Vance said Haitians are stealing and eating people's dogs, which is an another version of the racist myth of Chinese restaurants stealing neighborhood cats to cook from when I was a kid.
I can't find a tight synopsis, but here's what I've sponged....
Story originated about 48 hrs ago from one of those proven russian-right-wing-influencer shites that took an actual event elsewhere in OH, where a black (not haitian) woman AMERICAN was charged (turns out it was her brother, a registered republican), and it rabbit-holed from there.
Springfield, OH police had to deny everything.....
Oh man. OK, so as usual the bullshit started on Facebook.
It's worth noting NONE of this actually happened, but FB gonna FB.
A post went up about a missing cat in Springfield, Ohio followed by an update that the cat had been found, hung by a tree for butchering, in the back yard of Haitian immigrants.
An account for the local police "confirmed" the story and mentioned that they are doing the same for ducks and geese at the local pond.
Not sure how it originated, but trump at the debate said that migrants are eating the pets of Springfield residents.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Our politicians aren’t dog-whistling racism to win racist votes in a calculated game. They’re just racist. And realizing that is for the best. After all, the euphemisms politicians use are never just euphemisms. When racist white people talk about “the schools” or “the neighborhood,” those aren’t stand-ins for something deeper and more nefarious: Those are the deeper and more nefarious things, the load-bearing pillars of structural racism. This speech isn’t coded so much as it’s loaded.
Pretty much says all that needs to be said about it.
Back in the late 70's, my dad ran the local branch of the Humane Society, which, at the time, was responsible for all animal control duties within the city limits of our town. During that time, our area had a big influx of Vietnamese immigrants settling in. The amount of calls that came in accusing our new immigrant neighbors of stealing and eating dogs was unreal. Dad was a special deputy tasked with investigating animal cruelty cases, so he would look into these at first, but there was never any solid evidence that it ever actually happened, and they eventually just started ignoring the calls. I have to imagine that a lot of them were probably just racially motivated attempts at harassment...