Don’t let COVID-Induced Racism Protect American Animal Cruelty
To save more animals — including humans, we must all work to dismantle racism alongside speciesism
With many (though not all) of the first COVID-19 cases in humans linked to the since-shuttered Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, the intertwined practices of eating “wild” animals and selling live animals for food are under renewed scrutiny, especially in China. The country has partially banned such trade, animal and environmental groups are calling for it to close further loopholes, and last week, a bipartisan group of senators and representatives, including vegan Cory Booker, called for a worldwide ban on the wildlife trade. Even Texas Senator John Cornyn seemed poised to join the fight last month, in a roundabout, racist sort of way, when he said “China is to blame” for the pandemic, because “the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs” makes the country “a source of a lot of these viruses, like SARS, like MERS, the swine flu.”
It’s tempting for vegans to view defeat for an inhumane system as a clear silver lining to a pandemic that’s worsening daily. But a good rule of thumb is that if you find yourself agreeing with John Cornyn — who enthusiastically supports industrialized pig-killing and rattlesnake-eating, so long as it’s American…
