Vegans of color: managing visible and invisible stigmas

Associating veganism with whiteness and privilege is not only wrong, it marks and marginalizes vegans of color in the vegan movement and makes veganism unappealing to people of color. This qualitative study employs Goffman’s (1953) theories to explain how vegans of color experience both visible and invisible stigma from mainstream vegan movements and from their ethnic communities. I emphasize three reasons why my participants believe people of color are resistant to veganism: it is linked with whiteness, affiliated with privilege, and deemed incompatible with ethnicity. My participants engage in a process of differentiation and normalization from white veganism to destigmatize veganism to communities of color.