To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I point this out because I could see excerpts taken out of context that would make the book seem like a chore, but I never felt overwhelmed with talk about decolonizing one's diet in a white supremacist patriarchal society. She is currently working on a book exploring Wittgensteinian "forms of life" defenses of animal use, taking into account the racialization of the animal. Aph and Syl have created a brilliant framework through which we can integrate all aspects of anti-oppression work.

Rather than acting as though that perspective doesn't exist, we should immerse ourselves in it and allow ourselves to be confronted. Aphro-ism is helping countless young, hungry critical thinkers navigate through a world of ‘isms,’ make sense of endless contradictions, and come out the other side as more well-equipped, effective, woke activists.While we've been helping white people clean up their intellectual homes for free, ours have begun collecting dust. The phrase "we are all animals" seems to be the result of trying to "de-glamorize" the human for the sake of elevating the animals. I have personally seen this extensively in discussions on gender over the years, where instead of a willingness to discuss viewpoints, the premise of structural inequality—rather than targeted inequality—is dismissed at its core. I feel strongly that, provided the speech is not damaging or hateful, you don’t have to agree with everyone something says to consider it and to give different views the chance to impact yours.

Many of the arguments made against academia and critical theory include the reality that some people are trying to tangibly survive while academics sit writing think pieces. Society has a very vivid idea of what a "human" is, and as such it can justify anything "below" that as an "animal". Yet a refusal to back down from the conversation permeates these lovely, thoughtful essays by Aph and Syl Ko. The Ko sister's work challenged me deeply and aided me--encouraged me to reflect (which they promote as a form of activism) as well as inspired me to action. At the end of chapter 11 Syl says “to think in that way is to participate in racial thinking, the very kind of thinking this project intends to dissolve” but at another point in the point Aph or Syl said they were against post-racial messaging.

For that reason, they argue trying to dismantle the hierarchy that lets racism flourish without addressing speciesism will always be an incomplete task. If you have any interest at all in a discussion on race, species, power structure, and how they might be connected, I encourage you to read these essays. However, that does not mean that I do not have to consider the interests of the random person nor can I absolve my duties to them only on the grounds that they are not my family member. Though I've read much on the topics of Black liberation and social justice, feminism, and animal rights at this point, this book completely reframed a lot of what I thought I knew about those topics. Saying “Black people experience racism and, therefore, are treated like animals” is redundant because racism is already entangled with speciesism.