675 CVA booklets at Intrust Bank Arena in
Wichita for Winter Jam today. The crowd was smaller than usual this year.
2. The Roots of Tribalism
I will make analogies between American racism against blacks and our
species’ abuse of nonhumans, in terms of both motivations of the victimizers
and the consequences for the victims. My intent is not to equate the moral
value of human and nonhumans, however justified or unjustified that might
be.
I think James Baldwin had many profound insights into the sources of
American racism. He wrote:
If Americans were not so terrified of their private selves, they would never
have needed to invent and could never have become so dependent on what they
still call ‘the Negro problem.’ This problem, which they invented in order
to safeguard their purity, has made of them criminals and monsters, and it
is destroying them; and this not from anything blacks may or may not be
doing but because of the role a guilty and constricted white imagination has
assigned to the blacks.
Baldwin argued that whites, particularly poor whites, gained a sense of
value and self-esteem by denigrating blacks. While subjugation of blacks has
always had an economic impetus, poor whites could gain a sense of worth by
believing themselves as members of a superior category of people compared to
blacks. To do this, they maintained that a wide range of undesirable
attributes pertained exclusively to blacks. As Baldwin perceptively noted,
whites held these views to hide the existence of these attributes in
themselves. If the existence or absence of a given attribute related to the
character of an individual, then whites as well as blacks could manifest
that attribute. If they related to “race,” then whites could believe that
they either did or did not manifest that attribute. Regardless of how much
various attributes might or might not apply to some blacks, the overriding
purpose of racist thinking was self-deception by whites.
As I will discuss next week, we see the same process when it comes to
perceptions of nonhumans.
Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.
- Newsletter: We published the March 26 edition of our all-creatures Newsletter, which we hope you like and share with others to help stop the exploitation and killing of animals
- Recipe: Bread - Oat, Whole Wheat, Onion and Caraway Flat Bread
- Sermon from Rev. Frank Hoffman
Blind Receive Sight - Popcorn Sermon Video from Frank Hoffman
Faith brings blessings
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