Rumor that immigrants in Ohio eat cats and dogs points to ‘ancient racism’
Trump fuels false rumors about pet killings in Springfield, Ohio
Former President Donald J. Trump recently spread false rumors that Haitian migrants were kidnapping, killing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
When May-lee Chai was in high school in the early 1980s, a Chinese restaurant finally opened in the small South Dakota town where her family lived.
“The food was delicious!” recalls Chai, now a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.
But when her parents invited friends there for lunch, they always politely declined. Rumor has it that they were served stray cats and dogs.
Although the rumor was completely false, the owners, who fled the communist Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, ultimately had to sell their business and move away, Chai told USA TODAY.
For more than a century, Americans have falsely accused immigrants of cooking and serving pets.
That’s why many people, especially Americans of color, were alarmed this week when leading Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate JD Vance, repeated unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets.
The lecture brought back bad memories for Chai and many others. “Since my childhood, I have known the racist stereotype of immigrants coming to the city and eating pets. This is very old racism,” Chai posted on the social media site X (formerly Twitter), receiving more than 225,000 views and 18,000 likes.
Erik Crew, an attorney with the immigration organization Haitian Bridge Alliance, has deep roots in Ohio. His family emigrated to Springfield after the end of slavery as part of the Great Migration from the South to the North.
When Trump repeated the debunked conspiracy theory at the presidential debate on Tuesday night, Crew’s heart sank.
“These kinds of anti-black propaganda narratives that the ‘savages are coming to destroy and eat your family,’ are actually part of the same script that goes back hundreds of years,” he told USA TODAY on Wednesday. “They’re trying to sow division and hatred and gain whatever political power is up for grabs. It’s really heartbreaking and tragic.”
It was not surprising, he said.
“This is nothing new,” he said. “This is part of a strategy that white supremacists have been using for a long, long time.”
History of a meme
The origins of the stereotype that immigrants eat pets have been lost over time, says Scott Kurashige, an author and historian of race and Asian American history.
But by 1883, the story was so misleading that the leading Chinese-American journalist of the time, Wong Chin Foo, offered a reward of $500 – about $14,000 today – to anyone who could prove that Chinese people ate rats or cats.
“It’s really circular,” Kurashige says. If a culinary practice comes from a culture that mainstream America considers acceptable, then something like eating snails or frog legs is considered sophisticated. If it comes from a culture that’s considered “wild,” then a practice like eating dog or horse meat is automatically considered backward, he says.
“In the broadest sense, there was a dividing line between the dominant cultural practices of white Americans and those of Haitians from the global South, indigenous peoples and people of color,” Kurashige said. “Often these were accompanied by stereotypes.”
In fact, most cooking habits are cultural, he said, pointing out that some communities do well without pork, while others avoid meat altogether.
Kurashige said racist stereotypes in America exploit misconceptions about different cooking practices around the world, suggesting – without evidence – that immigrants treat pets or pests like livestock.
The meme has been used by politicians since at least the 1880s to dehumanize immigrants and create political divisions, says Chai, who teaches about it in her courses.
Grover Cleveland printed trading cards depicting male Chinese immigrants eating rats during his 1888 presidential campaign, Chai said. Chinese workers were described as a threat to white American workers, drawing parallels with Trump’s description of immigrants as a threat to workers, especially those of color.
Cleveland’s campaign team portrayed his opponent Benjamin Harrison as pro-Chinese immigration and therefore anti-American, Chai said.
Stereotypes are reflected in pop culture
This stereotype has often been taken up or ridiculed in popular culture.
In an episode of the television series “ALF,” which aired on NBC from 1986 to 1990, the furry alien and namesake of the series is seen preparing to eat a cat between two halves of a submarine roll.
In her 2011 novel “Dragon Chica,” Chai wrote about “this racist stereotype of accusing Asian immigrants of eating dogs.”
And Larry David’s character in Season 5 of the long-running HBO sitcom “Cut It, Larry!” convinces his wedding guests that the Korean caterer is feeding them all a friend’s dog. The guests vomit, and the episode ends with David nearly running over the dog, who is still very much alive.
The consequences of “misinformation and disinformation”
Niccara Campbell Wallace, campaign director and executive director of the Rolling Sea Action Fund, an organization that promotes civic engagement, spoke out against the comments promoted and refuted by Trump.
“Now we continue to spread misinformation and disinformation, confusing black Americans and Americans about what’s happening – whether it was real or not,” Campbell Wallace said. “People don’t know.”
Rumors become stereotypes. Stereotypes become political cannon fodder. Politicians sometimes exploit these stereotypes for political purposes.
Experts say this is a cycle that has been playing out for decades. Such racist stereotypes spread during times of high immigration, like we’ve seen in the recent past, and during times of economic stress, says Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University.
He pointed out that Chinese immigrants made up only 0.02% of the U.S. population in 1882, and yet that same year Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning immigration from China for a decade.
These stereotypes have consequences, says Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit that fights racism and racial injustice against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
“It benefits politicians to create fear and it benefits them to find scapegoats. They are easy targets. If they don’t have papers, they don’t really have much say,” he said. “Tyrants pick those who are easy to attack.”
