(Article) Is hunting racist?

 
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agate
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 11:25 am    Post subject: (Article) Is hunting racist? Reply with quote

This article is in Counterpunch, September 6, 2007, and makes interesting points that I just wanted to share here:

Quote:
September 6, 2007

Is Hunting Racist?

Bang Bang, Shoot Shoot

By KELLY OVERTON

It's autumn, the time of year when millions of Americans renew their love affair with guns and head for the woods in a preemptive strike in their war against wildlife. Hunters justify this slaughter by claiming to reduce incidents of human/animal conflict. They tell us they must kill to protect Americans from automobile/deer collisions ­ and save animals from certain starvation. They would have us believe that hunting is not only good for people, but also good for the animals they kill. Yet in reality, hunting is neither useful nor necessary. It is an environmentally and socially destructive practice historically grounded in racial injustice.

There is no truth to the myth that hunting reduces human/animal conflict. In fact, automobile/deer collisions actually increase during hunting season as deer are flushed from forests and onto roadways. The presence of wildlife in our yards, cities, and highways is due not to an increase in the number of animals, but to a staggering decrease in wilderness. We live in a culture that has accepted hunting for so many generations that we can no longer see the forest through the disappearing trees. The animals are not invading our territory--we have increasingly invaded theirs. It is our society's constant destruction of wilderness that causes human/animal conflict. In an age of water shortages and global warming our natural resources merit a sophisticated ecosystem protection policy--a policy in which humane wildlife management is one important aspect.

The tragic histories of the passenger pigeon and the American buffalo show us that hunters are sometimes the last to realize the delicate nature of animal populations. Hunting is not an effective method of wildlife management; the "need" to hunt on an annual basis is proof itself of hunting's ineffectiveness. Hunters' claims of conservationism are necessary because admitting that you enjoy killing is a less than flattering attribute. Hunters make the cruel choice to shoot animals instead of skeet or targets. And cruel it is.

There is nothing as heartbreaking as the sight of a bird shot from flight or witnessing a gunned down deer's last moments - the blood, the panicked breathing, the struggle, the recognition of what is happening, and the animal's visible desire to survive.

While some people may view hunting as a harmless cultural tradition, in fact, hunting is a stubborn holdover from our country's racist past. While many still consider it an annual rite of passage for white children to stalk through rural communities with loaded guns, it is a crime for a minority child to possess a gun in his urban neighborhood. A gun remains a traditional right for many boys in white, rural America, a tradition that would get a Latino boy killed or imprisoned in our cities. That we allow, even encourage, one segment of our population to run amuck with guns while imprisoning others is blatantly racist.

In a year when many cities are struggling with a disturbing reemergence of gun violence, America must rethink the continued glorification of guns and killing. The cruel reality of hunting blurs the message we deliver to our children about guns and violence in this country. We cannot simultaneously discourage gun violence and encourage hunting. Both cruelty and compassion are contagious, and it is our responsibility to plant the seeds of a compassionate culture for future generations. Children who learn to empathize with animals are much more likely to become empathetic adults. There is nothing good that comes from the murder of vulnerable creatures. Hunting teaches it is acceptable, even admirable, to kill a defenseless creature. Hunting is the opposite of caring.

We should celebrate when our children plant their first tree or spend their first day volunteering at a homeless shelter ­ not when they gun down their first animal. By abandoning hunting in favor of state-of-the-art methods of ecosystem management we can save two birds without picking up a single stone. We can forever improve the quality of life for both humans and animals while teaching our children a crucial lesson about compassion, mercy, and living in harmony with all of the earth's creatures.
--------------------------
Kelly Overton is Executive Director of People Protecting Animals & Their Habitats. Email: KhoPhaNgan@aol.com



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Mr Natural



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PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 11:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't think its "racist", but, antiqated. Jed Clampett doesn't need to be shooting at his food anymore (in America anyway). It bothers me that stalking and killing some defenseless animal has somehow, been considered "sport". Buy a hamburger! Most fast food restaurants sell 'em for a dollar.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 12:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, people around here seem fond of venison. Nothing quite like it, they say--and so they go out and shoot deer and get themselves a freezer full of venison steaks.

I'm not a meat eater any more but I've had venison. I don't see killing a deer for it.

I think the point about racism is worth thinking 1: white kids in some parts of the country are encouraged to go out hunting and can't wait till they get their hands on a gun, while African-American kids in the inner city are in trouble if they go near a gun.

Yes, it's antiquated, and like a lot of antiquated ideas, it has racist overtones.
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Mr Natural



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As a native Michiganian(gander), I've heard that BS before. They love it so much that they make chili out of it or drown it in barbeque sauce to "camolflage", it's gamey taste. I've had it (my dad was a big hunter when I was a kid. I never liked it.
I really think most of that rhetoric is contrived by the assassin himself (to somehow justify that barabarian behavior. Give me a hamburger.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 6:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I didn't know they camouflaged it, but that figures. I seem to remember venison as not just gamey flavored but also stringy.

I thought they just chomped away on venison steaks.
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ewizabeth



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr Natural wrote:
I don't think its "racist", but, antiqated. Jed Clampett doesn't need to be shooting at his food anymore (in America anyway). It bothers me that stalking and killing some defenseless animal has somehow, been considered "sport". Buy a hamburger! Most fast food restaurants sell 'em for a dollar.


I agree. I don't like the idea of hunting unless of course somebody has no other way to eat and they live in a hunting allowed area. I think it's also dangerous to eat venison and such, some sort of mad cow disease is suspected to be in some of it I think.
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Matt



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Buy a veggie burger!

There are so many more moral issues associated with eating animals than plants. Why would anyone eat an animal if a plant is available.

Ewizabeth, it's so good to see you still around!


Last edited by Matt on Tue Sep 11, 2007 10:56 am; edited 1 time in total
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ewizabeth



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Matt wrote:
Buy a veggie burger!

There are so many more moral issues associated with eating animals than plants. Why would anyone eat a plant if an animal is available.

Ewizabeth, it's so good to see you still around!


Hi Matt!

I'm in classes again. Two hard classes right now, then my very last class after that, and I'll be finished end of November. sunny I can't wait for that day, I'm so ready to graduate!
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lady_express_44



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's a personal preference, isn't it? Some people like Buffalo, venison, rabbit ... Others disagree with eating beef and pork, but will eat chicken and fish. Still others are pure vegetarians.

If it is just for the sport, personally I don't like hunting. But if the meat is going to get eaten, I don't have a problem with people hunting.

Cherie
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 8:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

After reading some accounts of the carnage involved in slaughtering farm animals and in hunting, I began to wonder whether killing animals might create a notion in some people that killing in general is no big deal...

But the animal-rights people have been going to extremes and making their cause look loony and ridiculous, it seems to me.

I don't have much of a problem with experimenting on animals for medical purposes, for instance, though watching rabbits be killed to find out if a woman was pregnant used to bother me when I worked in a hospital lab.
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Matt



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That'll be exciting when you graduate, ewizabeth!

One of the arguments I have heard about animal rights issues is as follows. Most people consider it to be immoral to kill someone who is severely retarded, because they are still conscious, and they still try to avoid painful stimuli or something which is harmful, acting in a self-preserving way. They are cconscious like us, and they do not want to die. All of these things are true of most if not all animals, and they may be just as inteligent as someone who is severely retarded.

Any justification of killing most animals involves a "it's us versus them" mentality. We will look out for our own kind just because they are our own kind, but for no greater moral purpose.

Some moral pholosophers and animal rights activists have likened the widespread justification of killing animals to some of the most severe racism in america's past, like when some white people in the south claimed that black people aren't really human, and they aren't really conscious, they just act on instinct, or that white's should only look out for their own race.
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lady_express_44



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PostPosted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Matt wrote:
That'll be exciting when you graduate, ewizabeth!

One of the arguments I have heard about animal rights issues is as follows. Most people consider it to be immoral to kill someone who is severely retarded, because they are still conscious, and they still try to avoid painful stimuli or something which is harmful, acting in a self-preserving way. They are cconscious like us, and they do not want to die. All of these things are true of most if not all animals, and they may be just as inteligent as someone who is severely retarded.

Any justification of killing most animals involves a "it's us versus them" mentality. We will look out for our own kind just because they are our own kind, but for no greater moral purpose.

Some moral pholosophers and animal rights activists have likened the widespread justification of killing animals to some of the most severe racism in america's past, like when some white people in the south claimed that black people aren't really human, and they aren't really conscious, they just act on instinct, or that white's should only look out for their own race.


Eating meat has gone on since the beginning of time, and I doubt very much that is going to change. Even animals eat animals, whereas people don't eat people (any more geek).

As far as "Most people consider it to be immoral to kill someone who is severely retarded, because they are still conscious", we are not killing animals because they are less intelligent then us. scratch Everything, including plants (vegetables, fruit) is a living organism, it's just where do you draw the line?

I don't think retardation is a reason to "KILL off" anyone, but where is only medical technology that keeps an otherwise braindead person alive, I think they should be unhooked. Can you imagine how many people we would have to house in hospitals if we kept everyone who is braindead artificially "living"?

I wouldn't eat them though. thumbright
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Matt



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PostPosted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 12:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

lady_express_44 wrote:

Eating meat has gone on since the beginning of time, and I doubt very much that is going to change. Even animals eat animals, whereas people don't eat people (any more geek).


A wide range of violent urges are also natural, and have been around from the beginning of time, but many violent acts are illegal. It is our human nature to question the morality of eating meat, as much as it is inour nature to question just about any other moral issue.

lady_express_44 wrote:

As far as "Most people consider it to be immoral to kill someone who is severely retarded, because they are still conscious", we are not killing animals because they are less intelligent then us. scratch Everything, including plants (vegetables, fruit) is a living organism, it's just where do you draw the line?


Perhaps it is better not to kill a plant. Assuming that it is acceptable to kill if that's what is required to live, than it must be necessary, and I do assume that it is acceptable and necessary. Animals have central nervous systems, and are much more likely to have a consciousness, and a desire to preserve themselves. Therefore, it is most likely worse to eat an animal than a plant. If both options are available, eating the plant is a superior choice.


Quote:

I don't think retardation is a reason to "KILL off" anyone, but where is only medical technology that keeps an otherwise braindead person alive, I think they should be unhooked. Can you imagine how many people we would have to house in hospitals if we kept everyone who is braindead artificially "living"?

I wouldn't eat them though. thumbright


I don't agree with keeping braindead people alive either. Terri Schiavo's parents are a bunc of quacks. I just hate it when that same reasoning gets applied to people who aren't braindead.
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