The Michael Vick case: Echoes of O.J.

Like most other Americans, I am not a fan of Dog or cock fights. I first heard of them as a child growing up in Hawaii, where they occurred with a fair amount of regularity. They idea of breeding something to fight to it's death seems pointless and as such,unneccessarily cruel.

But I am not a lover of the indoor mutt either. (Wake up America! The dark ages are over; We don't have to co-habitate with filty beasts anymore. :) ) I think this gives me a less biased view on the Michael Vick debate.



I will not be discussing the legal ramifications of the Vick suit, because they are pretty straightfoward. Vick has been charged with having some involvement with the dog fighting enterprise that was occurring on one of his properties. Unlike others, I am not real interested in trying to overturn his conviction in the court of public opinion. He will have his day in real court. If he is innocent or his lawyers are quite convincing, he will be found innocent. If not, he will likely do time.

That is all very straight forward. Nothing more to discuss.


It is everything else that intests me about this, not the least the racist overtones and origins of the national interest in this. One animal loving democratic member of congress (apparently a former official in the KKK, no less) has said
he would be OK if Vick were assasinated over this. Another Democratic leader has asked the NFL to suspend Vick until the case comes to a close. (Both instances are great examples of political oppportunism as Vick has few meaningful political ties and therefore no congressional advocate = political profit and no political backlash.) One blogger rightly posted that Michael Vick has replaced OJ as the most hated man in America (I personally would argue "White America", but he's probably right as is too.).

Earl O. Hutchinson
wrote a piece that accurately covers a lot of the shared ground with the O.J. trial and the unfair treatment of African Americans in U.S. courts. Even if you got tired head with Black America's constant defending of O.J., you may find his article interesting and eye opening.

I am going to deal with things not addressed in his article. These interest me and it all dovetails into a talk I was having with some friends about this controversy. They made some interesting points that have me thinking about this whole thing from a different perspective.

One of my friends is Puerto Rican and the other one I was speaking with is from Viet Nam. Both expressed to me that dog fighting (and cock fighting) are considered acceptable sports in their homelands. They have friends who participate in Dog and cock fighting and as such have some sympathy towards Vick, even though they acknowledge the law is the law. They would favor a slap on the hands or a fine and are more than a little taken back by the anti-Vick response this case has generated. While my friends are American and do not participate in the sport themselves, they raise the question of culture influencing perception.

In America, our laws are primarily proclamations of white culture (the group with the money to buy votes and influence) applied to the rest of us. I think white America looks at this whole dog fighting thing and sees their house dog forced to fight for their life. That is where the passion against Vick originates, IMO.

That is quite far cry from what apparently usually goes on in these dog fighting enclaves. House dogs are the product of 1000's of years of breeding mild tempered animals. Wild feral dogs were often killed removing them from those genepools.

These dogs are bred for meanness. From what I understand the female dogs are often so vicious that the fertilization process is not at all normal---even for dogs. The human equivilant would be if the govenment started breeding insane humans.

These dogs that were seized from the Vick house --- what will happen to them? Do you think they will be given to some family with young children? I could be wrong, but I suspect these animals will either spend most of the rest of their lives in solitary confinement or will be put down.

These are not house pets. I suspect these may be a lot closer to wild feral dogs, which society has always put down.



I heard a black caller make a compairison of Horse racing to dog fighting in regards to this case. It isn't a perfect equality, but it is not a meaningless compairison and it gets to the heart of the racial undertones in the Vick case. Horse racing is a sport involving animals selectively bred to excell in the sport and pushed to their limits --- sometimes resulting in the animals having to be put to sleep. Dog fighting is a sport involving animals selectively bred to excell in the sport and pushed to their limits to kill other dogs.

In both sports, owners express pride in their animals' acheivements. In both sports owners claim to love their animals and express that their animals are doing what they are born to do.

White America likes/is tolerant of horse racing. I think it isn't a stretch to say that some of brown America (latinos, Asians, islanders) is tolerant of dog (and cock) fighting.

White America will argue that horses are not intentionally injured in horse racing. I would counter that horses are made to run as fast as they possibly can while carrying a human. I am no Vet, but with my rudimentary knowledge of science, I would strongly suspect those horses' chances of suffering a fatal broken leg would be greatly reduced if the horses weren't carrying a guy on their backs.

White America will argue that their owners feel remorse when a horst suffers a fatal injury. A cynic would argue there is no difference between their remorse and the remorse an owner of a champion dog or cock would feel at their animal's passing.


O.J. divided America because you had a black man allegedly killing his white wife. Interracial relationships between whites and other races and especially between white women and other races have always been looked at as taboo by white America. There is a perception that white women chase danger in dating men of other races. O.J. allegedly killing his white wife was fuel for the justification of that belief. (In a side note, that view may not be totally dead. I went to an estate sale at a white home in Denton with my girlfriend yesterday --- she is white, I am mixed --- and we both independently noted the many uncomfortable gazes at us. We are normally pretty oblivious to that kind of thing, so it was pretty obvious.)

I think the Vick case is another that teeters on a larger division between white America and the rest of America. White America sees dogs as family members and therefore seems to be valueing this activity as if it were an attack on family. (European white couples have moved in large numbers to having pets instead of children. American whites seem to be trending that way as well. Is this the origin of the valuation of pets as family members?) The rest of America seems a lot more divided on the place of dogs and therefore seems more willing to let the courts decide Vick's fate. I think a good chunk of minority America sees dogs as tools. Guard dogs, possessions, breeding stock; Assets not to be wasted to be sure, but not family members.