(Beth Clifton collage)
Opportunistic use of phrases and imagery can come across as insensitive and insulting
MINNEAPOLIS, PHOENIX, NEW YORK CITY––“It is striking to me,” wrote Mike Troutman in sharing with friends his first-hand account of recent events in Minneapolis, “how three central challenges of our time––racist policing, COVID-19 and the climate crisis––all share the cry: ‘I can’t breathe.’”
Troutman might have added to the list one of the central challenges for animal advocacy. Animal advocates around the world almost overnight co-opted the phrase “I can’t breathe,” just as many animal advocates earlier turned the phrase “Black lives matter” into “Black dogs matter,” and other phrases of similar meaning, even before there was an organization called Black Lives Matter.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Insensitivity
In either instance, few people concerned about either animal rights or human rights would disagree that the specific causes in which animal advocates have used “I can’t breathe” and “Black lives matter” are worth raising hell about, from forcing animals to inhale tobacco smoke and gassing animals by way of “euthanasia”, to trying to rehome more hard-to-place black dogs and cats.
The insensitivity of co-opting phrases used by people fighting for their lives, however, should not elude any caring person, particularly when those phrases belonged originally to people with a history of being dehumanized, described as animals, and often treated worse than dogs and cats, sometimes worse than livestock.
George Floyd, 46, of Minneapolis, suffocated on May 25, 2020 by police officer Derek Chauvin, had not even been buried when the New Zealand Anti-Rodeo Coalition posted to Facebook an image of a black calf being roped, headlined “I can’t breathe,” with the explanatory words, “This poor boy was strangled twice.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“We have to take it to the highest level”
Anyone anywhere aware enough of the George Floyd killing to reference “I can’t breathe” should also be aware of the historically frequent racist use of the word “boy” to belittle black men.
Responded the New Zealand Anti-Rodeo Coalition to criticism, “If anything good is to come from these evils, then we have to take it to the highest level in such a way that will get their attention and get the wheels in motion to engage change.”
Many animal advocates might accept that argument, but to humans trying to escape being perceived and treated like a sub-human species, it can come across much like a metaphorical knee to the back of the neck; as just another way of holding black people down by putting them on the same level as animals.
Ingrid Newkirk & friends. (Beth Clifton collage)
Rats, pigs, dogs, boys, & refuse
Of course, as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder Ingrid Newkirk famously put it, “In their capacity to suffer pain, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”
All, as Newkirk pointed out, have essentially the same central nervous system, and for that reason have essentially the same moral claim, under the Golden Rule, that one should do to others as one would be done by, to not be tortured.
As Newkirk also said, “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.”
And neither are other people, including those whose ancestors were bought and sold at auction like livestock.
In our capacity to suffer humiliation and recognize oppression, meanwhile, humans are very different from animals. A rat or a pig or a dog may be delighted to eat refuse, for instance, if the refuse is easily accessed and there is enough of it.
A human will be aware that it is refuse, and that a person made to subsist on refuse is being relegated to the status of a rat, pig, or dog, none of whom are accorded human rights.
Amy Blumenshine & Mike Troutman
Two degrees of separation
Continued Troutman, “We live just six blocks from where George Floyd was murdered by police on Memorial Day. One of my friends from church worked at the Cup Foods convenience store,” where Floyd allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, “and knew Mr. Floyd as a customer. So not only do I live near the murder scene, but I am in a close two degrees of separation from him in my friend network.”
Troutman and his wife of 42 years, Amy Blumenshine, are both lifelong activists on behalf of the environment, against hunger, and for peace and social justice.
Troutman and Blumenshine attended a memorial service for Floyd, who was held down by two other police officers as Chauvin asphyxiated him. Another police officer kept bystanders from intervening.
(Beth Clifton collage)
What if George Floyd had been a Labrador retriever?
“A local pastor noted that she was sure that if Officer Chauvin had had his foot choking the life out of a black Labrador retriever for over eight minutes, instead of a black man, one of the other officers would have intervened,” Troutman wrote.
American SPCA founder Henry Bergh and attorney Elbridge T. Gerry in 1877 famously invoked animal protection law to rescue an abused child named Mary Ellen Wilson, with the words that if the child had no protection under the law as a human being, she could at least be protected to the same extent as an animal.
The court agreed. If an animal must not be abused or terrorized, a child must not be abused or terrorized either.
Chauvin is now charged with second degree murder.
None of the three other police officers on the scene, all now charged as accessories to second degree murder, recognized even the obligation to respond to Floyd as a suffering animal, if not as a human only superficially differing from themselves.
Mickey the pit bull
Mickey the pit bullThis was scarcely a unique inversion of moral logic. Similar examples reach ANIMALS 24-7 almost every day, among which few have been more blatant than the six-year saga of Mickey the pit bull, still evolving in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mickey, who had reportedly killed a puppy several weeks earlier, on February 20, 2014 attacked four-year-old Kevin Vincente without warning or provocation. Mickey seized Kevin Vincente by the face and shook him despite the immediate intervention of Vincente’s mother and several other adults.
Under normal circumstances, Mickey would have been quarantined for ten days to ensure that he was not rabid, and would then have been euthanized, having twice demonstrated vicious behavior.
But, at urging of pit bull advocates around the world, Maricopa County sheriff Joseph Arpaio intervened to save Mickey.
Kevin Vincente and his mother at Kevin’s first grade graduation.
“Local racists loved it”
Summarized Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times, “The dog was white, the boy was brown. Local racists loved it.”
Eventually Arpaio donated $2,500 and an assortment of toys to the 4-year-old victim, but only after the victim and his mother were viciously maligned by Mickey defenders, who wrongly alleged that the victim had taken a bone from the chained pit bull (no bone was found at the scene) and that the victim’s mother was not present.
Pit bull advocates donated many times more money to save Mickey than was donated to help Kevin Vincente, who is still undergoing plastic surgeries to try to restore him to normal appearance.
Arpaio meanwhile persuaded a judge to let him keep Mickey at one of the Maricopa County jail animal shelters, after defanging and castration, and set up a web camera to allow Mickey fans to monitor his care.
Eventually Mickey, now elderly as pit bulls go, developed terminal cancer. His advocates petitioned for him to be released from the jail animal shelter.
On June 12, 2020, attorney John Schill announced, “The aggressive dog petition against Mickey has been dismissed by court order. Mickey is no longer considered vicious! Mickey no longer has any restrictions placed on him that a normal dog would not have!”
Kevin Vincente, however, continues to serve a life sentence to disfigurement and––along with his mother––ongoing online abuse from Mickey fans.
Joe Arpaio & Mickey
(Beth Clifton collage)
Joe Arpaio
Arpaio, now 88, has been an animal advocacy celebrity and occasional keynote speaker at animal advocacy conferences since 1999, when he converted a former jail into a shelter for animals seized from suspects in cruelty cases and the pets of victims of domestic violence who sought shelters in facilities that did not accept pets.
After that initiative won public approval, Arpaio in January 2005 reassigned four deputies and four civilian investigators to handle animal abuse cases full-time, and authorized the county Animal Cruelty Prevention Unit to immediately arrest and jail suspects.
Arpaio later in 2005 converted part of another jail into an overflow shelter for dogs and cats who might otherwise have been killed due to short space at the at overcrowded county animal shelters.
These and many other well-publicized pro-animal actions and statements burnished Arpaio’s reputation, even as he racked up a record of police misconduct that the U.S. Department of Justice eventually identified as part of the most blatant pattern of racial profiling in U.S. history.
On Arpaio’s record are multiple instances of abuse of power; misuse of funds; failure to investigate sex crimes, including against children; criminal negligence; abuse of suspects in custody; improper clearance of cases; destruction of records; unlawful enforcement of immigration laws; and election law violations.
None of this was any secret as Arpaio and Maricopa County lost at least 11 related lawsuits, while the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department was placed under Federal court supervision.
Mickey the pit bull.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Animal advocacy groups have yet to distance themselves
Yet Arpaio remained an animal advocacy celebrity even after his 2017 conviction for criminal contempt of court in continuing to detain Spanish-speaking people as suspected illegal immigrants, irrespective of any other evidence.
U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Arpaio two months later, but U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton did not vacate the conviction. Bolton ruled that while the pardon relieved Arpaio of the burden of punishment, it did not change the facts of his crime.
The Humane Society of the U.S., under former president Wayne Pacelle (2004-2018) especially lionized Arpaio. HSUS and Pacelle have yet to distance themselves from Arpaio.
Others who have yet to distance themselves persuasively from Arpaio include Steve Dale of PetWorld, the Best Friends Animal Society, the Helen Woodward Animal Center, and a legion of other animal advocates and organizations, especially those engaged in pit bull advocacy, who effusively and often praised Arpaio. Some continue to praise him.
What sort of message does this send to any person of color?
Christian Cooper
Christian Cooper
What does idolizing a racist––a criminally convicted racist, no less––tell persons of color who are themselves animal advocates, like Christian Cooper, 57, of the Lower East Side in New York City?
Reported Sarah Maslin Nir of The New York Times, “Christian Cooper began his Memorial Day like most of his May mornings, searching for Blackburnian warblers, scarlet tanagers and other songbirds that wing their way into Central Park.” Cooper bicycled three miles to the semi-wild section of the park, the Ramble, which is widely believed to be the best birding location in the city.
“Around the same time,” Nir wrote, “Amy Cooper, 40, who is not related to Christian Cooper, left her apartment on the Upper West Side with her dog, Henry, a blond cocker spaniel, whose romps around the city she chronicled on a dedicated Instagram account.
Amy Cooper
Just adopting a “rescue dog” does not make a person good
“Just before 8 a.m.,” Nir continued, “Christian Cooper was startled from his quiet birding by Amy Cooper, who was loudly calling after her dog, he said. He asked her to leash Henry, as the park rules required. She refused.
“They exchanged words,” Nir summarized, “and as he recorded on his phone, she threatened to report that “an African American man is threatening my life,” a false accusation. Then she called 911.”
As Amy Cooper demonstrated, one is not a good person simply because one adopts a “rescue dog.”
Neither is one a good person for doing something with good intentions that nonetheless hurts others through indifference to the greater consequences and implications of the action.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Bait & switch
Humane societies eager to rehome hard-to-place black dogs and cats have at least since 1996 published variations of an advertisement opening, in the most often cited form, “Single black female seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I’m a very good girl who loves to play.”
The telephone number of the humane society placing the ad follows.
Such bait-and-switch ads may have helped to save the lives of some black animals, though this is not actually documented.
But they have also helped to amplify and perpetuate stereotypes about black women.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
Those ads are far fewer now than they once were, but that they ever circulated at all should be a continuing embarrassment to a cause which has already long been conspicuous for failing to hire, train, and promote black leadership, even in overwhelmingly black communities.
(See A black-and-white issue that the humane community has yet to face.)
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When have humans been treated “worse than [farmed animals]”?
(“Livestock” is a disparaging term for farmed animals.)
“In our capacity to suffer humiliation and recognize oppression, meanwhile, humans are very different from animals.”
Humans ARE animals. Nonhuman animals also suffer humiliation, and they, too, can realize when they are being oppressed.
“A rat or a pig or a dog may be delighted to eat refuse, for instance, if the refuse is easily accessed and there is enough of it. A human will be aware that it is refuse, and that a person made to subsist on refuse is being relegated to the status of a rat, pig, or dog, none of whom are accorded human rights.”
There are humans who voluntarily and happily consume refuse (e.g., dumpster divers).
Humans who resort to consuming refuse may be glad to get it, and would not be “relegated to the status of a rat, pig, or dog.” They would still have human rights, whereas nonhuman animals have no legal rights.
“’A local pastor noted that she was sure that if Officer Chauvin had had his foot choking the life out of a black Labrador retriever for over eight minutes, instead of a black man, one of the other officers would have intervened,’ Troutman wrote.”
How could she be sure of it? Police brutality against nonhuman animals is all too common, including cruelty in front of other officers. See, for example: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-scene/matt-zapotosky/should-police-have-shot-parrot.html
Mary Finelli seems to be unaware that the routine handling of slaves during the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas involved abuses which would have been illegal in transporting animals within the U.S. since 1873, and have been illegal in international live animal transport for as long as commercial animal transport by ship and aircraft has been commonly practiced.
Death rates in transit far higher than the death rates in live sheep and cattle transport from Australia to the Middle East, for example, as appalling as those death rates are, were just business as usual for slavers––and the Middle Passage was only the beginning of the cruelties that the survivors would experience.
Mary Finelli also seems to overlook the difference in nuance between being treated like livestock, i.e. as objects like any inanimate merchandise except in being alive, and like “farmed animals,” which to most of the public still connotes the sort of care and attention to animal welfare that in popular myth was accorded to animals on old-fashioned family farms.
Little, meanwhile, could better illustrate myopia induced by “white privilege” than likening the voluntary practices of the relatively few “freegan” dumpster divers of today, most of whom could return to privileged white middle class society any time they want, to the scavenging induced by necessity, practiced by millions of impoverished people of color, both past and present, dwelling in shacks and makeshift tents around the outskirts of nearly every affluent city.
Finally, while instances of police unnecessarily shooting pets do occur, and often attract more public outrage than the typical instance of a police officer shooting a black person, ANIMALS 24-7 has since 2005 meticulously logged reports of police shooting dogs. Police officers have shot more dogs in recent years than a decade ago, but dogs by 2017 injured police officers more than 12 times as often as they had a decade earlier. Injuries to police officers inflicted by human suspects have not increased at even a remotely comparable rate.
(See When pit bulls charge: holding fire gets cops hurt 12 times more often).
Even at the somewhat increased rate of today, moreover, police in the 21st century have not shot even a fraction as many dogs as were routinely shot in rural areas lacking animal control services as recently as the early 1990s, when shooting free-roaming dogs on sight was standard practice not only for law enforcement, but also for property owners concerned that the dogs might chase and injure either owned animals or wildlife.
Thank you many times over for this much-needed article. The behavior of many animal advocates and animal groups is getting ridiculous and looking more and more regressive in the wake of current events.
I think a large part is because those animal advocates with the most money and media savvy to advertise their beliefs to the largest audience are also the most privileged. They don’t get that other people are simply struggling for their lives each day and may see the privileged’s memes and sloganeering in a far different light. Caring about animals is for everyone. You either want a compassionate world made up of everyone or a compassionate club made up of primarily white, young, upper-middle class/wealthy people. I prefer a compassionate world to a compassionate club. Stop turning anyone who doesn’t fit narrow parameters off and turning them away.
Thank you for putting “euthanasia” in quotation marks where you mention “gassing animals by way of ‘euthanasia.’” As you know, being gassed to death with CO2 is the opposite of euthanasia. It’s disheartening to see how some animal advocates have succumbed to using this false industry term to characterize horrible deaths, including mass-exterminations, inflicted on farmed animals and laboratory animals. We don’t characterize torturing human beings to death as “euthanizing” them. The debasement of this word, even within the animal advocacy community, suggests that our movement has yet to liberate itself from the legacy of speciesism.
It seems to me that the animal advocacy movement is sometimes more energized by needing to “prove” we are not racists than energized on behalf of animals. I support the Black Lives Matter movement. I am appalled by the brutality displayed by white police officers toward black people. I support the call for the most radical reforms of law enforcement. I do question, though, whether the animal advocacy community, per se, is racist at this point in our history.
Right now, our movement seems to be increasingly well represented by POC, LGBTQ people, and women in positions of leadership. Sadly for animals, the animal advocacy community is all they have to care about them and try to protect them from our species’ lack of moral accountability toward nonhuman lives. If U.S. law enforcement officers have immunity from accountability for their actions, this freedom is magnified to the nth degree in the behavior of our species toward the planet and its other-than-human inhabitants.
Though I happen to be a white male who has never pretended to ultra-sensitivity or “political correctness,” in 36 years of often attending and reporting about animal advocacy conferences, I have yet to attend even one at which some of the speakers did not deliver from the podium some of the most appalling blanket denunciations of “the Asians,” “the Chinese,” et al, that I have ever heard uttered in a public place, seldom even transiently qualified by acknowledgement that some Asian people in general and some Chinese people in specific have maintained pro-animal teachings and vegan or vegetarian food cultures for much longer than the entire recorded history of western civilization.
Beth, while attending animal advocacy conferences for a much shorter time, has been repeatedly shocked at the open, if unconsciously uttered racism she has heard from “leaders” who really ought to know better––and even more shocked that some of these “leaders” then received standing ovations.
Similar statements are also often uttered about “the Jews,” “the Spanish,” “the Mexicans,” “the Greeks,” Islamic people, etc., with scant recognition in most instances that any specific practices being denounced have close equivalents right here in the U.S., the most obvious difference being that Americans mostly conduct animal slaughter behind closed doors.
Animal advocacy conference speakers tend to be more cautious about what they say about black people, and indeed pay much lip service to “trying for years to appeal to black people and other people of color,” while consistently failing to do even the most elementary and obvious things to make it happen. ANIMALS 24-7 has for more than three decades often pointed out what some of those things are, beginning with actually practicing equal opportunity hiring.
Ironically, animal advocacy was thoroughly integrated more than 100 years ago, when most of American society was not. The examples of Richard Carroll, Frederick Rivers Barnwell, and others employed then by the American Humane Education Society should more than amply demonstrate what can be accomplished when genuine equal opportunity hiring is practiced. (See Four black leaders who built the humane movement.)
“Summarized” is an interesting term. It omits the quoted fact (from Christian Cooper himself) that he said (approximately), you do what you do, I’ll do what I do, and you won’t like what I do. Those words, as referenced by the good Mr. Cooper, could be heard as a threat.
Despite the above writing, where is the evidence that a dog ever picked a bite victim based on color?
Nice to know that Joe was an advocate for animals.
FWIW: “Single White Female” was a movie in 1992 starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh and the ad likely “appropriated” the phrase.
What Christian Cooper did was to toss Amy Cooper’s dog a treat. If that is a threat, every other person at every dog park is the bogey-man: an invention of paranoid fantasy.
A person ignorant of the history of “white dogs” trained to attack persons of color is just plain ignorant of the history of dog breeding and training. For details, see When dogs mauled children outside the White House.
Joe Arpaio, as ANIMALS 24-7 pointed out, has never been an advocate for animals more than an opportunist using gestures toward animal advocacy as cover for racist atrocities.
And it is telling that if the 1992 film “Single White Female” inspired the “Single Black Female” dog ads, the animal shelters placing those ads reversed the racial identity implied by the slogan.
Thank you for addressing several very serious and perhaps still very often misunderstood issues in this article. I truly believe (or want to believe) that a lot of well-intentioned people still just do not understand these points. Sharing to socials, in hope.