Minority Report

Dealing with the real issues

If antipathy toward altering animals can be overcome with close work in the community, what's not so easily achieved is access to necessary medical care.

Eight years ago, Mike Kaufman was in Denver undertaking a research project within Mexican communities. He began asking Mexican families about pet ownership and their lifestyles.

"We found that most members of that community did factory shift work. They started at 7:30 in the morning and didn't get off until after five o'clock," recalls Kaufman. "The Denver public bus system didn't serve the community very well, and most people didn't have reliable cars. Some of the large humane groups offered low-cost spay/neuter, but the people couldn't get there. And people were nervous about going outside of their neighborhood because many of them didn't speak English. So yes, the services were available, but it wasn't very easy to take advantage of them."

Kaufman helped set up a vaccination clinic in the community with a mobile vehicle going in. It worked well - but for another reason that no one had thought of.

"The key person on the program was the director of the seniors' group. Seniors are the ones who give confidence and approval to things in Hispanic communities. So it ended up being one of the most successful vaccination clinics that had ever been held. People were lining up with their cats and dogs.

Kaufman says that the simple reality is that "most people have lots of misconceptions, lots of prejudice. And that's natural. People say 'Oh, I treat everybody the same. I am color blind.' But everybody has prejudices. We all have deeply ingrained preconceptions about other people. The moment a woman walks into a room, you judge her based on what she's wearing, based on how she's talking, based on her hairstyle, based on a whole lot of criteria. That's human nature. So you have to realize that you yourself have been shaped by your own set of circumstances. And then you say 'Okay, they're different and they come from different backgrounds. I come from a certain background. Now let's get past that and start finding the commonalities. Let's get the business done.'"

Cruelty isn't macho

One area of increasing concern among animal welfare people is the rising level of animal abuse within both the Hispanic and African American communities. Young men who feel little control over their own destinies often turn to dogs to present a macho image to the world - an air of danger and invincibility.

The dogs of choice are pit bulls and Rottweilers, trained to fight or display aggression. And often the training itself is abusive. But here again, a lack of understanding leads to missed opportunities.

"When teenagers are sentenced for animal cruelty," says Kaufman, "the court will often impose community service at the animal shelter. That can either be a very good experience or a very bad one. Ask people in the Hispanic community about animal control and the humane society, and they'll often tell you that they are crazy white people! Now, these boys find themselves doing community service at the animal shelter, and the first thing that happens is that everybody at the shelter thinks that they are the scum of the earth for abusing animals. Then their supervisor is a woman who speaks nothing but English. If she's a younger woman, there's a challenge for these teenage boys to accept her as an authority figure. And the woman starts out feeling negatively toward these kids, so it sets up barriers immediately, and from that point on, it can get worse. Then the kids are put to the worst tasks possible. No effort is made to show them what is really going on at the shelter. That's the worst-case scenario.

"The best-case scenario is that the kids come to do their community service, and somebody understands where they are coming from and starts working with them with some understanding, hopefully speaking Spanish, setting up the animal experience successfully, showing the kids that caring about animals is a good thing, an accepted thing in the U.S., and it's not a punishment but an educational opportunity.

Whichever experience they have will be the basis on which they view animal care from then on."

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next