The strange relationship between dog-eating and anxieties over race, assimilation and citizenship reemerged into public view immediately after the Vietnam War in 1975. The federal Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act helped relocate approximately 130,000 Indochinese refugees to America as permanent residents. Stories of ravenous bands of canine-eating refugees quickly flooded the media.
In November 1979, animal welfare authorities in St. Paul investigated complaints that refugees were stealing and eating neighborhood pets. Southeast Asian residents vigorously denied the charges, but the director of the Ramsey County Humane Society persisted: “There have been too many calls from too many people to say that it’s just a rumor or there’s nothing to it.” Resettlement organizations included programs on “cultural differences in attitudes toward pets” to cultivate proper American values in a people deemed inscrutable.
Our fears of consuming canines, then, have had more to do with moralistic xenophobia and exclusion than with animal welfare, public health or ethical taboo. The flap over Mr. Obama’s youthful consumption of dog meat is a resurrection of the birther-conspiracy wolf dressed in dog’s clothing.
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