It's one of the most famous quotes in the animal rights movement, and it's attributed to Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple" (Buy Direct):
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."
The problem is the quote is taken out of context, and Walker wasn't expressing her own views. The source of the quote is Walker's preface to Marjorie Spiegel's 1988 book, "The Dreaded Comparison" (Buy Direct). In fact, the very next sentence is "This is the gist of Ms. Spiegel's cogent, humane and astute argument, and it is sound."
When Walker wrote those words, she was summarizing someone else's views, not her own.
It's easy to see how something like this spreads. It's a great sentiment, coming from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. And technically, Alice Walker did write it.
When I see the quote, it's rarely cited as coming from Spiegel's book, so it would be difficult to verify. But considering the context, I don't think the quote should be said to describe Walker's views on animal rights.
I was unable to find a way to contact Walker, either on her blog or on her official website.
And while we're discussing Alice Walker, various animal rights and vegetarian/vegan websites describe Walker as a vegan or vegetarian, but as of November of 2009, that is not accurate. Walker wrote in her blog post titled, "So I Thought We Would Just Go On Like This Forever,"
And it isn't as if I'm vegan, as Wikipedia claims. I'm just an ordinary run of the mill mostly vegetarian person who still eats chicken soup when I'm sick and roast chicken when I can't resist. But I could not have eaten Babe.
Babe was a chicken Walker had helped take care of.
(Addendum: As TG points out in the comments below, it appears that Walker became vegetarian a few weeks later. However, Walker did not stick with it. Thanks to Mylène Ouellet for finding the info and to Leila Fusfeld of Peace Advocacy Network for passing it along.)
My purpose is not to criticize Walker. She tries to be vegetarian and says that Spiegel's book that compares human slavery to animal slavery is based on a sound argument. But I believe that calling her vegan, taking this quote out of context and attributing it to Walker is inaccurate.
And while we're discussing famous animal rights quotes, another one that is questionable at best is the one that is attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
It appears that a rather thorough search for the origins of the Lincoln quote has turned up nothing.
Photo of Alice Walker by Peter Kramer / Getty Images
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Comments
As you yourself write, Walker endorses the quote: says it is sound, in effect, endorsing the comment. I don’t see this as a mistaken attribution (although the context is certainly worth having).
“But I believe that calling her vegan…” I think you are conflating two issues here. Walker is evidently not a vegan. But one can bring up this quote without declaring that Walker is a vegan.
This blog column itself is called “Animal Rights” yet it frequently showcases, or invokes as sources, people and organizations devoted not so much to a serious concept of animal rights as to be in a position of access to animal husbandry control; that, to my mind, is a bigger concern. Why make a tempest out of the frequent use of this quote?
It’s not parallel to the misquoting Lincoln by attributing a completely unattributable statement to the figure.
By the way, although Walker falls short of being vegan, there are a number of passages in the author’s own writing which are strong on the very issue you bring up. Look at the essay “Coming Apart” in YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD WOMAN DOWN. Although you could dismiss those too (as appearing in fictional essays) if you wanted to, the book is decidedly offered as an incisive political commentary.
There’s enough, when it’s put together, to see Walker as having considered these issues personally, seriously, and over a long period of time. Walker was also a board member for years of a group with the term “animal rights” in the name and surely didn’t take that lightly. So when looking for context, please don’t skimp, or you’re going to be vulnerable to the same criticism you’re making of others.
I’ve loved Alice Walker’s writing since discovering her in college about 25 years ago. Her work takes up at least two shelves in my home . . . and I think there is real value in the way she has discussed oppression in a shared context (female oppression, skin color based oppression, animal oppression; all are fed by a similar poisoned spring), particularly in her more recent work. The popular quote cited here is true to what Walker has expressed in many places in her writing, especially over the last decade or so.
That being said, there is always value in clarifying the facts, particularly in an age where people don’t bother to do so nearly often enough. If Alice Walker eats chicken, she’s not a vegetarian, never mind vegan. If people read she is a veggie, but also read elsewhere that she eats chicken, then they think we’re all a bunch of hypocrits. What’s the good in that? Why not just love her for writing w/out having to claim her, or others, for the animal rights side?
I recommend The Dreaded Comparison. It’s an amazing book. Then if you quote Walker from the introduction, you can give a plug for the book it was based on as well.
Thanks for doing the research, Doris. The organizations using this quote should thank you for doing their work for them rather than getting defensive. I agree that the quote out of context is really rather misleading.
So we should purchase Marjorie Spiegel’s book and not Alice Walker’s book.
Didn’t Marjorie Spiegel speak up about this many years ago?
It’s odd that she wasn’t credited much earlier for being the original SOURCE of the note.
Meanwhile, Alice Walker SHOULD go vegan. She was credited with it long ago; she ought not to merely hide behind personal choice and cultural wrongs.
“That Dreaded Comparison” has been given some tough times by those who do NOT want to acknowledge the very real parallels in oppressing different groups that come from common sources.
We also have ‘identification WITH the aggressor’ which is perceived as being a way to liberate oneself: perhaps it’s just that raw human ‘will to power’ and oppression is one more quality to bemoan in homo sapiens.
In a blog post a few weeks after the comment about eating chicken, she writes: ” She said to me as I was extolling your virtues: Do you still eat chickens? And I said to her, truthfully: Yes, about ten of them a year, some years; other years I might eat none; but I brush my teeth and gargle before coming down to hang out with mine. She laughed, but I have felt the seriousness of the question. So on this pilgrimage, as I’ve visited Gandhi’s cremation site, and then the place where he was martyred, and while I was led around the grounds by his granddaughter, Tara, whom I liked instantly, the way I liked you when we first met, I’ve determined not to eat the flesh of any creature, and certainly not chicken.”
(from http://www.alicewalkerblog.com/2009/12/mommy-is-not-pure.html)
I don’t find it misleading, unless people are looking for a quote to come with a lot of labels and allow people to make all encompassing assumptions about the person speaking. That she said it is true. I also believe she meant it, in her way. That she didn’t even see how far her own statement could (and probably should) be taken is an example of a very human disconnect that I’d wager every single human on the planet is more than capable of exemplifying. Even us vegans, on some topic or other.
In any case, its clear that shortly after that statement, she made a conscious decision to not eat the flesh of any animal.
Thank you, TG! I will correct the blog.
My thanks to you for doing the research, clarification, correct contexting and precise attribution is a pretty good policy to follow. Marjorie Speigel should get the credit for prompting Alice Walker to speak as she did.
Alice Walker is a fraud. Period. Animal rights people and groups do not condone killing sentient beings no matter how they are raised. How disgusting that she saw her own, private chicken as NOT food, but the hell with all the unnamed ones out there. There are fair game for killing, confining, mutilating, etc.! Alice Walker, I think does more to confuse people about animal rights than most people who do not give a damn. Damn her!
Unfortunately, Alice Walker can make a quote like that and not be a vegan. Actually, she has shown her support for the anti-vegan ultimate exercise in logical fallacies, otherwise known as The Vegetarian Myth
Maynard and Linda:
“Damn her?” I can’t believe what I’m reading here. Demands made of people who we’ve never met to change their personal dietary habits, in this highly condescending or condemning tone, are one of the most counterproductive ways to promote vegetarianism and/or veganism.
We live in an entire world organized around speciesism and carnism that is slow to change and we all don’t have equal control over this world. This means that people are going to be inhabiting contradictory frames of mind and habits.
The way to combat this, I think, rather than just telling people “go vegan” or shaming them, is to think of vegetarianism and veganism like karate, ie. understanding that it’s a discipline like any other diet or any other practice. That’s why most people who “go vegan” actually go vegetarian for awhile until veganism looks less daunting. Empirical research shows that most people who suddenly “go vegan” don’t stick with it. You have to look after yourself before you can do anything. Who knows, maybe Walker’s “doing it wrong” and she has cravings, so she has to backtrack.
I think Alice Walker’s words are unforgettable and stunning. I was highly skeptical of the Dreaded Comparison until I read her introduction. Here is a person who has lived painful memories of slavery passed down through her forebears (that I as a white person while never experience) and she endorses the link between speciesism and racism. Seeing that many people can’t even do that in theory, and avail themselves of excuses not to even entertain the question, I think we should be supportive.
To be less than grateful for this, to me, makes “animal rights” philosophy, vegetarianism, and veganism a very privileged position.
Interesting that “So I thought I Would Just Go On Like This Forever” has been removed from her blog.”