# The stupid rumors about Springfield Haitians **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 13, 2024, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210 "2024-09-13T04:48:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Cool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cool)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/41 "2024-09-13T17:17:39Z")
To be fair, I posted that article since there was a conversation about immigrants eating cats in the parent thread. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/42 "2024-09-13T17:19:33Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Not this “eating pets” nonsense the kids are spreading now “Your day” must not have been the 70s, because back then, it was the Chinese food restaurants that were catching the cats for food. The only thing new in racism is which group the racists tell their lies about. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/43 "2024-09-13T17:39:54Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > “Your day” must not have been the 70s, because back then, it was the Chinese food restaurants that were catching the cats for food. And in the 80s, it was ALF. ---
**Author:** ![Tatterdemalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tatterdemalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tatterdemalion)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/44 "2024-09-13T17:45:29Z")
Actually, I was thinking of this quote from ol’ Bill Buckley. > **[A quote by William F. Buckley Jr.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/732749-a-conservative-is-someone-who-stands-athwart-history-yelling-stop)** > > A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who s... ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/45 "2024-09-13T17:48:59Z")
> [@bump](#): > > No… the classical definition was more or less that they are saying “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”, and being generally skeptical of change, especially change for change’s sake. With an especial blindness that something is “broken” only if it’s broken for them personally, not for other people. Plus of course the idea that something merely adequate could and therefore should be made better is anathema to them. Which is how “change in the measured service of improvement” gets conjugated by them into “change for change’s sake; IOW busywork for government busybodies.” Once the conservative movement redefines all the words in seemingly innocuous sentences, suddenly they’re not innocuous in meaning at all. ---
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/46 "2024-09-13T18:08:55Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > Chinese food restaurants that were catching the cats for food. A while back, when Vietnamese food was still a novelty in the Midwest, a local Vietnamese restaurant was located right next to a pets’ spay and neuter clinic. I can’t imagine that helped their business. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/47 "2024-09-13T18:31:17Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > “Your day” must not have been the 70s, because back then, it was the Chinese food restaurants that were catching the cats for food. Yeah, I still remember getting into a minor argument with somebody in High School over that. Instead of just another teen making a tasteless joke (which, whatever) they were seriously complaining about a Chinese restaurant serving cat meat to him. Based on nothing but his not being able to identify chunks of pork because he was a dumb shit. Rumors like this are pernicious when some of your audience don’t have half a brain to think things out. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/48 "2024-09-13T18:38:38Z")
Or Taco Bell (or McDonalds or whoever) serving horse meat instead of beef. People want to believe stupid shit, so they do. Easier than actually giving anything a moment of thought. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/49 "2024-09-13T18:52:51Z")
Ehh, that sort of thing actually has happened. However, the restaurants weren’t intentionally doing it, they were fooled by the supplier. > **[Australian meat substitution scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_meat_substitution_scandal)** > > The Australian meat substitution scandal of 1981 involved the widespread substitution of horse meat and kangaroo meat for beef in Australia. While the substitution primarily affected meat exported overseas, particularly to the United States, further investigations revealed that these as well as donkey meat and pet food had been packaged for human consumption and non-halal meat sold as halal meat domestically in Australia as well. > Claims that meat processing companies in Victoria were substituti... ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/50 "2024-09-13T19:15:50Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > “Your day” must not have been the 70s, because back then, it was the Chinese food restaurants that were catching the cats for food. > > The only thing new in racism is which group the racists tell their lies about. Just highlighting this. This is a well-known and widely studied urban legend. It is absolutely anti-immigrant, and in the 70s was weaponized against the wave of Vietnamese immigrants, as it had been used against the Chinese before that. What people are actually eating or not eating is immaterial. People are saying, “well, we don’t actually know,” but yes, we do: this is not factual, and even if not believed, the narratives feed anti-immigrant sentiment. “Stories of Vietnamese eating pets supported the belief that the refugees were using up residents’ share of good depriving them of what was rightfully theirs—whether pets, jobs, or sanitary food supplies. Simultaneously, tales of degrading acts marked the immigrants as socially inferior, requiring segregation from the rest of society.” Michael Owen Jones, “What’s Disgusting, Why, and What Does It Matter?,” _Journal of Folklore Research_ 37:1 (Jan.–Apr., 2000), pp. 53-71, [What's Disgusting, Why, and What Does It Matter? on JSTOR](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3814665), quote from p. 65. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/51 "2024-09-13T19:23:54Z")
I remember when Wendy’s served worms as burgers. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/52 "2024-09-13T19:29:16Z")
Well it’s come full circle. A Vietnamese-American coworker, an actual very proud boat person, was enraged that we were joking about this. I guess that’s assimilation that she idealizes. To join the in-group she turning literally the same calumny on the next group of desperate immigrants. This is the same person who insisted that someone chasing her and screaming “Go back to China” was not racial abuse, but a legitimate political gripe about the Chinese government’s actions in re COVID. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/53 "2024-09-13T19:31:09Z")
Hatemongering is what today’s far right does. It’s their thing. They hire people who make their livings spreading hate in all its forms to dredge up scandalous lies about anybody they see as vulnerable. Trump’s campaign team has at least three very well-known people who profit from this filth online and who will end up on his White House staff if he’s elected. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/54 "2024-09-13T19:31:23Z")
Trump’s future in politics may be over, but as a [songwriter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BrCvZmSnKA), he’s got potential! 🐕 🐈 ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/55 "2024-09-13T19:46:54Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I mean, these people go and propose the 1950s and 1960s as the ideal, as if it was all white picket fences, jobs for everyone, crew cuts, clean shaves, poodle skirts and all that stuff. It wasn’t- there were slums, unemployment, long hair, beards, orgies, drugs, gay people, etc… They just weren’t actually visible back then like they are now. Sometimes I think that what people are actually remembering when they fantasize about, say, the 1950s, has more to do with the idyllic sitcoms of the era than with actual life back them. _Father Knows Best_ literally had most of those good things you list, including the white picket fence. What’s interesting is that even though the show portrays a highly idealized picture-perfect life, today we’d perceive a lot of negative factors even in that completely whitewashed supposed Utopia. For example, misogyny was rampant, disguised as a well-meaning doctrine that a woman’s place was in the kitchen. Minorities were scarcer than hens’ teeth, and where they existed (e.g.- the Andersons’ Mexican gardener Frank) they zealously abandoned their heritage in their quest to become “real Americans” (i.e. white). Blacks were nowhere to be found at all. There’s also a great film called _Far From Heaven_ (2002) that deals with some of these issues. Set in the 1950s, it’s beautifully filmed in vibrant colours to underscore the supposed idyllic nostalgia. The couple is seemingly perfect, the husband with an executive job, the wife a happy homemaker with an active social life. It soon falls apart when the husband turns out to be a closet homosexual who can no longer repress his true feelings, and the despondent wife befriends a Black man with the consequences you’d expect in the 1950s. All of that said, some things were indeed better or at least simpler back then. But for the most part the bad significantly outweighed the good. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/56 "2024-09-13T19:48:51Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > The orange idiot is going to get people hurt. _is going to?_ ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/57 "2024-09-13T19:57:54Z")
Remember, if you push back too hard on this “news” you’ll trigger fragile white people to have to vote for Trump. Let’s meet “halfway” and admit the fears are well founded and that immigrants should do a better job of convincing white people that they won’t eat their pets. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/58 "2024-09-13T20:08:24Z")
> [@Chingon](#): > > Let’s meet “halfway” and admit the fears are well founded The real problem is, there are real problems in Springfield, because you get those sorts of problems any time an existing community sees a sudden influx of new people, no matter who those new people are. You could have 20,000 white rural Republicans move there over the course of 4 or 5 years, and housing costs would still climb, school attendance would still increase, and city and state services would still lag trying to keep up with these changes. But the racists don’t want to address those real problems, because they would require real solutions. Better to just rant about a bunch of cat-eating immigrants. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/59 "2024-09-13T20:09:03Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > > [@bump](#): > > > > I mean, these people go and propose the 1950s and 1960s as the ideal, as if it was all white picket fences, jobs for everyone, crew cuts, clean shaves, poodle skirts and all that stuff. It wasn’t- there were slums, unemployment, long hair, beards, orgies, drugs, gay people, etc… They just weren’t actually visible back then like they are now. > > Sometimes I think that what people are actually remembering when they fantasize about, say, the 1950s, has more to do with the idyllic sitcoms of the era than with actual life back them. _Father Knows Best_ literally had most of those good things you list, including the white picket fence. > > … > > All of that said, some things were indeed better or at least simpler back then. But for the most part the bad significantly outweighed the good. As someone who grew up in the '50s, in an upper-middle-class, _Leave it to Beaver_ bubble (my father, on whom be peace, was a doctor), I can attest to both of the above. It wasn’t until I was in (a Jesuit) high school that I began to see the underside of the society I lived in — the bubble was that pervasive. While I won’t (and can’t) apologize for the caste I was born into, I’ve spent most of my adult life at least trying to help those who weren’t so fortunate get a rung or two up the ladder. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2024, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210/60 "2024-09-13T20:16:59Z")
It’s hard not to repeat myself (ourselves) when Trump has only the single page in his playbook: _“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”_ –Lyndon B. Johnson “Hold my beer (Diet Coke).” –Donald J. Trump And it doesn’t _have to be_ a ‘colored’ man. Just anybody that’s either traditionally a minority, a member of a vulnerable population, or ‘the other.’ _“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you: [Donald Trump] is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, …”_ – “The American President” Trump and the other RW surrogate ‘opinion leaders’ are horrid disgusting people, but the notion that there is _substantial demand_ for this rankest form of demagoguery is profoundly disheartening. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-stupid-rumors-about-springfield-haitians/1007210.md?page=4)