Cody
Williams
"Bad Newz Bitches"
by Cody Williams
After almost a week in Korea I finally broke down and decided to eat some local cuisine and I actually enjoyed it. Many Korean restaurants serve the traditional Kimchi, an aged cabbage, with a meat filet barbequed right at your table.
I mentioned to my American host that the well seasoned meat was pretty tasty and I asked what it was, beef or pork.
He smiled, refused to tell me but half jokingly said, “If you wake up tomorrow with fleas then you’ll know.”
Did I eat dog?
I doubt it and am convinced that it was pork that tasted so good. But, I had also popped down a couple of the silk worm larva that is served as a delicacy in that country too. So if they eat bugs why wouldn’t they eat Fido?
Barf.
I grew up in Detroit. Some folks may call them the mean streets but for me it was just home. One of the first things I realized after leaving the city and starting school in the campus town of Ann Arbor was that dogs in predominantly black communities and those in white communities served very, very different functions. Dogs in the two different communities have very different temperaments.
Whites, I discovered, raised dogs to be a loving member of the family. I remember thinking how odd it was that suburban dogs didn’t bark much and would let anyone walk up and pet them.
In ghetto communities, however, dogs have a more utilitarian function. They are often the first line in a defense and home security system. A dog in the community where I was raised was not considered much good if it was not vicious or prone to attack strangers and didn’t bark at strange noises. But, we wouldn’t ever think of eating one.
Atlanta Falcon star quarterback Michael Vick grew up in a Virginia housing project that culturally was more linked to the mean streets of Detroit than the pooch loving communities of suburban America. While his alleged dog fighting venture, “Bad Newz Kennels” may have been illegal a lot of people from communities like ours are scratching their heads and saying, “What’s the big deal? They’re only dogs.” Korean barbeque.
Spanish bullfighting is a brutally cruel and bloody death sport where the animal is pitted against a human who almost always emerges as the victor. Often in heavily Hispanic East Harlem, New York of all places, residents are awakened by the cock-a-doodle-do of a rooster crowing at sunrise. I asked someone what was a cock doing crowing in New York City and was told about the cockfighting that goes on there.
Oh?
Dog lovers are up in arms, calling for Vick to face stiff punishment. Many of them care much more about the humane treatment of dogs than they do about the blacks being killed in ghettos like Detroit or Darfur. We live in a society where dog and bull fighting is criminal. But two humans can step into a boxing ring, and for sport, beat each other brain dead, while onlookers pay good money to cheer them on. And Vick can go to jail for fighting dogs?
With Vicks hundred million dollar NFL contract he could have afforded to fight his dogs in South Korea where they eat them or South America where they legally slaughter bulls and roosters for sport.
What he has proven is you can take the man out of his culture, but you can’t take the culture out of a man.
Care to join me for dinner at a Korean restaurant?
© www.codywilliams.com 2007
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