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contextualise the practice as culturally legitimate by Alice, Frankie, Vivian and
Georgia, on the other:
SUSAN: That's horrible. That's disgusting/
FRANKIE: …that's the same way we feel about eating, slaughtering goats and cows
and chickens. The same way we feel; it's all meat and we gonna eat
anything.
SUSAN: That ain't no meat. That's not meat for us to eat/
FRANKIE: That's not what we see it as/
ALICE: That attitude is part of their culture.
SUSAN: Dogs is not meant for us to eat.
GEORGIA: …they eat dogs because that's a part of their culture, but it's very hard
for us to adapt to because we have always considered dogs as pets…
SUSAN: Dogs
are
pets [emphasis in original]. That's wrong, that's wrong.
GEORGIA: …if you were brought up eating [dog], it would be just fine…It's like
if you would eat a chicken…
VIVIAN:
But you know…the difference [between chicken and dog]. I mean, you
were born in the United States.
The arguments of Susan, a young Los Angeles native (whose economic means may
be greater than that of the other focus group members), centred entirely on the
Western construction of 'dog' as pet not intended for human consumption.
Juxtaposed to her arguments were those of Alice, Frankie, Georgia and Vivian, who
comprehended the Asian construction of 'dog' not as pet but (in certain instances)
as food. By providing Susan with examples of how Western society constructs
animals as food (chickens, goats, cows), these women shed a more culturally
empathetic light upon Asian consumptive practices. Vivian went so far as to detail
the consumption of horse meat in parts of the US, consciously using an animal
whose popular construction in American culture maintains a privileged position
along with that of the dog. Susan herself reinforced this contradiction, using the
example of kangaroos ('they had kangaroo meat at Jack-in-the-Box before…I swear.
It was on the news a long time ago'), and Alice mentioned ostrich consumption.
Unsurprisingly, Alice, Frankie and Vivian maintained positions of cultural
empathy, understanding and contextuality in the case of Asian dog-eating practices;
to do otherwise would have fundamentally undermined their earlier statements
concerning the consumption of repulsive 'trash' animals and organ meat within
their own culture. Again, this position appears to revolve around the notion of cultural
survival, in which there is an historically negotiable 'place' for pets as well as for
consumable animals that is culturally, socially, politically, economically and
geographically mediated. The cultural placement of animals into one category or
another (or, for that matter, into any of several other categories of animal: beasts of
burden, wildlife, game, and so forth) is an historical process that, in the African-
American context, was powerfully mediated through the processes of oppression,
violence and neglect.
