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Question: Is speciesism analogous to racism?

Today when one views an image of a black man in stocks, most people will cringe and think “Oh, that’s awful. What were we thinking?” Or think of the images you’ve seen of a thousand dead Jews piled on top of each other. It seems surreal to think that only happened a few decades ago.

John Mill agrees,


It often happens that the universal belief of one age, a belief from which no one was free or could be free without an extraordinary effort of genius or courage, becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity that the only difficulty is to imagine how such an idea could ever have appeared credible.
(Mill, 1990: 33)


Since then, it seems that we as humans have learned the value of the human life; it’s not our choice to do what we want with someone else because we “believe” our race to be of higher value. It took years of human pain and suffering and the persistent cries of many, but it seems we have finally come to the realization that no human on this earth is above the rights of another human.

As Peter Singer states, “If we have learned anything from the liberation movements, we should have learnt how difficult it is to be aware of latent prejudice in our attitudes to particular groups until this prejudice is forcefully pointed out” (Singer, 2001:26).

We know now that we were blind to the racism. We can look at these pictures of oppressed humans and know that it was/is wrong, even though a few years ago the “master race” could justify those actions. But we, as a species, can view images of animals used for meat, clothing and experimentation and continue to justify those actions as beneficial to humans. How long will it take this time?



Mill, John Stuart and Marjorie Spiegel "Blinded By the Light,” The Animals' Voice Magazine 3, no. 1, 33.

Singer, Peter “All Animals Are Equal” Environmental Philosophy, eds. Michael Zimmerman Et. Al., 3rd Ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001).