Speculations on Haitian Cuisine

My Deep-ish Dive into America’s Hottest Rumor

I’ve been researching some information that has consumed social media this week, and last night, while reading a mainstream newspaper, I found an article titled, Refugees accused of eating dogs, cats. Here are a couple of quotes: “Authorities have received more than a dozen complaints in recent months from people who claim they have witnessed thefts or seen pets skinned and prepared for food.” And later, “Alvin Edgeman said he found more than a dozen ‘dressed out’ dog carcasses in streets surrounding a public housing project this summer and fall when he worked for the city dog pound. ‘The dogs had been completely skinned out and the meat removed just like you’d see done with a cow or a pig.’ he said. ‘All that was left was the hide and the head, just tossed in the street.’”

Reading these words, you might be encouraged to find some validity in recent rumors. Or perhaps you read this and are appalled that a daily paper has given any credence to such malignant lies. However you view these words, you have undoubtedly guessed that the paper comes from or near Springfield, Ohio and refers to their Haitian population.

Your guess would be wrong

The article I have quoted here is from the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. It appeared on November 16, 1979. The refugees to which the article refers are Southeast Asian, primarily Vietnamese, and if you take note of the date of the article, you can guess what they were taking refuge from. Hint: agonizingly long war featured in major motion pictures Platoon, and Apocalypse Now.

When I first heard the rumor of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio, I thought Ugh. Here we go again, another page in America’s long list of baseless accusations against an immigrant population, painting them as lawless filthy savages to justify hatred. I was reminded of a line from a slam poem by author Bao Phi from the early 2000s, where he embodies a litany of Asian stereotypes in response to Senator McCain’s claim to hate gooks but not all Asians. The poem crescendo’s when Bao yells, “I ate your motherfucking cat.”

I feel a need to pause here and point out that Bao Phi did not actually eat Senator John McCain’s cat, because there’s a strong chance that some of you might believe it, and perhaps consider this to be a confession. It wasn’t. There is not even any evidence that Senator McCain owned a cat.

Rather, I’ve referenced this line to point out that the rumor isn’t original. It was given credence in 2000, in 1979, and on and on back to the 1800s, when newspaper columns and cartoons across the country accused Chinese immigrants of eating rats. The Chinese were the first immigrant group to be restricted, actually completely banned from US citizenship. You may wonder what made them different than the thousands of people entering this vast country to work and homestead and dig for gold and raise their families. It’s because they just had too much melanin. For those of you cat butchery conspiracy theorists, that means they weren’t white. Other non-white people weren’t banned because they were either dragged here against their will and considered property, regrettably absorbed into the US population from Mexico with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, or they already lived here long before anyone else and couldn’t be kicked out, so they were murdered instead. So the Chinese took the legislative brunt of America’s blossoming xenophobia and fully developed racism, justified by claims that they were filthy and disease-ridden, they’d pollute our way of life with their weird ways, and also they ate rats. Yuck.

Here we are two centuries later talking about eating cats yet again. It’s ridiculous. Like a group of people seeking permanent asylum here would rove the neighborhood butchering their neighbors’ pets. It would just seem counterproductive to their desire to stay. And we’re talking Haiti. Things aren’t great there. Violent gangs control major cities and ports, the government is in tatters, over half the population lives in poverty, and they’ve been hit with an endless string of natural disasters including a 7.2 magnitude (a.k.a really really big) earthquake last year. Things are so bad that they’ve received temporary protected status as immigrants in the US. I assure you, considering all the rapes and murders and kidnappings, the floods, hurricanes, and landslides, the poverty and famine, they do not want to fuck this up regardless of what they’re used to eating back home, which I’m actually betting isn’t cats.

Once I’d learned of the rumor, I saw it repeated over the past few days in the form of ridicule; scathing articles, dozens of funny memes, celebrity tweets. Most of my friends are writers, artists, and people who live in metropolitan areas, so the pet-eating was almost universally dismissed. But what surprised me were the comments. Almost every pet-eating post included a comment from someone who believed it. They’d heard reports. They’d seen Youtube videos of town hall meetings. It’s true they said. They’re cutting the heads off geese and ducks and eating cats. It’s been proven.

There were so many of them that I ended up searching the internet myself, not to see if it was actually true, because no it isn’t. But rather to see these alleged locals at their town hall meetings making their spurious claims. I didn’t watch much, because really, ugh. But I did find a 25-ish minute video where a guy went to Springfield to interview people about the situation. There weren’t any eye witnesses to pet murder. There were a lot of Haitians laughing at the idea, and a lot of poor white people complaining that the Haitians got more government assistance than they got, drove up the rent, and filled their trash cans too full.

And there were racists. A bedraggled man, a walking caricature with a pot belly, a filthy cut off t-shirt, and three teeth in his head screamed “sand n***ers” at actual human beings nearby. This is weird, because I was of the impression that term refers to people of Middle Eastern descent, but I suppose he has no idea where Haiti is anyway. There was a woman who claimed the Haitians had been given limitless grocery cards while she couldn’t get any government assistance. Then she confirmed the pet-eating rumor. Her mother had seen a Facebook post about it. I guess all the free groceries in the world can’t hold these people back from their cat-eating ways.

The parallels between the residents of Springfield and those of 1979 St. Paul are undeniable; poor people see a large influx of refugees move into their neighborhood. Their schools, hospitals, and housing supply are ill equipped for this new population growth and are pushed to the limit. They blame their new neighbors. Then someone lights a hateful match and the community pounces on the opportunity to portray these outsiders as not even human. The governor of Ohio has now pledged financial assistance to Springfield, acknowledging the burden that 15,000 new people in just 4 years has put on a city of 59,000.

But I’m like too little too late, dude. They’ve already busted out the pet eating thing. They waited so long that it has gone national. People all over the country are echoing the pet snacking claims. People actually believe it. I’m not talking about Donald Trump. Whatever. That guy just wants you to be mad. It doesn’t matter what you’re mad about. Immigrants eating dogs? That works. As long as poor people hate poor people, they don’t pay attention to what rich people are doing.

So who started the latest incarnation of this tired old rumor? I found my answer in a very interesting article on Medium. In it the author introduces a neo-Nazi hate group called Blood Tribe that has been terrorizing people of color, immigrants, and Pride festivals for the past 4 years. They have a strong presence in Ohio, and their second in command, Drake Berentz, who goes by the classy and massively subtle name “Nate Higgers” attended a Springfield Commissioners meeting on August 7th to rail against immigrants. There’s that town hall meeting everyone’s talking about. Spoiler alert, Drake Berentz does not live in Springfield. Meanwhile, his fellow Blood Tribers infiltrated the city spreading that juicy rumor, which was picked up by our presidential candidates, who will pounce on anything that makes immigrants look bad, then regurgitated by their loyal followers and here we are.

Food based slurs against immigrant populations are sprinkled throughout American history. We have the garlic eaters from Italy, the potato eaters from Ireland, the beaners from Mexico, etc. But the ones about eating vermin and people’s pets are particularly damaging. They separate us from these people more viscerally, because they are made to look subhuman and monstrous. They fuel a particularly violent kind of hatred. So when you’re considering sharing that funny meme marking you safe from having your pets eaten or showing Kamala Harris in a kitchen, smiling over a cat curled up in a baking dish, consider this.

Every time this rumor is repeated, even in jest, it prompts another person to defend it, to find ways to prove it to be true, to spread their newfound evidence to others who are also looking for justification. Every time you remind the public that this vile accusation is out there, you are spreading the words of Nazis. As I mentioned, almost every social media post I saw included at least one comment defending it, with links and video and elaboration and details. Many of those comments were probably researched and procured just so they could respond to the post and sound informed. Let’s put this exhausting garbage to bed and never wake it up again. It’s been used ad nauseam for a couple of centuries.

I’d like to say we’re better than that, but honestly, lately I really have my doubts.