WHEN IN CHINATOWN … AND OTHER MULTICULTURALIST ASSERTIONS

One argument that officials from charro associations and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, among others, adduce is that the charreada and live-animal markets deserve respect and protection because they are venerable traditions integral to their respective communities' ways of life and identities. The charreada, they explain, emerged from the centuries-old ranching culture of Mexico and was embraced by the Chicano Movement in the 1950s as a part of the reinvigoration of Mexican culture within U.S. boundaries. Full of pageantry, ritual, music, and food, the charreada is a cultural practice with deep historical roots. Similarly, spokespersons for Chinatown point out that the Chinese tradition of selling live animals goes back thousands of years. Their culinary tradition, they aver, is based on the notion that freshly killed meat is not only more flavorful but also more energizing, more nutritious, and more medicinal (with healing properties for those suffering from arthritis and other ailments). Procuring a live animal (or freshly killed meat) is thus an important part of the ritual of Chinese cooking. When Assemblyman Mike Honda (D-San Jose), who is Japanese American, introduced a bill in 2000 to protect Chinatown's live-animal markets from a statewide ban on the importation of turtles and frogs, he explained: “This is an age-old cultural practice” (Associate Press State and Local Wire 2000).

According to Brian Barry, saying that a practice is part of one's culture is an anthropological rather than a moral statement: “The fact that you (or your ancestors) have been doing something for a long time does nothing in itself to justify your continuing to do it” (Barry Reference Barry2001, p. 258). Barry's argument makes sense in that we have condemned and sought to end many cruel practices that were apparently integral to cultures and ways of life. The plantation owner's insistence that slavery was vital to the southern culture and economy was, in the view of the abolitionists, morally irrelevant. Notwithstanding Barry's objections, “it's part of my culture” is a claim that now carries considerable weight in contemporary political discourse in the United States. Per multiculturalism, the painful history of racial and cultural oppression in the United States has created a presumption in favor of the preservation and protection of minority cultures (Parekh Reference Parekh2000; Young Reference Young1990). In the eyes of multiculturalists, the argument “When in Rome …” may be imperialistic, but the argument “When in Chinatown …” has prima facie legitimacy and should, absent other serious arguments, carry the day (Renteln Reference Renteln2004).

Immigrant advocates make a second and related argument, derived from multiculturalist discourse, that their critics are demonstrating racism, ethnocentrism, or cultural imperialism.Footnote ⁴ Paul Wartelle, attorney for the Chinese vendors sued by the coalition of animal advocates, said on more than one occasion that “they're just picking on a bunch of vulnerable people because they're members of a racial minority” (Contra Costa Times 1997). Several elected Asian American politicians who intervened in the conflict shared Wartelle's view. Supervisor Leland Yee denounced the lawsuit as racially motivated (Epstein Reference Epstein1997); Supervisor Mabel Teng urged Governor Pete Wilson and the Fish and Game Commission to reject a proposed ban on the importation of turtles and frogs; Assemblyman Mike Honda sponsored a bill seeking to prevent the Fish and Game Commission from imposing such a ban; and Supervisor Tom Hsieh vowed to fight the proposed ban, calling it racist, unfair, and “disrespect[ful of] our traditions, cultures, and values” (San Francisco Chronicle 1996). The fact that nativism is a staple component of U.S.-political discourse—that conservative Republicans and right-wing nativist groups consistently blame immigrants for the nation's problems and call for draconian measures to exclude and marginalize them—helps to explain the resonance of these charges.

History also contributes to the resonance of these charges—in particular, the history of how Whites have constructed both Mexicans and the Chinese as degenerate peoples in order to rationalize the exploitation of these groups. Modern-day denunciations of horse tripping as cruel and unacceptably violent echo long-standing constructions of the Mexican “race” as savage and barbaric. Prior to the U.S.-Mexican War of 1848, Whites consistently characterized Mexicans as a mixed or mongrel race afflicted with not only Spanish but also Indian and African blood. Unlike Whites, who were bearers of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, the Mexicans were necessarily degenerate—“un-Christian, uncivilized, and racially impure” (De León Reference De León, Delgado and Stefancic1998, p. 158)—and engaged in savage rituals such as human sacrifice and cannibalism. The very color of their skin, like that of Africans and Native Americans, signified depravity. In addition, Whites insisted that Mexicans were primitive, backward, and indolent. Together, Whites used these racialized constructions of Mexicans as degenerate (a dangerous, corrupting influence) and lazy (unable to use God's bounty as He intended) to justify their own use of violence in appropriating Mexicans' land and other resources.

As Whites began to challenge Mexican rule, first in Tejas and then throughout the Southwest, American fiction celebrated the colonizing process, showcasing “shifty, brutal, and treacherous Mexicans” (Delgado and Stefancic, Reference Delgado, Stefancic, Delgado and Stefancic1998, p. 210) being displaced from their lands by honorable, God-fearing Anglos. During the early decades of the twentieth century, as the dispossession of Mexican natives of the Southwest proceeded, American films featured as a stock villain the violent Mexican bandido, who spent his time “stealing horses or gold, lusting after pure Anglo women, shooting noble Saxon heroes in the back” (Delgado and Stefancic, Reference Delgado, Stefancic, Delgado and Stefancic1998, p. 210). As with the Native Americans, those resisting the process of colonization were constructed as an aggressive threat such that the colonizing process seemed necessary and providential. The Mexican bandido image is far from dead today, as is evidenced by the contemporary racialized construction of Mexicans (and Latinos generally) as violence-prone gang members and juvenile delinquents.

Similarly, modern-day condemnations of the live-animal markets as cruel and disease producing tap into historical constructions of Chinatown as “the preeminent site of urban sickness, vice, crime, poverty, and depravity” (Shah Reference Shah2001, p. 1). From its inception in the late 1800s, San Francisco's Chinatown, often described by public health officials as a “plague spot” and “cesspool” of epidemic disease, served as a potent symbol of what was different and dangerous about the racial/cultural “other.” The American racial imaginary transformed what were products of discriminatory legislation—Chinatown's racial segregation, overcrowding, poverty, lack of health care—into essential traits of its Chinese residents (clannishness, unwillingness to assimilate, degeneracy, filthiness). The decadence and regressiveness of Chinese culture, it was claimed, threatened the dynamic progressivism of American culture, much as the stench and disease of Chinatown threatened to spill over racial, spatial, and class boundaries and endanger White bodies.

In addition, the minstrelsy of the mid-1800s specifically derided Chinese eating habits as deviant and disgusting. Robert Lee writes: “Food habits, customs, and rules are central symbolic structures through which societies articulate identity; you are, symbolically at least, what you eat” (Lee Reference Lee1999, p. 38). Minstrel-show performers focused on the Chinese consumption of animals considered nonfood animals by Whites (dogs, cats, mice, and rats), as in this stanza from “John Chinaman,” a song published in 1855: “I thought of rats and puppies, John, / You'd eaten your last fill, / But on such slimy pot-pies, / John, I'm told you dinner still” (Lee Reference Lee1999, p. 44). The White working class and its allies deployed arguments about Chinese degeneracy to counter the serious threat posed by cheap, plentiful Chinese labor. These constructions of the Chinese fed into and were fed by the growing storm of anti-Chinese agitation that gave rise in San Francisco to discriminatory ordinances such as the foreign miners' tax (1854), the queue-cutting ordinance (1876), and the various “laundry ordinances” of the 1870s and 1880s (McClain and McClain, Reference McClain, McClain and Chan1991).Footnote ⁵

As proof that animal advocates are imperialists in sheep's clothing, immigrant advocates frequently point to the supposed “double standard” applied by animal advocates to immigrant animal practices. Their argument goes something like this: “You cannot criticize us immigrants for practice A when the majority's practice B is comparably cruel; if you do, you are applying a double standard that reproduces the discrimination we have historically suffered.” Per multiculturalist discourse, the idea here is that the majority presumptively lacks the moral standing to be able to criticize the immigrants' practices because (1) it has historically stood in a relationship of dominance relative to them; and (2) it engages in practices that are comparable. Immigrant advocates further suggest that animal advocates' supposed application of a “double standard” shows that their stated concerns about cruelty toward animals are at least in part pretextual; one of their real motivations must be to single out and persecute the vulnerable “other.” When the California legislature was debating the horse-tripping bill in 1994, Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) criticized the bill for targeting Mexican immigrant practices and ignoring the majority's rodeo practice of calf tripping.Footnote ⁶ Some charro association officials additionally asserted that the well-financed animal rights movement was targeting charros because they are predominantly working-class and lack the resources to fight back. These arguments about majority aggression against immigrant communities undoubtedly help to mobilize many Mexican Americans and Chinese Americans in defense of the charreada and live-animal markets, respectively. Even for those who have reservations about these forms of animal usage, the call to arms in defense of coethnics can prove hard to resist.

Scholars, too, have gravitated toward a multiculturalist interpretive framework regarding these controversies, arguing that Whites engage in “cultural imperialism” around animal practices in order to define immigrant minorities as “out of place,” and thereby perpetuate their power over them (Elder et al., Reference Elder, Wolch, Emel, Wolch and Emel1998; Griffith et al., Reference Griffith, Wolch and Lassiter2002; Nájera-Ramírez Reference Nájera-Ramírez1996). Geographers Glen Elder, Jennifer Wolch, and Jody Emel, for example, write: “By scrutinizing and interpreting subaltern practices on animal bodies … through their own lenses, dominant groups in the United States simultaneously construct immigrant others as uncivilized, irrational, or beastly, and their own actions as civilized, rational, and humane” (Elder et al., Reference Elder, Wolch, Emel, Wolch and Emel1998, p. 82). Noting with disapproval a “pervasive bias against ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples in their uses of animals,” political scientist Alison Renteln argues in The Cultural Defense that there should be a presumption “in favor of the right to culture unless a significant demonstrable harm can be shown to exist” (Renteln Reference Renteln2004, p. 94; p. 113). Anthropologist Olga Nájera-Ramírez contends that the charreada is actually a form of cultural resistance to U.S. domination. According to her interviewees, the charreada provides a space where Mexicans can belong, be themselves, and express group pride in the face of a hostile majority culture. The event itself is heavily inflected with nationalistic music and rhetoric, and “the image of the charro has become representative of lo mexicano (literally, ‘Mexicanness’)” (Nájera-Ramírez Reference Nájera-Ramírez1994, p. 1).Footnote ⁷ By linking Mexicans on both sides of the border, the charreada as transnational practice expresses a “counterdiscourse of resistance against Anglo domination, cultural erasure, and the demeaning portrayal of Mexicanos” (Nájera-Ramírez Reference Nájera-Ramírez, Vélez-Ibañez, Sampaio and González-Estay2002, p. 2).

Filmmaker Eric Lin's Chinatown (1999), filmed in San Francisco's Chinatown and distributed by the National Asian American Telecommunications Association, makes a similar point about the conflict in San Francisco's Chinatown. The film depicts the diversity of Chinese opinions about animal practices; it opens, for example, with a Chinese Buddhist monk releasing a frog into the wild. At the same time, the film suggests that most elements of the Chinese community read the actions of animal advocates as a continuation of White society's century-old assault upon Chinatown. Bound together by a sense of external threat, denizens express their anxieties in various ways. The protagonist, a female waitress, has recurrent nightmares about cannibalism and reflects that the animal activists are taking food away from the Chinese in order to weaken them and turn them into food for others. Her angry young male acquaintances complain about the Hollywood movie Chinatown (directed by Roman Polanski in 1974), in which the area is depicted as an irredeemable “shit hole” filled with opium dens, brothels, and shops selling rat meat. Once again the interpretive framework emphasizes the priority of defending immigrant minority cultures against White cultural imperialism.

THE MULTICULTURALIST MORALITY TALE: ELISIONS AND SUPPRESSIONS

Like all interpretive frameworks, the multiculturalist framework slides easily into reductionism, involving the following problematic moves. First, the multiculturalist framework essentializes the activity of animal advocates as a form of cultural imperialism. Second, it essentializes cultures (both majority and minority) as coherent, unitary wholes. Third, it elides ideological, rhetorical, and strategic differences among animal advocates, the mainstream media, politicians, and others, by lumping these distinct entities together as “the dominant group(s).” Finally the multiculturalist framework denies that animal advocates are in fact as critical (if not more so) of the animal practices of the majority as they are of the animal practices of immigrant minorities. These moves are crucial to charging the conflict with a particular moral valence, one which valorizes immigrant minorities as victims and demonizes their critics as malevolent aggressors.

Are animal advocates agents of a hegemonic majority intent on devaluing Mexican and Chinese culture and valorizing its own? To begin with, there is no American cultural consensus or single “majority” point of view about the limits of permissible treatment toward animals. The animal defense movement is itself marked by serious ideological and strategic divisions, and the broader public holds widely varying opinions about live-animal markets, rodeos, hunting, trapping, circuses, farming, experimentation, and all other forms of animal usage. Although little research has been done on this issue, impressionistic evidence suggests that there is no “Mexican line” or “Chinese line” on animal issues, either. The notion that we are looking at a “clash of cultures” over animal usage is therefore misleading. What we are really looking at is a set of conflicts among interested parties who hold different positions on specific animal-usage issues and belong to different racial/ethnic groups, as well as the broader political entailments that then attach to these conflicts.

Far from being representatives of the majority, animal advocates are more accurately seen as challengers who relentlessly criticize majority animal practices and press for change. There are no animal advocacy groups devoted exclusively to curtailing the practices of immigrant minorities. To the contrary, the explicit goal of animal advocacy is to end cruel or unjust practices toward animals no matter who the perpetrators are—Whites or minorities, natives or immigrants, men or women, etc. Precisely because they challenge some of the most powerful forces in U.S. society—multibillion dollar interests such as the meat and dairy businesses, pharmaceutical and biomedical research companies, and the entertainment industries—animal activists are ridiculed, marginalized, and criminalized (Beers Reference Beers2006; Finsen and Finsen, Reference Finsen and Finsen1994; Munro Reference Munro1999). A case in point: by passing the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in 2006, Congress enhanced the federal government's power to define and punish animal activism as terrorism.

If animal defense organizations focused exclusively on immigrant minority practices and made arguments about the inferiority or intrinsic barbarism of minority cultures, then they might justifiably be charged with racism and cultural imperialism. However, this is not the case in these controversies. Animal advocates are no more interested in trashing immigrant cultures than they are in celebrating their native culture.Footnote ⁸ Instead, they advance a moral discourse about the wrongness of being cruel to animals. Rather than suggesting “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” or “My culture is superior to yours and should therefore supplant yours”—alternate credos of the cultural imperialists—these animal advocates effectively assert, “You should stop this animal practice because it is cruel, inhumane, and causes suffering to the animals involved.” The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SFSPCA) said of horse tripping, “No animal should have to endure the suffering caused by this cruel practice,”Footnote ⁹ and of Chinatown's live-animal markets, “[These conditions] are among the most inhumane we have ever encountered” (italics in original).Footnote ¹⁰

A few things are noteworthy about the cruelty discourse advanced by animal advocates. First, it does not focus on immigrant cultures in toto, only particular practices; there is no suggestion that immigrant cultures are especially inclined toward cruelty or that the majority culture is disinclined in this way. Second, it does not make a comparative assessment or assert that the majority culture is superior to the minority culture. Animal advocates do not stand within the majority culture passing judgment on the minority culture, but stand apart from and challenge the practices of both, on behalf of animals who cannot defend themselves. Now, one could argue that animal advocates implicitly judge immigrant animal practices to be worse than those of the majority to the extent that these campaigns target horse tripping and live-animal markets and not majority practices. However, the premise here is false. The diverse groups involved in these campaigns—Action for Animals, California Equine Council, American Tortoise Rescue, SFSPCA, In Defense of Animals, United Poultry Concerns, and others—spend the majority of their time and energy on campaigns that do target majority animal practices, including American rodeos, the slaughtering of horses, industrial farming, animal experimentation, and the treatment of companion animals. Their involvement in specific campaigns against immigrant animal practices thus cannot be taken as evidence of their bias against immigrants; it would be more accurate to say that they are unwilling to exempt immigrant minorities from their general interdiction against animal cruelty. Like all social movement organizations, animal advocacy groups make strategic choices within certain material and ideological constraints. They believe that animal suffering and abuse are ubiquitous. To maximize the effectiveness of scarce resources, they try to design winnable campaigns. Campaigns are more likely to succeed if they (1) focus on flagrant, dramatic, visible kinds of animal cruelty; (2) speak to the common dispositions of the majority; (3) do not face powerful, organized opposition; and (4) stay narrowly targeted. The campaigns against the charreadas and live-animal markets fit these criteria, as do many campaigns targeting majority practices.

There is more to say about the charge that animal advocates employ a “double standard” in judging immigrant practices. It is not at all clear why immigrants are entitled to be the last in the reform queue. Who is to say that animal advocates can only criticize immigrant minorities once the majority's house is totally in order? Why must animal advocates prove that what immigrant minorities do to animals is as bad as or worse than what the majority does? Should disadvantaged immigrant minorities get a pass from any and all forms of moral scrutiny? Immigrant minorities are entitled to protection against racism and nativism, but should they therefore be entitled to immunity from criticism for their treatment of animals? Does a multiculturalist sensibility really entail this position? As Paula Casal (Reference Casal, Clayton and Williams2004) writes, the issue of noncomparative desert (what treatment animals deserve) should be seen as separable from and perhaps more important than the issue of comparative desert (how much immigrant minorities should be pressed to change their animal practices relative to the majority). If giving animals protection from cruelty is a moral good, then it is a moral good even if the rule is not applied everywhere to the same degree at the same time. Requiring the universal, simultaneous application of this rule to all possible parties would, practically speaking, thwart social change efforts altogether (Casal Reference Casal, Clayton and Williams2004).

The multiculturalist interpretation of these animal-related controversies “goes imperial” by asserting itself in such a way as to mischaracterize and suppress the potentially competitive moral discourse about cruelty toward animals. Chinatown vendors and charreada practitioners usually deflect the question of animal cruelty by pointing to animal advocates' supposed “double standard,” thus displacing attention from how humans inflict suffering on animals to how the majority scapegoats immigrant minorities. Many scholars make similar moves. Recall Alison Renteln's argument that there should be a presumption “in favor of the [immigrant minority's] right to culture unless a significant demonstrable harm can be shown to exist” (Renteln Reference Renteln2004, p. 113). Renteln believes that most immigrant animal practices will survive this test, which implies that she must not count animals as beings who can suffer “significant demonstrable harm.” Animals are tacitly defined out of the equation. The only time Renteln considers what might be called the animals' perspective is when she makes the following statement: “From the chicken's point of view, participating in a religious [Santeria] ceremony is more dignified than winding up in a bucket of fried chicken!” (Renteln Reference Renteln2004, p. 101). It is not clear what evidence Renteln bases this claim on—what about religious significance would redeem violent death in the mind of a chicken?—but it is curious that she talks of chickens as beings who have a point of view and an interest in dignity, even as she excludes them from moral consideration. Similarly, Olga Nájera-Ramírez's “The Racialization of a Debate: The Charreada as Tradition or Torture” (Reference Nájera-Ramírez1996), despite the promise of its title, focuses exclusively on the mainstream media's ethnocentric treatment of the charreada and says nothing about the substantive claims made by animal advocates about the event. In Eric Lin's Chinatown, animal rights activists are White, young, immature, loud, and obnoxious. Hectoring Chinatown's residents and suborning racially motivated violence, they are caricatures not characters and, therefore, say nothing. In addition to calling out White ethnocentrism around immigrant animal practices, Elder et al. (Reference Elder, Wolch, Emel, Wolch and Emel1998) do advocate rethinking the status and treatment of animals, but they are the clear exception in the literature on this issue.

Through its various iterations during this century, multiculturalism's promise has been a powerful one: to decenter the center, challenge domination and its truths, and mitigate power's effects. Yet in these conflicts we see multiculturalist discourse “going imperial” and reducing complex power dynamics among different human and nonhuman animal groups to a single hierarchical relationship of human majority over human minority. Opponents of the live-animal markets have been thwarted for more than a decade, and, although California passed a ban on horse tripping, this appears to have resulted more from skillful political maneuvering than from a public consensus that the interests of animals trump the interests of immigrant minorities. Judging from the newspaper coverage of the controversy, it is not at all clear who won the public relations battle on this issue. What about the hierarchy between humans and animals? As Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert write, “Human-animal relations have … been filled with power, commonly the wielding of an oppressive, dominating power by humans over animals” (Philo and Wilbert, Reference Philo, Wilbert, Philo and Wilbert2000, pp. 3–4). In one sense, the neglect of this hierarchy is not surprising. The ideology of human supremacy—based on the related notions that humans are vitally different from and superior to other animals, and that humans have intrinsic moral worth while other animals do not—is one of the master narratives of Western culture (Plumwood Reference Plumwood1993). In another sense, though, it is strange to consider that multiculturalist discourse might function to enshrine power's effects in this area.

CRUELTY IS CRUELTY IN ANY CULTURE

According to animal advocates, the immigrant animal practices in question are morally wrong because they are cruel and/or cause marked suffering. It would be hard to dispute that horse tripping causes horses to suffer. Anyone hearing a bare description of the event—chasing an animal until it runs hard and then lassoing its front legs so that it falls on its face or flips over—can surmise that the animal will feel pain when brought down. But those who have specific knowledge of horses as a species will have a keener appreciation of how much suffering is engendered here. For one thing, there are the physical facts. Horses are large, heavy animals (weighing up to 1000 pounds or more), whose legs are thin and delicate relative to their body mass. Because of her weight and size, a horse who is tripped while running at full speed experiences a much more violent, forceful crash than would a smaller, lighter animal (such as a calf).Footnote ¹¹ She is also more likely to fracture her legs or other bones when she falls. Tripped horses do in fact suffer from a variety of grievous injuries ranging from lameness and facial lacerations to broken necks to death. Furthermore, horses are “flight” animals who survive in the wild by fleeing from predators. Due to evolutionary adaptation, they are sensitive and fearful animals. Even a domesticated horse who is comfortable with humans may startle violently at sudden movements and loud noises. A horse used in manganas exhibits signs of terror and severe distress: she jerks her head upward, rolls her eyes around, sweats, and runs wildly to elude the charro chasing her down. She may even rear up on her hind legs and try desperately (and unsuccessfully) to jump the wall around the arena to escape. Her emotional suffering is palpable.

Chickens, frogs, turtles, and other animals suffer anguish and physical pain in live-animal markets such as those in San Francisco's Chinatown. Chickens are intelligent, feeling animals with individual personalities.Footnote ¹² When a hen is packed into a wire cage with other chickens so tightly that she cannot move, for long periods of time, she experiences the psychological and physical hardship of an animal who wants and needs to move around freely. She cannot reach food or water or make even small movements to relieve her discomfort. All of her natural behaviors—including pecking, dust bathing, walking, and stretching her wings—are frustrated. When she is grabbed by her feet and thrown into a bag for the customer, she naturally feels fear; she may also be injured or have bones broken. Slaughter methods in live-animal markets inflict pain as well. Turtles are alive and fully conscious when their shells are ripped off or when their limbs are cut off or their bodies cut in half with a knife or saw. Frogs are alive and fully conscious when they are skinned with a knife. Although they are not able to scream and fight back, turtles and frogs are able to feel.Footnote ¹³

The choice to focus on alleviating cruelty (as opposed to securing “rights,” for instance) is overdetermined. Organizations such as the SFSPCA are self-described humane groups whose stated mission is to fight cruelty and improve animal welfare. Some of the other animal groups who have become involved in these conflicts, such as In Defense of Animals or United Poultry Concerns, go beyond this to talk about animal “rights” and “entitlements.” Because the least common denominator among all animal protection groups is their opposition to animal suffering, a discourse about cruelty can unite welfare-oriented and rights-oriented groups in a workable coalition. Opposition to cruelty is also a least common denominator within the broader public. Most Americans would say that they repudiate cruelty (lest they be seen as sociopathic!), and both federal and state laws recognize the prevention of cruelty and the humane treatment of animals as legitimate matters of public interest. Animal advocacy groups understand the importance of the process that David Snow and Robert Benford (Reference Snow and Benford1988) call “frame alignment.” That is, they know that their framing efforts are more likely to succeed if they begin where their audience already is, ideologically speaking. Charges that horse tripping and live-animal markets are “cruel” and “inhumane” are tailored to speak to the public's existing sensibilities.

Animal advocates reject the charge that they are unfairly targeting minority cultures. For them, cruelty is cruelty in any culture. United Poultry Concerns, which helped to raise funds for the lawsuit brought against Chinatown live-animal vendors, writes on its website: “Live-animal markets epitomize In-Your-Face, I-Don't-Give-A-Damn cruelty to animals…. The issue is not culture but a degrading human tradition, from Ming Lee to KFC, that … needs to be changed” (Poultry Press 1997). During the California legislature's debate about horse tripping, the California Equine Council made this statement:

In its “Statement on San Francisco Live Animal Markets,” the SFSPCA suggests that the city shows favoritism to the Chinese community by exempting it from anticruelty laws which would, if applied, proscribe live-animal market practices. Matthew Kaplan, chair of the Commission on Animal Control and Welfare (which proposed a ban on the sale of live animals for food), makes a similar point in his article “San Francisco Should Not Tolerate Animal Cruelty.”Footnote ¹⁴ Chinese animal vendors, he argues, resist the imposition of regulations on their slaughter methods even though every slaughterhouse in the country is regulated. He adds: “Playing the race card in an attempt to continue torturing animals is disgraceful and unacceptable.”

Even if we provisionally accept that animal advocates are not motivated by nativism or racism, the question remains: Are anticruelty campaigns illegitimate if they benefit from, take advantage of, or even deepen majority prejudices toward immigrant minorities? What if being racist is what enhances the “winnability” of a campaign? When the news magazine show 20/20 aired a segment on horse tripping, “Pity the Horses,” which expressed cultural intolerance and played upon anti-Mexican feeling (Nájera-Ramírez Reference Nájera-Ramírez1996), did this compromise or invalidate the efforts of Action for Animals and the California Equine Council? When racist, xenophobic agitators like Frosty Wooldridge call for the exclusion of immigrants because of their animal practices, does this tarnish the efforts of animal advocates?Footnote ¹⁵ These are not easy questions to answer. Giving succor to the Frosty Wooldridges of the world should be avoided; it is right to expect animal groups to tailor their rhetoric and agenda to take reasonable precautions. At the same time, condemning animal advocacy on the grounds that it inflames existing prejudices does not seem right either. Rick Avanzino of SFSPCA is not Frosty Wooldridge and the distinction between the two is important. It is not tenable to argue that one can never say anything critical about any aspect of any disadvantaged group's actions for fear of exacerbating that group's disadvantage. For one thing, there is a real danger of exoticizing and marginalizing immigrant minorities, placing them outside of the circle of moral dialogue, criticism, and community. For another, the focus on protecting immigrant minorities from persecution, while entirely valid, should not be allowed to displace and shut down the other moral discourse in play here, that of the cruel treatment of animals. Sometimes there is no morally irreproachable course of action.

Now a multiculturalist might reply: “Even if animal advocates do not argue the superiority of their own culture, their assertion of a universal value—the evil of cruelty—is ethnocentric.” But is the assertion of the existence of universal values by definition ethnocentric? As many have argued, claims about the culture boundedness of all assertions are nonsensical in that they themselves assume universal form; they also presume the untenable notion that cultures are discrete wholes that can be neatly marked off from one another (Parekh Reference Parekh2000). In general, I concur with multiculturalist theorist Bhikhu Parekh that (1) the assertion of certain universal values (e.g., the value of human life) is appropriate and not intrinsically incompatible with multiculturalist beliefs in justice, fairness, and equality; and (2) these values should be very basic and few in number. Parekh writes: “Universal moral values are those we have good reasons to believe to be worthy of the allegiance of all human beings” (Parekh Reference Parekh2000, p. 127). The interdiction against cruelty (whether inflicted upon humans or animals) seems to me to fit this description.

This particular value (that cruelty is wrong) is not in fact contested by the parties involved in these controversies. Spokespersons for the Mexican and Chinese communities do not endorse cruelty; to the contrary, they strongly disavow it. What is contested here is the definition of what constitutes cruelty. Animal advocates view horse tripping and live-animal markets as cruel because they cause significant suffering to the animals involved. Charros, who view their practice as an artful and culturally laden engagement with animals and nature, argue that it is not cruel because there is no infliction of needless or gratuitous suffering. In other words, suffering is not inflicted for its own sake but is incidental to the display of skill and prowess, much as in the American rodeo. Defending themselves against the charge of cruelty at a California Assembly hearing in March 1994, the Federation of Charros stated: “No information or indictment has ever been filed alleging that the event of Manganas [horse tripping] subjected any animal to needless suffering.”Footnote ¹⁶ Chinatown vendors, similarly, view live-animal markets as sites of cultural and culinary production that do not inflict gratuitous suffering and, in any case, are no more cruel than the majority's farms and slaughterhouses. Immigrant advocates thus reject the cruelty charge by (1) defining cruelty as the infliction of gratuitous suffering and arguing that they are not engaged in this; and (2) arguing that, even if what they do is cruel, it does not deserve attention because it is no more cruel than are the majority's practices.

Is this a “clash of cultures” over the definition of cruelty? It is true that culture can influence definitions of cruelty by shaping our sense of the proper conceptual and spatial placement of different kinds of animals (Emel and Wolch, Reference Emel, Wolch, Wolch and Emel1998; Philo and Wilbert, Reference Philo, Wilbert, Philo and Wilbert2000).Footnote ¹⁷ Because many Whites see horses as superior to livestock animals (cows, pigs, etc.) and lack appreciation for the cultural significance of the charreada, they are probably more likely than are many Mexicans to judge horse tripping to be cruel. Similarly, many Whites see turtles as pets or wildlife, whereas many Chinese people may see them as food animals. This means that Whites are probably more likely than are the Chinese to see the treatment of turtles in Chinatown's live-animal markets as cruel. Pius Lee, cochair of the Chinatown Neighborhood Association had this in mind when he said: “[What] animal rights activists don't understand is the distinction between animals for food and animals for pets. They are separate. They're two different issues” (Lee Reference Lee2000). Lee suggests that cruelty is a concept properly applied to the treatment of pets, but not to food animals. While many Americans may accept this distinction, most animal advocates contest the notion that the suffering of food animals is morally irrelevant. In any case, it would be a gross oversimplification to say that definitions of cruelty match up closely with cultural group boundaries. For one thing, definitions vary within cultures: some Americans think that hunting is cruel; others do not. For another, definitions cross cultural lines: some Whites think that horse tripping is cruel; some Mexican Americans agree. Some Chinese Americans deny that chopping the heads off of live fish is cruel; many Whites agree. Is it ethnocentric, then, for animal advocates to assert their definition of cruelty over that of charros and live-animal vendors? Because definitions do not match up with cultural boundaries, and because animal advocates assert their definition of cruelty over those of majority elements (pet owners, scientists, and the meat industry) as well, the case for ethnocentrism is not very compelling. Not every disagreement about values is an example of cultural imperialism.

MUTUALLY UNSETTLING DIALOGUE

When the multiculturalist interpretation of these animal controversies “goes imperial” and drives anticruelty discourse off the table, what is lost? For one thing, an opportunity for us as a society to consider the legitimate ethical issue of how we should relate to animals. Some of multiculturalism's luster as an oppositional force is also lost, I think. For a justice narrative to ignore and even reinscribe another form of oppression is problematic, though not uncommon. Just as there are strong reasons for not interfering with historically disadvantaged immigrant minorities, there are strong reasons for not inflicting suffering on animals. In both cases, the mitigation of oppressive power is a forceful moral imperative. Thus it would be similarly problematic if the anticruelty discourse were to predominate to the extent that immigrant minority concerns were silenced. One way to avoid a scenario in which one moral concern stifles the other is to fully recognize the normative dilemma posed by these conflicts and address it through moral dialogue.

Multiculturalism theorist Bhikhu Parekh (Reference Parekh2000) makes some useful suggestions about generating “intercultural dialogue,” or moral dialogue across racial/cultural lines. Dialogue, he avers, is a method of handling differences while showing mutual respect and building moral community. In his view, the majority should respect a minority community's right to culture but also feel free to criticize aspects of that culture, all the while remaining mindful of the danger of cultural imperialism. The minority should, in turn, offer explanations or defenses of its practices and feel free to raise questions about the validity of the majority's values and practices as well. The key to the success of this dialogue is its “bifocality,” meaning that “neither the majority nor the minority way of life can escape the other's scrutiny” (Parekh Reference Parekh2000, p. 293). All who participate are (potentially) transformed because the dialogue “forces each party to become conscious of its values and reasons for holding them, and contributes to their critical self-knowledge” (Parekh Reference Parekh2000, p. 271). Difference here is not a threat to be obliterated but a mirror for the self, a mirror that denaturalizes without necessarily invalidating the ways of the majority. This kind of mutually discomfiting dialogue realizes important democratic values such as transparency, fairness, and inclusiveness.

I explained above that immigrant advocates charge animal activists with using a “double standard,” or targeting immigrant practices when the majority's practices are comparably cruel. In response, I made two points: first, animal activists do in fact spend most of their time challenging majority practices, and, second, there is no prima facie reason why immigrant minorities should be last in the reform queue. I add a third point here: if immigrant advocates are concerned with fairness (as opposed to using majority practices for cover—so that they can continue to cause suffering to animals), then they should seek not to silence criticism from animal advocates but to broaden its focus, through moral dialogue, to include majority practices as well.

In the current scenario, animal advocates charge immigrant minorities with cruelty, the latter close ranks, invoking the multiculturalist defense, and a pitched battle ensues. If bifocal dialogue were to develop, the scenario would be different. First, in a manner respectful of concerns about racism and nativism, animal advocates would present reasons why immigrant minorities should change their animal practices. Second, the latter would take these concerns seriously, rather than deflecting them, and would explain and defend their practices, with the option of raising questions about majority animal practices. So, Mexican Americans might present both charreadas and majority practices such as American rodeos and horseracing as proper subjects for evaluation and scrutiny, and Chinese Americans might suggest a closer look at both live-animal markets and conventional farms and slaughterhouses. Finally, different segments of the majority and immigrant minority communities would weigh in, bringing disparate and contradictory interests and beliefs into the mix. Animal advocates, hunters, farmers, and racing enthusiasts would participate in the debate alongside charros, live animal vendors, Buddhists, and minority animal advocates. Because views about animals do not match up with racial or other group boundaries, interesting cross-cutting solidarities (and cleavages) might develop.

Clearly, this kind of dialogue comes with no guarantees. Building moral community is difficult in the context of unequal group power, for instance. But it is also true that following the multiculturalist dictum “leave my culture alone” can amplify the exoticization and marginalization of immigrant minority cultures. Immigrants need protection from cultural imperialism and nativism, but receiving and giving moral criticism and engaging others on issues of moral concern are important parts of membership in a moral community. The risks of being seen as outside of this community may well be higher than the risks of being included.