CRIME OF PUNISHMENT: Critical Race Theory (CRT) academics war on animals

CRT academics have no problem with hunting wild animals or abusing animals who will be eaten, so long as those doing the hunting or abusing are 'marginalized.' To them, strong penalties for animal abuse and neglect, including torture and killing, enforcing animal welfare laws, and police investigating animal cruelty, are not to be celebrated as progress. They have defended the harpooning of whales and clubbing of seals because of 'native cosmologies.' They have claimed that animals want to die and do not mind suffering when they do if the hunter is 'Indigenous.' They even argue against prosecuting animal abusers like Michael Vick, claiming black dog fighters are the real 'victims'.

NATHAN WINOGRAD: In the latest call to excuse violence towards animals, Kelly Montford, a professor who studies race, gender, poverty, and crime, Darren Chang, a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology, and Selingul Yalcin, a law student, decry efforts to take animal abuse seriously, including greater enforcement and more substantial penalties. To them, strong penalties for animal abuse and neglect, including felonizing torture and killing, specialized training for police to enforce animal welfare laws, and first-of-its-kind police department “animal cruelty investigation unit[s]” are not to be celebrated as progress….

In “Anti-Carceral Approaches to Addressing Harms Against Animals,” they instead call for “Restorative Justice,” a combination of defunding the police, abolishing prisons, anti-corporate and anti-capitalist activism, and roleplaying because enforcement of anti-cruelty laws is designed to protect the “heteronuclear white family,” support “racist and colonial legal institutions,” and expand the “carceral” state. They could not be more wrong…

For example, studies show that people living in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty are “more likely to befriend stray or feral animals of unknown origin by occasionally feeding them or briefly letting them into their homes” and “consider to be unproblematic community pets or tolerate as just part of the neighborhood landscape.” By contrast, “animal control officers see them as nuisances to be disposed of, even though residents have not filed a complaint with the department and consider them to be shared community pets.” This not only sets up residents in an antagonistic relationship with animal services, it results in higher rates of killing because of the prohibitively high reclaim and citation fees charged by regressive pounds.

But animal cruelty laws do protect animals. And they do so by setting out minimum standards of care and proscribing conduct that falls below them. They criminalize animal mistreatment, not poverty, and contrary to Montford’s claims, they are not mutually exclusive with the “carrot.” Of course, there are times that education and subsidized services will achieve the desired outcome better than citations or incarceration, such as providing free fencing to get dogs off chains and quality food to get cats and dogs needed nutrition… Any argument to the contrary not only offers a false “either-or” choice, it throws the proverbial baby out with the bathwater…

For all the discussion and professed concern regarding hierarchies of privilege, Montford’s prescription for human-animal relations could not be more inequitable, uncharitable, and unkind. Were the movement to accept her premise that all animals do not bear the same rights and that all humans do not bear the same responsibilities to those animals, we would create a privileged class of animal abusers by subordinating the rights of animals to the interests of those who harm them, undermining the central tenet of the animal protection movement and leaving animals in danger. That is something we should never do.

Contradicting herself later, Montford lauds legal efforts to appoint guardians in cruelty cases because they acknowledge that animals have interests independent of the people they are connected to. But she then argues they should not be enforced because they exclude most animals, including hunted wild animals and animals raised and killed to be eaten. From the moment they are born to the moment their necks are slit, the vast majority of “farmed” animals will experience lives of unremitting torment. They will know neither contentment, respite, safety, happiness, or kindness. Instead, they will live a short life characterized by inescapable discomfort, social deprivation, the thwarting of every natural instinct, and constant stress, all punctuated by moments of pain, terror, and, eventually, an untimely and brutal death. Indeed, the exploitation, abuse, and killing of animals for food is the single greatest source of human-caused suffering on the planet, yet it is legal.

As normative and legal changes almost always involve tackling evils one at a time, thereby setting a precedent and reducing tolerance for animal cruelty, the obvious answer is to work to prohibit that conduct. Montford, however, would have us do the opposite: decriminalize the abuse of companion animals until all animals, including animals in laboratories, wild animals, and “farmed” animals, are likewise protected. That means “we would simply permit all manner of animal cruelty, on the theory that there is no principled distinction between what we currently permit and what we currently prohibit.” Not only would any progress for animals be impossible, but we’d also have to undo the progress we’ve already made.

But while Montford rightly accuses society of being selective about the animals they care about, she, too, is guilty of this. CRT academics have no problem with hunting wild animals or abusing animals who will be eaten, so long as those doing the hunting or abusing are “marginalized.” They have defended the harpooning of whales and clubbing of seals because of “native cosmologies.” They have claimed that animals want to die and do not mind suffering when they do if the hunter is “Indigenous.” They even apply dual standards when it comes to dogs, such as arguing against prosecuting abusers like Michael Vick, claiming black dog fighters are the real “victims.” To Montford, Zeus’ interests are entirely subordinate to those of Michael Beaver, the man responsible for his suffering and death. Again, she cannot have it both ways.

So what does Montford propose as an alternative to enforcement of cruelty laws? Montford advocates for roleplaying, where someone ostensibly pretends to be the animal or a veterinarian represents the interests of the animal and explains to the abuser “the physical and psychological impact of the harm experienced by the animal”… Since crime and enforcement are inversely proportional to one another — the greater the enforcement, the lower the crime and vice-versa — if we don’t want the crime, we need to vote accordingly. It is simple cause and effect. As humans, we have choices. Animals are not so lucky. SOURCE…

RELATED VIDEO: