East and Southeast Asian Americans may wince at the recent accusations of immigrants eating dogs, cats and pets. There are dog markets in Asia and dog meet is consumed in South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, however, sometimes that gives rumors a lift that is amplified by yellow peril hysteria.
Such as the case with a Laotian-Thai restaurant in California.
“Dogeaters” is both the name of a play and a book by Jessica Hagedom. The book is about the Philippines in the 1950s and was published in 1990. Dogeaters is a derogatory term for Filipinos and California has a history of violence toward Filipinos, even if they were US Nationals and that included lynchings. Filipinos and Filipino Americans are an important part of Asian American and US history, a part of history that is often ignored.
The term “dogeaters” has been used to stoke anti-Asian actions. That’s why Asian Americans, in a time of heightened anti-Asian sentiment, should take note of former President Donald Trump’s 10 September 2024 remark about immigration:
Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War 3, just to go into another subject. What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.
Full transcript of the Harris-Trump Presidential Debate (ABC News)
Proof of this claim comes in the form of two photos, neither of which were from Springfield, Ohio.
One was about a woman who is accused of animal cruelty in Canton, Ohio. The woman is Black, but there is no proof that she is Haitian.
The Associated Press reported about both incidents, but noted that the woman, 27-year-old Alexis Ferrell, is not Haitian.
She was born in Ohio and graduated from Canton’s McKinley High School in 2015, according to public records and newspaper reports. Court records show she has been in and out of trouble with the law since at least 2017.
- Trump Falsely Accuses Immigrants in Ohio of Abducting and Eating Pets
- Ohio Woman Arrested after Eating Cat: Canton Police Release Bodycam Footage from Incident
The photo that fueled the accusation is of a Black man and a goose, but little more is known about the subject except the photographer took the photo from a bus in Columbus, Ohio.
The photographer first posted the photo on Reddit.
The photo was used to illustrate claims that Haitians were killing birds:
Many people claiming on social media that Haitians are killing pets or birds in Springfield have posted a particular picture of a Black man in a blue shirt and khaki pants carrying a goose down a city street. The circumstances of that situation are not clear. But that picture has now been verified as being taken at the intersection of Cleveland Avenue and Northwold Road in Columbus, not Springfield.
The photos has been used along side a video (27 August 2024) of an African American resident of the City of Springfield (at 3:15:50) making a claim about migrants killing ducks from a pond.
The New York Post reported that in Springfield, “Local cops and officials denied that anyone has reported pets being taken for food — but residents have previously claimed that ducks and other fowl were being eaten.”
So the Springfield issues has nothing to do with pets. The ducks and geese are wildlife. The issue in Canton is about one woman who is not Haitian and a cat. None of these support Trump’s dog eating claim.
- The Stereotype of Immigrants Eating Dogs and Cats Is Storied –and Vitriolic as ever (NPR, 11 September 2024)
- Haitian Immigrants Eating Pets (BBC)
- Migrants Eating Wildlife Isn’t Actually a New Thing, Despite What Media Claims (The National Pulse, 10 September 2024)
The NPR article notes:
Fear and disgust over immigrant foods has a long history in America. Italians were once upon a time labeled as “garlic eaters”. Writer Gustavo Arellano has written about how the staple diet of beans led to a slur against Mexicans. The stereotype of the immigrant who eats cats and dogs is also storied, often lobbed against Asian Americans.
“The dog-eating stereotype has historically been utilized to belittle Asians and Asian immigrants,” writes Jean Rachel Bahk in the Inlandia literary journal. “I was incessantly pestered about whether the meat in the side dishes I brought for lunch was dog meat” she recalls about her own childhood.
The right-wing publication, The National Pulse, notes that Eastern European migrants in the UK, captured and ate swans.There is a case in New York in 2015 from the Washington Free Beacon of immigrants from Myanmar eating a swan. The National Pulse also notes that Breitbart reported an incident cited in Il Giornale of Tunisian migrants slaughtering sheep. The National Pulse also reports on animal cruelty in “immigrant-dense areas” including hedgehogs, hares, cats and swans.
However, swans and sheep are not family pets. It isn’t clear of the hedgehogs or hares were wild or pets. And except for the incident in New York in 2015, none of these problems were in the US.
The LA Times did report that Cambodian refugees in California killed a dog for food in Long Beach. That was in 1989.
- Culture Class or Animal Cruelty? (13 March 1989)
- Judge Clears Cambodians Who Killed Dog for Food (15 March 1989)
- Dog-Eating Divides West Coast (8 August 2021)
More interesting, is the reporter who covered the saga, writing about another dog in the Philippines.
There are issues of cultural differences, but in the case of the Harris-Trump presidential debates, there was no evidence of pets such as cats and dogs were being eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. The woman be held up as an example was neither an immigrant nor in Springfield. Even less is known about the Columbus, Ohio man photographed with a goose, but again, a goose is not a cat or a dog. In building up a case against immigrants, people against immigration have spread faulty and misleading information. I don’t know how the Haitians in Springfield are being treated as a result of these rumors, but in California, we have a story from this year about how false accusations adversely affected not only a business, but a family. As citizens of the state of California and as citizens of this country, that should be enough to give us pause before spreading unsubstantiated accusations.
Addendum (14 September 2024)
This comes under why one needs to question testimony without verification. According to NBC News, the woman whose Facebook post became part of the claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, was filled with regret.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday….
Lee said she never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate.
“I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”
Yet her post became part of anti-immigrant rhetoric on a national level.
According to NewsGuardRealityCheck.com:
NewsGuard identified and tracked down the two people central to the claim: Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who wrote the original Facebook post, and Kimberly Newton, the neighbor who had provided her with a third-hand account of the rumor, making Lee’s social media post a fourth-hand account: the alleged acquaintance/cat owner; Newton’s friend; Newton; and Lee, who posted it on Facebook.
In exclusive interviews, NewsGuard spoke both with Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker who has lived in Springfield for four years, and Newton, her neighbor and a 12-year resident of Springfield. The interviews reveal just how flimsy and unsubstantiated the rumor was from the beginning — based entirely on third hand hearsay. Yet it quickly gained traction and, remarkably, found its way to Trump’s lips on a national stage.
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor, Lee, the Facebook poster. Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.”
Age of the Geek 