Question

Read the article by Peter Singer on racial discrimination: According to Singer, what makes the case of the baker in the racist town different from the case of the actor on blackface?

Answer 1

Speciesism, as Singer defines it, is “an attitude of bias against a being because of the species to which it “belongs” — in short, discrimination against nonhuman animals. “Humans show speciesism,” he explains, “when they give less weight to the interests of nonhuman animals than they give to the similar interests of human beings.”Singer does not think it is speciesist to think human life is more important than that of nonhuman animals in some instances. It is only speciesist to say human life is always more important.To support this distinction, Singer focuses on the specificities of particular situations. It is not speciesist, for example, to declare that monkeys should not teach physics, because monkeys lack the ability to do so.It is, however, speciesist to argue that monkeys should be used in medical experiments that are not absolutely necessary, simply because they are not human.

People influenced by Singer’s concept of speciesism often use it in a stronger sense — and deploy it less carefully than Singer himself does. The concept of speciesism is a cornerstone of the animal-rights movement, whose members tend to categorize it alongside (if not ahead of) forms of human oppression such as racism and sexism.

Those who count animal-rights activists or vegan evangelists among their Facebook friends will no doubt be familiar with this sort of framing: it often involves inflammatory memes juxtaposing images of factory-farmed chickens with images of slave ships or Nazi concentration camps. Israeli animal-rights activists also drew this parallel in a recent viral video, explicitly describing a truck full of chickens as “just like what my grandparents experienced during the Holocaust.”The recent illegal killing of Cecil the Lion has also brought this dynamic to light. Author Roxane tweeted her thoughts on the hypocrisy of white Americans who were outraged about the lion but expressed no concern for ongoing police murders of African Americans, writing: “I’m personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so that if I get shot, people will care.”Bixexual was subsequently inundated with hundreds of messages from incensed animal-rights activists, who insisted that “animal lives matter” and accused her of speciesism. The next day, the hashtag #AllLionsMatter was trending on Twitter.Singer thinks human consciousness has advanced with regard to racism, contending that, while racism still exists, it is widely condemned, and that where it does persist it can be explained by people’s individual attitudes. After significant prodding by Yancy, Singer concedes that such attitudes are often reinforced by some institutions in society, but is unwilling to specify which ones. Instead he conjectures that “it would take detailed evidence and analysis to demonstrate that each of these sectors, and each of its divisions and subdivisions, involves or expresses racist practices.”