According to Black Youth Project, "The Ko sisters argue animality is a Eurocentric concept that has contributed to the oppression of any group that deviates from the white supremacist ideal of being—white Homo sapiens. Rather, the people he encountered saw themselves in a deep relationship with the surrounding plants, animals, bodies of water and so on.

So much to dig into and some exciting ideas for how the mainstream animal rights movement can adapt to be more effective, inclusive and important.Thanks to these brilliant women of color, I’ve gained a new understanding of systems of oppression and feel less alone in the fight for social justice. She or he will be richly rewarded, however, because APHRO-ISM is challenging, provocative, infuriating, funny, deeply felt, and often revelatory.

The Ko sisters are simply on a much higher intellectual plane than I, and as such I really struggled with some of the concepts discussed in the book. Rather than acting as though that perspective doesn't exist, we should immerse ourselves in it and allow ourselves to be confronted. Let's use our erasure from this rotten-to-the-core Western notion of humanity to build up a different “new world,” one that is not defined in terms of dichotomies or hierarchies or emotional death—but centered on love: one in which we accept ambiguity and difference, grounded in an expansive, limitless “we.The idea that humans and animals have been framed by white men to be on different ends of a spectrum with white men being considered what it means to be human and "minoritized" people being viewed towards the animal end of the spectrum. Aphro-ism is a groundbreaking suite of original essays on the entanglements of race, empire, gender, and species. You are an enemy to true diversity if your only concern is to recruit black and brown bodies instead of black and brown ideas.

Making comparisons between the physical treatment of nonwhite humans and nonhuman animals - saying things like “black people are treated like animals” disregards the fact that these oppressions are not similar but interconnected.Over the last few years the discussion has entered mainstream vegan spaces - is it okay to compare factory farming to the Holocaust? Everyone should read this to better understand how racism and speciesism not only intersect, but are two outcomes of the same white supremacy.

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. Having said that, it was still such a great read, and mind-blowing how everything you think you know about anti-racism and veganism is almost certainly through a Eurocentric lens. Puts forth better theoretical framework for approaching animal rights framework than the prevailing one based in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. It feels like an invitation into their conversation, dialogue, and inquiry and I am SO glad that they invited us in. There is a deconstruction of the phrase “We are all animals” but I could not explain to you why that phrase is or isn’t helpful.It deconstructs Eurocentric views (aka white supremacy + colonialism) in relationship to its founding roots in animality. White men should be against white supremacy as well—just as a white person should be against racism or a man against sexism. Ko believes that " Racism uses animality as a vehicle to oppress any being that is not considered ‘human. The book is an extensive adaptation of blogs that the sisters wrote between 2015 and 2016 and we kept the vernacular, slightly demotic tone.