This collection of fifteen passionately argued essays by farmed animal protection advocates explains why prioritizing racial diversity, equity, and inclusion within animal advocacy is not only essential to creating a more just movement, but one that is larger, more dynamic, and (crucially) more effective. These essays emerged from the groundbreaking 2020 inaugural Encompass DEI Institute and were originally published on Sentient Media.

The animal-rights organization PETA asked “Are Animals the New Slaves?” in a controversial 2005 fundraising campaign; that same year, after the Humane Society rescued pets in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while black residents were neglected, some declared that white America cares more about pets than black people. These are but two recent examples of a centuries-long history in which black life has been pitted against animal life. Does comparing human and animal suffering trivialize black pain, or might the intersections of racialization and animalization shed light on interlinked forms of oppression? In Afro-Dog, Bénédicte Boisseron investigates the relationship between race and the animal in the history and culture of the Americas and the black Atlantic, exposing a hegemonic system that compulsively links and opposes blackness and animality to measure the value of life. She analyzes the association between black civil disobedience and canine repression, a history that spans the era of slavery through the use of police dogs against protesters during the civil rights movement of the 1960s to today in places like Ferguson, Missouri. She also traces the lineage of blackness and the animal in Caribbean literature and struggles over minorities’ right to pet ownership alongside nuanced readings of Derrida and other French theorists. Drawing on recent debates on black lives and animal welfare, Afro-Dog reframes the fast-growing interest in human–animal relationships by positioning blackness as a focus of animal inquiry, opening new possibilities for animal studies and black studies to think side by side.

In this lively, accessible, and provocative collection, Aph and Syl Ko provide new theoretical frameworks on race, advocacy for nonhuman animals, and feminism. Using popular culture as a point of reference for their critiques, the Ko sisters engage in groundbreaking analysis of the compartmentalized nature of contemporary social movements, present new ways of understanding interconnected oppressions, and offer conceptual ways of moving forward expressive of Afrofuturism and black veganism.

In 2020, COVID-19, the Australia bushfires, and other global threats served as vivid reminders that human and nonhuman fates are increasingly linked. Human use of nonhuman animals contributes to pandemics, climate change, and other global threats which, in turn, contribute to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and nonhuman suffering. Jeff Sebo argues that humans have a moral responsibility to include animals in global health and environmental policy. In particular, we should reduce our use of animals as part of our pandemic and climate change mitigation efforts and increase our support for animals as part of our adaptation efforts. Applying and extending frameworks such as One Health and the Green New Deal, Sebo calls for reducing support for factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade; increasing support for humane, healthful, and sustainable alternatives; and considering human and nonhuman needs holistically. Sebo also considers connections with practical issues such as education, employment, social services, and infrastructure, as well as with theoretical issues such as well-being, moral status, political status, and population ethics. In all cases, he shows that these issues are both important and complex, and that we should neither underestimate our responsibilities because of our limitations, nor underestimate our limitations because of our responsibilities. Both an urgent call to action and a survey of what ethical and effective action requires, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves is an invaluable resource for scholars, advocates, policy-makers, and anyone interested in what kind of world we should attempt to build and how.

'Why are you making this about race?' This question is repeated daily in public and in the media. Calling someone racist in these times of mounting white supremacy seems to be a worse insult than racism itself. In our supposedly post-racial society, surely it’s time to stop talking about race? This powerful refutation is a call to notice not just when and how race still matters but when, how and why it is said not to matter. Race critical scholar Alana Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight. Weaving together international examples, she eviscerates misconceptions such as reverse racism and the newfound acceptability of 'race realism', bursts the 'I’m not racist, but' justification, complicates the common criticisms of identity politics and warns against using concerns about antisemitism as a proxy for antiracism. Dominant voices in society suggest we are talking too much about race. Lentin shows why we actually need to talk about it more and how in doing so we can act to make it matter less.

Speaking Up for Animals highlights eighteen courageous members of a growing international animal advocacy movement that is overwhelmingly powered by women. These remarkable activists take us with them as they lift factory farmed chickens and cows from quagmires of filth, free gigantic sea lions caught in fishing gear and secure undercover footage of dogs crying for mercy on stainless steel vivisection tables. In the process, these dedicated women expose the many ways that most of us are complicit in the suffering and exploitation of animals, and creatively suggest a variety of ways in which we might help bring change.

"In this book, Aph Ko examines the mainstream animal rights and anti-racist movements in an effort to explain why tension exists between the two. She offers possible resolutions, and explores how such tensions represent a symptom of a deeper societal problem. Framed as a "starter guide" for having conversations on race and animals, Racism as Zoological Witchcraft draws upon television shows and films such as Jordan Peele's Get Out, Netflix's Santa Clarita Diet, and ABC's The Bachelor franchise to demonstrate how one can use media and cultural studies to provide new ways of thinking about complex social phenomena. Drawing upon Claire Jean Kim's zoological race theory and James W. Perkinson's European race discourse as witchcraft scholarship, Racism as Zoological Witchcraft concludes that white supremacy functions as a form of zoological witchcraft, a pervasive force that thrives off of metabolizing nonhuman souls. In re-framing white supremacy as a consumptive, cannibalistic force, only then can we re-imagine how Black bodies and animal bodies are used as vehicles to fulfill the racialized power fantasies of the dominant class. This book poses a crucial question: What is the interplay between the ideological and economic consumption of Blackness (both historical and contemporary) and the conception of animals as consumable entities in American society? In Racism as Zoological Witchcraft, Aph Ko argues that in order to "get out" of a problematic system, we have to thoroughly understand how we got in"--