Tagging alq
Fur manufacturers may start labeling ho
J. J. HARDER is a senior
political science and
broadcasting major and a
Daily Nebraskan colum
nist
All right, fellow members of
academia, it’s time for a vacation.
It’s the middle of winter, we’re just
beginning to feel the semester’s
first wave of tests, and spring
break is far, far away. So your
buddy J. J. is about to magically
whisk you away to an exotic loca
tion.
How does Beverly Hills sound
to you? Sunny skies, expensive
cars, plastic surgery-altered faces
and Robin Leach’s voice in the
background wherever you go.
So we’re rolling in our Benz
down Rodeo Drive, passing by all
the lavish retailers, and you notice
a fine fur coat in the window. Now
you know if you’re in Beverly
Hills, you’ve got to have a fuir, so
let’s go inside.
You skip over the low-budget
rabbit, the old-woman styles and
the ’70s pimp getups, then find the
perfect mink. The feel is good and
the fit is right, and since this is an
imaginary trip, we actually have
the funds to flash for the ftir.
But before you hand over the
skin to be sacked, you notice an
extra tag hanging from the arm of
the coat. You expect it to say
“Made in Ghana” or “See Reverse
Side For Care,” but instead it says
in huge bold lettering:
CONSUMER NOTICE: This
product was made with fur from
animals that may have been killed
by electrocution, gassing, neck
breaking, poisoning, clubbing,
stomping or drowning, and may
have been trapped in a steel-jaw
leghold trap.
And then we realize that the
vacation is just a dream, because
you’d never see something like this
in real life. Right?
Back to reality, folks. Allow m<
to introduce you to the proposal
actually being presented by the
Beverly Hills Consumers for
Informed Choices, or IDIOTS for
short. They want to place these
tags on furs because the animals
are treated unethically before they
die, and people don’t know about
it.
Luke Montgomery, the group’s
' spokesman, says, “It’s not about
animal rights, it’s about giving cus
tomers the right to make up their
own minds.”
So I guess they have no real
problem with how the animals are
killed, they just want all the rich
Californians to know what they’re
buying and how it arrived in their
hands. The fur industry doesn’t
hide the way they kill the critters,
but the retailers seem to fib a bit
and say they are killed “humanely.”
“We just don’t want them to lie
to people that are spending thou
sands of dollars on coats,”
Montgomery said.
Well, no matter what
Montgomery and his ward of liber
al hooligans preach, the problem, in
Beverly Hills won’t be fixed with
tags that scream scare-tactic propa
ganda. People will stop buying
these furs after they understand
that killing them is wrong.
100 oaa mere isn i anymmg
wrong with killing them! The
Bible tells us we have dominion
over the animals of the Earth, but
let’s not argue the morality of ani
mal killing - we should analyze the
actual absurdity of the entire issue.
Let’s apply this “tell-me-how-it
got-here-on-a-tag” concept to the
extreme. If a dead fox gets a tag for
a fur, then a dead pig should get
one for a pork chop. (We’re defi
nitely equal-opportunity.)
So I go to Super Saver before a
barbecue to load up on some
chops. I better see more on the
plastic than just a “97% fat free”
sticker. There better be a tag that
tells me not only how it was killed,
but every detail associated with the
process. It should say the hog was
raised in Atlantic, Iowa, by a man
named Fritz, what kind of feed it
ate, how many other pigs it was
raised with and how big it got
before it was sent to slaughter.
Then it better say which IBP it,
was shipped to, who stunned it to
, death, who skinned it and how it
was cut up.
To be completely
thorough, I better know
who the guy was that
cleaned up the feces
from the factory floor. It
should conclude with a
detailed description of
how it got from IBP to my grocer’s
refrigerator. (Including a compre
hensive guide to the deliverer’s dri
ving habits.)
Then we may finally be able to
purchase quality consumer prod
ucts with knowledge of the item’s
origin and death - and this would
apply to furs, chops, clothes and
KFC. That’s what these Beverly
Hills wackos want - for the
consumers to know not only
the facts, but the history of
the product novel-style.
And it seems that the citi
zens of Beverly Hills are
actually supporting this
whole tag scheme.
Seventeen percent of
the population there
signed a petition
to get the ini
tiative on the May
11 ballot. (That’s
more people than
those who voted
for the cur
rent mayor!)
But if you, citizens
of civilized America, feel this pro
posal is as much of a farce as I do
(and don’t want to start tagging
dead animals willy-nilly), then
maybe we should take a perma
nent vacation to the Hills and slap
some sense into these people.
Just be sure to get regis- a
teretfto vote by May 11. Jp
SZ^^Shaw^' Drapal/DN
The name game
Identifying people by group, not individuality, leads to bigotry and misperceptions
JAY GISH is a senior broad
casting major and Daily
Nebraskan columnist
Prejudice and bigotry of many
sorts seem always to lurk just beneath
the Surface of our interactions with
others.
-from the introduction to
“Bigotry, Prejudice and Hatred,”
Edited by Robert M. Baird.
This could hardly be truer.
We can and should be happy that
much of the hateful bigotry that was
once the norm in our nation has been
overcome. Not allt>f it, but a lot.
The next problem, as many people
other than myself have said, is to com
bat the deeper prejudices that lurk
where we often can’t see them.
The common bigotry of current
society can effectively be called by
another name: “groupism.” (It’s not in
the dictionary — let’s just say I coined
the term.) I feel safe saying every one
of us has been guilty of it, in repeat
numbers. And defeating it may make
the fight against outright hatred seem
easy. Let me explain.
I was recently annoyed by the loud
talking of a white male, seemingly not
too different from myself. I immedi
ately thought, “Why does he have to
be so loud?” Common response,
right?
Another time, I was annoyed by
the loud talking of someone who was
obviously an international student.
This time I said to myself, “Why do
they have to be so loud?”
Catch the minuscule difference?
Both perpetrators were talking to
other people, yet I identified the white
student as an individual, and the for
eign student as merely one of a group.
I did this immediately, and completely
without malice.
But that “they” I used to name the
international student has a wealth of
implications, whether or not I ever
directly visit those implications in my
mind.
It implies thinking of the person as
a “foreigner” and “alien.” It also just
as easily encompasses lots of racial
and ethnic slurs - even though I might
never completely form those phrases
myself.
I had taken the easy yet disrespect
ful way of dealing with another person
in my mind. Even though categorizing
him that way held no advantage for
me; even though what groups he
might be part of didn’t apply in any
way to this situation, I had grouped
him.
This is actually a form of bigotry.
It’s the quiet beginning to attaching all
sorts of qualities to those groups, and
then easily pegging those qualities
onto anyone whom I perceive to be in
that group. That’s not fair to anyone.
Nevertheless, it is incredibly prac
tical.
You can think a person from L.A.
is a gang member, and never have that
assumption challenged. You can
patently think of homosexuals as
“sick” or “freaks.”
It makes life easier. You might
never be burdened with thinking about
them as individual people.
If you told me to think of people I
know who are minorities, I could form
a picture of several people in my
mind. But I guarantee you, there are
others who would fit that description
that I would never think of.
Those are people who are close
friends or co-workers — people I’ve
had to get to know. And I’m no longer
capable of just shoving them into a
group, because I know too much
about them.
Once I’m aware of their personal
hopes, their daily trials, it just doesn’t
make sense to try to label them any
more. That’s why their parents gave
them a name.
Now, consider the bothersome
international student I mentioned
above.
What if I had been forced some
how to think about what guts it took
for him to study in a foreign nation?
What if I had been forced to sit and
watch his whole life up to this point on
a movie reel? I’d know his family, his
home, his private moments.
And it would be so damned much
work to think about that calling him
anything but his name would feel like
cheating myself.
I’m sort of perplexed by the PC
trend of renaming various minority
groups. You can change the erstwhile
term “Indian” to “Native American.”
You can go from “gays” to “homosex
uals” (or various others ) No matter
what letters make up the name, it’s just
another handle for us to use to throw
people into a faceless, inhuman pile.
I have an acquaintance whose
family came from the nation of India.
I was told she became upset because
people tended not to recognize her as
an Asian. *
That’s no surprise. It would be a
novel idea for most of us to think of
“Asian” as a purely geographic term
rather than an ethnic one. and would
be just as unusual for some people to
realize that India is part of the conti
nent of Asia (on your gh >be at least—
not geologically speaking).
But I wash this woman would
think about how thoughtlessly we can
toss her into whatever group we
choose, regardless of her preference.
Maybe she’d decide not to fiiel
“groupism,” the bigotry of conve
nience.
Maybe she’d really just like us to
know her name.