“They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” former President Trump claimed at the first presidential debate
A few lines stood out from the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump last night — one of them being former President Trump’s bizarre proclamation that: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
The former president was, of course, perpetuating a talking point that has been making the rounds among top Republicans this week: that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating cats and dogs. This is despite the fact that Springfield police have received “no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten,” according to the Springfield News-Sun. (The source for the misinformation appears to be a viral post from a local Facebook group that claimed that a person who had lost their cat found it “hanging from a branch at a Haitian neighbor’s home being carved up to be eaten.”) Debate moderator David Muir fact-checked Trump on this point, presenting the city manager’s statement that this was not in fact happening, to which the presidential candidate replied: “The people on television say ‘my dog was taken and used for food.’”
Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator J.D. Vance, shared similar sentiments on X on Monday: “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” The X accounts of both Texas Senator Ted Cruz and the Republican House Judiciary Committee have also shared related racist sentiments and memes about Republicans protecting cats.
In June, the Biden administration extended the temporary protected status of up to 309,000 migrants from Haiti who are now living in the United States. Following these protections, Republicans have lobbed criticisms at the Haitian immigrant community, reinforcing the GOP’s practice of reducing the lives of immigrant communities to memes and racist political jargon to fuel the party’s policy platform. The Republican politicians circulating the cat-eating myth have essentially turned the highly memed line from the show Community — “I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty” — into a campaign talking point.
With this rhetoric, the Republican party is picking from the most predictable xenophobic playbook and invoking time-worn fear mongering: That immigrants “eat pets” is meant to signify their backwardness, danger, and inferiority; in turn, it then justifies the Republican party’s efforts to curtail immigration. For those perpetuating this false narrative, the truth has taken a back seat to the intended message: that immigrants are not “like us” and therefore pose a threat to hard-won American lives. The dichotomy being created is of white “Americans” with household pets like Fluffy and Fido as members of the family, and immigrants as trouncing on that which is held dear.
Immigrants have consistently been subject to this racist food rhetoric throughout American history. In 1883, the New York Times posed the question: “Do the Chinese eat rats?” It continued: “A large portion of the community believe implicitly that Chinamen love rats as Western people love poultry.” The piece in question discussed a slander suit in which a New York City doctor claimed “Chinamen” in New York City had “killed and cooked rats and cats in the yard” — a claim that the Chinese grocery owner in question vehemently denied.
Myths around immigrants and food have persisted in the American political canon. As Soleil Ho writes in the 2018 Taste piece “Do You Eat Dog?,” while some Asian cultures have indeed eaten dogs, it is an outlier of a practice, with most people seeing dogs in a pet-like way. Racist, antiquated narratives hold an outsized shadow over East and Southeast Asian communities in the West, with Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino people often subjected to allegations of eating dogs.
These racist tropes stem, in part, from the Chinese Exclusion Act, which curtailed entry of Chinese workers to the U.S. Passed in 1882, it’s considered a major turning point in the U.S. transitioning from a country with an open immigration policy to one with more restrictions. Tales of Chinese people eating rats and cats and of Chinese restaurants serving “mystery meat” — a bogeyman that pervades — represented growing skepticism about the country’s new additions. As with the rhetoric of immigrants “stealing” jobs today, the Chinese Exclusion Act was largely motivated by economic concerns about the influx of Chinese laborers taking jobs away from American workers.
In a chapter on dog meat in the book Dubious Gastronomy, Robert Ji-Song Ku writes about the cultural deployment of disgust: “The foods — and the people who eat them — we mutually find disgusting can be the source of a social bond that distinguishes the in-group (or our group) from the out group (or their group), a marker for not only preserving ethnic, racial, and class boundaries, but also creating new ones.” This is the political function of accusing immigrants of eating cats, dogs, rats, and whatever else a “good American” sees as beyond the pale.
Food has often been weaponized in this way. Just recall how Wuhan’s wet markets were discussed during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when eating bats was often invoked as the cause for the outbreak; it’s a way to point blame and suggest that certain lives — lives of immigrants and people of color around the world — were worth less than others.
When the Igorot people from the Philippines were exhibited at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, their ritual practice of eating dogs — which was a rare event in the Philippines — was emphasized and staged for visitors who saw the Igorots akin to zoo animals. The display’s design was as gawking as it was strategic. By portraying the Igorots as backwards savages, it also put forth the United States as a civilizing force and its people as civilized by comparison. This ideology echoed the precedent set by William Howard Taft, who classified Filipinos as the U.S.’s “little brown brother” during his time as Governor-General of the Philippines, which had just become a U.S. colony.
This ideology also establishes an acrimonious relationship in which immigrants and other countries are, at best, buffoons in need of constant resources and education from the U.S., and, at worst, a dangerous risk to the American way of life.
The experience of Haitian asylum seekers across North and South America has already been dehumanizing. In June 2023, Amnesty International called on Americas to end “anti-Black discrimination, including race-based torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, against Haitian people seeking safety and international protection.” In a 2021 PBS report about racist policies toward Haitian migrants, Nicole Phillips, legal director for the Haitian Bridge Alliance, described a “stigma against Haitians” dating back to the early 1800s, when enslaved Haitian people revolted against France. As NPR has reported, the instability from which many of these people are now seeking asylum has direct ties to the U.S. occupation of Haiti and overthrow of its elected officials.
Food is so mundane and that is exactly its power. What the Republicans are suggesting is: If they don’t eat like us, then how can we trust them? This rhetoric only works to dehumanize immigrants — who are always Black, Brown, or Asian — even further and to ultimately position white Americans as superior, their lifestyles as the ones worth protecting. We’ve heard it all before; the Republicans think we’ll fall for it again.
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