The Minority Report

Getting help can be tough

Caring for pets within the community can often place additional stress on families. There are fewer veterinary services in urban, lower-class neighborhoods. And when humane groups mount spay/neuter and vaccination clinics, they often report that the interest is lacking. But rarely do they examine the fundamental reason that attendance might not be overwhelming.

"People work," says Miller. "So if you only have services during working hours, they can't get there. Or you may be open on Saturday, but if people work Monday through Friday, then Saturday is the day to do laundry, cooking, cleaning. That makes it difficult.

"At my clinic, we used to do spay/neuter surgeries for free. We subsidized it to that degree. I would have people literally begging me for appointments and then they wouldn't keep them. I used to be furious about that. We'd call them the night before and confirm appointments. But a lot of times other things happened in people's lives that took precedence.

"It doesn't mean they don't care about the pets, but if you are planning to bring the dog to the vet today and your child gets sick and has to stay home from school, you have to stay home with the child. It's little things that disrupt people's lives, that throw a poor person's life into chaos, whereas if it was somebody else, there might be other options open to them."

Miller suggests that animal welfare groups get a sense of the needs of the community and alter shelter hours to provide greater access - like keeping the shelter open Saturday and Sunday, and having spay/neuter clinics available in the evening.

And drop the buzzwords!

In advancing the struggle for animal rights, humane groups often equate the animals' cause to the abolition of slavery and then the civil rights movement of the 60s. While this might appeal to a white audience, it sparks complex emotions in the black community, particularly in the South where, for generations, African Americans were likened to animals. ("Monkeys" was a regular moniker.)

In an article in Animal People, journalist Merritt Clifton examines what happened when animal rights philosopher Tom Regan co-opted Dr. Martin Luther King's famous I Have a Dream speech for the 1990 March for the Animals in Washington D.C.

Regan in no way intended to offend. But, writes Clifton, "he might have first considered the words of W. B. Allen, then chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who objected to the implied analogy: 'Now that we have finally recognized that American blacks have rights, we need to do the same for animals.'

"As Allen saw it, this analogy 'threatens to undermine all we have accomplished in the way of articulating and safeguarding a common standard of citizenship. It irresistibly draws the mind to assimilate the status of blacks to that of animals - as a mere project of charity, of humaneness, in the society at large.'"

Whether or not whites make that association themselves (and most likely they don't) is of little consequence. It strikes a very wrong note in a community that already feels that their place in society still isn't truly equal.

And those cultural misunderstandings and cultural fears are undermining the core mission: to ensure that all animals everywhere can live in a happy, safe, caring environment with people who respect and love them.

"The humane community needs to look at it not as a black or white issue, or who isn't involved," says Noel. "It's for the animals. It's for the ones without voices. That's the message that needs to be conveyed, and that's a message that needs to incorporate everyone."

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