Postscript: It’s time to protest, and out the lie.. I don’t know the colleges where the professors responsible for illogical thinking teach ( I can look it up ) but if it is possible to audit their classes online and ask a lot of impertinent questions about their impertinent claims that could actually be a lot of fun. And ask important questions: When a parrot is speaking does she/he/they understand what they are saying? That was once the purpose of court jesters. And then on the student class recommendations, that could be fun too. I learned a lot about nothing today. I came for the sherry and stayed for the lecture. I’ll have a sherry and hemlock please. That is the state of animal academia now.
To think such insane nonsense, based on feelings and opinion, spewed by “professors” is tolerated, is in itself, bizarre and insane — corroborating one’s thoughts as a “professor” would help, but “professors” give NOTHING — such people are a danger to Society.
The death of critical thinking in academia is tragic because that’s where one pays to learn critical thinking and tragically laughable because that’s where one goes now to lean into bias towards publish or perish. When a professor includes his/her book on a student’s reading list, the question is is it a trick to teach logical thinking or a bid for praise? How can you learn? What is abundantly clear is the crisis in academia where teaching isn’t prized, just how many times you can ride that publish or perish pony around the track.
The statement by Ouer and Robinson “Strangely Hesitant about Anti-Blackness” that shelter adoptions delays are the result of “white, middle class women[ sexist] who staff shelters refusing to adopt to black people and that delays in adopting pit bulls -who are the ‘animalization of Blackness’ [ an insulting statement] to white households result from what they termed temperance [ temperament ] tests…” is shocking in its blatant stupidity and desperation. What is true now in many academic houses and government public shelters is that any term now can be twisted to serve an evil master, its opposite. In Multnomah county honoring the Equity lens means no questions asked and abusers and those who neglect and can’t afford the care animals they adopt for low cost ( $25 most of the time) are free to go out the door. Equity doesn’t include any thought for an animal’s rights to equitable care.
“Equity doesn’t include any thought for an animal’s rights to equitable care.”
Exactly right.
In their claims about shelter workers and “pit bulls,” Ouer and Robinson cite Katja Guenther, a professor of race and gender studies, at the University of California at Riverside.
In her book, Guenther criticizes rescuers for wanting to adopt dogs to “those who will treat their dog as a family member and have the financial means to care for their dog at a high level for the duration of the dog’s life, for example by providing specialty-brand food, toys and beds, and extensive veterinary care should any illness of injury occur.” She claims these are “white” values, and thus, rescuers are using “the animals as instruments for reproducing whiteness.”
Rescuers and shelters have an obligation to the vulnerable animals they serve to ensure those animals are not placed in harm’s way. This can and should be done using standards that don’t focus on a potential adopter’s skin color but on their ability to provide for an animal’s physical and mental health. Glossing over this obvious point, Guenther suggests that rescuers and shelters are obligated to place animals into knowingly unstable situations (which she problematically equates with skin color) or engage in the greater harm: racist behavior.
Guenther, Ouer, and Robinson have it backward. Some ways of relating to animals are better than others. Determining which does not start with the skin color of the person the animal is connected to but objective norms rooted in the animal’s biology and Enlightenment values, including the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
These are not white values; they are ways of relating to animals that increase the well-being of dogs and cats and, therefore, should be afforded to all of them, irrespective of the ethnicity, gender, race, or class of the human with whom they live.
Equity for animals is just about the universal values, compassion, kindness, and the responsibility to not place the helpless in harm’s way. I don’t understand why that’s so hard to agree upon or why those universal values have been so diabolically perverted towards personal gain. Can’t professors make an honest living?
Words today are being turned inside out stretched beyond recognition for ulterior motives. The Equity lens at MCAS, Multnomah County’s public shelter is one example. Mistranslated it legitimizes harm .Fig and Petunia, two gentle Border Collies are both presumed dead after being adopted over the protests of the adoption counselor to someone on other rescues “Do not adopt list.” There was no due diligence investigation after their deaths. It was covered over. All that matters are adoption numbers, cloaked under misdeeds, not the welfare of the adopted animals. If adoptions don’t work out send them back, dead or alive. Only the animals lose . .
Link -
Uncertain fate of 2 gentle dogs signals ongoing problems at Multnomah County animal shelter
There are many additional cases. Dogs go out the door daily to anyone with $25, unspayed , un neutered with a voucher for sterilization that only 60% accessed last year, this year 40%, never mind the care they receive. Low fees are linked to returns making a lie of free or nearly free dogs are “just as loved.”
At MCAS the Equity Lens has become a cover for animal neglect. It is the only way they know how to place animals by having no standards at all; subtracting value not adding it as they hide behind catch phrases.
Never stop calling subversion out lest a hidden crime become normalized. Looking away going along to get along is what led to the massive extermination of different religious and ethnic groups and in the end of morality. Ken Saro Wiwa, a Nigerian activist ordered killed for the power of his words wrote silence would be treason. It was James Baldwin who when asked where hope comes from said we have to re-invent it every day and John Stewart, who said hope comes not from government but from ordinary people: three persons across race and generations with so much in common who care about social justice . I don’t know why social justice is so difficult to achieve but keep on keeping on. What is the choice? If not today, tomorrow decency and kindness will win. Don’t be afraid of the dark.
There are many additional cases. Dogs go out the door daily to anyone with $25, unspayed , un neutered with a voucher for sterilization that only 60% accessed last year, this year 40%.
At MCAS the Equity Lens has become a cover for animal neglect. It is the only way they know how to place animals by having no standards at all; subtracting value not adding it as they hide behind catch phrases. Never stop calling subversion out lest a hidden crime become normalized. Looking away going along to get along is what led to the massive extermination of different religious and ethnic groups and in the end of morality. Ken Saro Wiwa, a Nigerian activist ordered killed for the power of his words wrote silence would be treason. It was James Baldwin who when asked where hope comes from said we have to re-invent it every day and John Stewart, who said hope comes not from government but from ordinary people: three persons with so much in common who care about social justice . I don’t know why social justice is so difficult to achieve. Keep on keeping on. If not today, tomorrow decency and kindness will win. Don’t be afraid of the dark.
I hate this. Thank you, Nathan for being a voice for these babies.
Great article Nathan and spot on as usual. I hope you are well.
Postscript: It’s time to protest, and out the lie.. I don’t know the colleges where the professors responsible for illogical thinking teach ( I can look it up ) but if it is possible to audit their classes online and ask a lot of impertinent questions about their impertinent claims that could actually be a lot of fun. And ask important questions: When a parrot is speaking does she/he/they understand what they are saying? That was once the purpose of court jesters. And then on the student class recommendations, that could be fun too. I learned a lot about nothing today. I came for the sherry and stayed for the lecture. I’ll have a sherry and hemlock please. That is the state of animal academia now.
To think such insane nonsense, based on feelings and opinion, spewed by “professors” is tolerated, is in itself, bizarre and insane — corroborating one’s thoughts as a “professor” would help, but “professors” give NOTHING — such people are a danger to Society.
The death of critical thinking in academia is tragic because that’s where one pays to learn critical thinking and tragically laughable because that’s where one goes now to lean into bias towards publish or perish. When a professor includes his/her book on a student’s reading list, the question is is it a trick to teach logical thinking or a bid for praise? How can you learn? What is abundantly clear is the crisis in academia where teaching isn’t prized, just how many times you can ride that publish or perish pony around the track.
The statement by Ouer and Robinson “Strangely Hesitant about Anti-Blackness” that shelter adoptions delays are the result of “white, middle class women[ sexist] who staff shelters refusing to adopt to black people and that delays in adopting pit bulls -who are the ‘animalization of Blackness’ [ an insulting statement] to white households result from what they termed temperance [ temperament ] tests…” is shocking in its blatant stupidity and desperation. What is true now in many academic houses and government public shelters is that any term now can be twisted to serve an evil master, its opposite. In Multnomah county honoring the Equity lens means no questions asked and abusers and those who neglect and can’t afford the care animals they adopt for low cost ( $25 most of the time) are free to go out the door. Equity doesn’t include any thought for an animal’s rights to equitable care.
“Equity doesn’t include any thought for an animal’s rights to equitable care.”
Exactly right.
In their claims about shelter workers and “pit bulls,” Ouer and Robinson cite Katja Guenther, a professor of race and gender studies, at the University of California at Riverside.
In her book, Guenther criticizes rescuers for wanting to adopt dogs to “those who will treat their dog as a family member and have the financial means to care for their dog at a high level for the duration of the dog’s life, for example by providing specialty-brand food, toys and beds, and extensive veterinary care should any illness of injury occur.” She claims these are “white” values, and thus, rescuers are using “the animals as instruments for reproducing whiteness.”
Rescuers and shelters have an obligation to the vulnerable animals they serve to ensure those animals are not placed in harm’s way. This can and should be done using standards that don’t focus on a potential adopter’s skin color but on their ability to provide for an animal’s physical and mental health. Glossing over this obvious point, Guenther suggests that rescuers and shelters are obligated to place animals into knowingly unstable situations (which she problematically equates with skin color) or engage in the greater harm: racist behavior.
Guenther, Ouer, and Robinson have it backward. Some ways of relating to animals are better than others. Determining which does not start with the skin color of the person the animal is connected to but objective norms rooted in the animal’s biology and Enlightenment values, including the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
These are not white values; they are ways of relating to animals that increase the well-being of dogs and cats and, therefore, should be afforded to all of them, irrespective of the ethnicity, gender, race, or class of the human with whom they live.
How is this controversial?
Equity for animals is just about the universal values, compassion, kindness, and the responsibility to not place the helpless in harm’s way. I don’t understand why that’s so hard to agree upon or why those universal values have been so diabolically perverted towards personal gain. Can’t professors make an honest living?
Words today are being turned inside out stretched beyond recognition for ulterior motives. The Equity lens at MCAS, Multnomah County’s public shelter is one example. Mistranslated it legitimizes harm .Fig and Petunia, two gentle Border Collies are both presumed dead after being adopted over the protests of the adoption counselor to someone on other rescues “Do not adopt list.” There was no due diligence investigation after their deaths. It was covered over. All that matters are adoption numbers, cloaked under misdeeds, not the welfare of the adopted animals. If adoptions don’t work out send them back, dead or alive. Only the animals lose . .
Link -
Uncertain fate of 2 gentle dogs signals ongoing problems at Multnomah County animal shelter
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjrkNLiw9CAAxUxMDQIHTiZABsQwoQHKAB6BAgkEAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oregonlive.com%2Fpolitics%2F2023%2F08%2Funcertain-fate-of-2-gentle-dogs-signals-ongoing-problems-at-multnomah-county-animal-shelter.html&usg=AOvVaw0eYOITrhJQCxu7_38dMUz6&opi=89978449
There are many additional cases. Dogs go out the door daily to anyone with $25, unspayed , un neutered with a voucher for sterilization that only 60% accessed last year, this year 40%, never mind the care they receive. Low fees are linked to returns making a lie of free or nearly free dogs are “just as loved.”
At MCAS the Equity Lens has become a cover for animal neglect. It is the only way they know how to place animals by having no standards at all; subtracting value not adding it as they hide behind catch phrases.
Never stop calling subversion out lest a hidden crime become normalized. Looking away going along to get along is what led to the massive extermination of different religious and ethnic groups and in the end of morality. Ken Saro Wiwa, a Nigerian activist ordered killed for the power of his words wrote silence would be treason. It was James Baldwin who when asked where hope comes from said we have to re-invent it every day and John Stewart, who said hope comes not from government but from ordinary people: three persons across race and generations with so much in common who care about social justice . I don’t know why social justice is so difficult to achieve but keep on keeping on. What is the choice? If not today, tomorrow decency and kindness will win. Don’t be afraid of the dark.
There are many additional cases. Dogs go out the door daily to anyone with $25, unspayed , un neutered with a voucher for sterilization that only 60% accessed last year, this year 40%.
At MCAS the Equity Lens has become a cover for animal neglect. It is the only way they know how to place animals by having no standards at all; subtracting value not adding it as they hide behind catch phrases. Never stop calling subversion out lest a hidden crime become normalized. Looking away going along to get along is what led to the massive extermination of different religious and ethnic groups and in the end of morality. Ken Saro Wiwa, a Nigerian activist ordered killed for the power of his words wrote silence would be treason. It was James Baldwin who when asked where hope comes from said we have to re-invent it every day and John Stewart, who said hope comes not from government but from ordinary people: three persons with so much in common who care about social justice . I don’t know why social justice is so difficult to achieve. Keep on keeping on. If not today, tomorrow decency and kindness will win. Don’t be afraid of the dark.
Sorry about the duplicated paragraphs at the end (tired).