Tuesday, August 16, 2005
PETA Founder Tells African-Americans: "Get Over It!"
From Wesley J Smith's blog Secondhand Smoke
PETA founder and Peter Singer devotee Ingrid Newkirk responded thusly to an African-American person who objected to PETA's equating slavery in America with the mistreatment of animals:
"How dare you compare my ancestors' subjugation to the subjugation of cows prodded down the slaughter line to their deaths?!" I can, because it is right to do so and wrong to reject the concept. Please open your heart and your mind and do not take such offense.
The post was entitled, "We Are All Animals, So Get Over It!" This is a notion that she adopted from Singer who finds nothing morally wrong in sex with animals or the euthanizing of young children.
However Ingrid treats us with some of her own philosophical stylings:
Generally speaking, mustn't rhinos think that rhino suffering is more important than vervet monkey suffering and vervet monkeys think that their suffering is more important than songbird suffering? I'd imagine so, for a monkey mother who must choose between rescuing her own baby or a squirrel baby from drowning would surely pluck the monkey baby from the water? Just so, humans who define themselves by religion or culture or nationality or skin color think that their suffering can never be compared, no matter how factually, with any other human or animal's suffering. To do so makes them feel belittled, reduced. But perhaps that's just our primitive biology crying out to protect and save our own kind, the more narrowly defined the better, and the rest be damned. I reject that.
Let's be clear, Ms Newkirk is suggesting that an African American person's belief that they are more important than an animal is "primitive".
The more we get to know PETA, the more they reveal how deeply demeaning their philosophy is.
PETA founder and Peter Singer devotee Ingrid Newkirk responded thusly to an African-American person who objected to PETA's equating slavery in America with the mistreatment of animals:
"How dare you compare my ancestors' subjugation to the subjugation of cows prodded down the slaughter line to their deaths?!" I can, because it is right to do so and wrong to reject the concept. Please open your heart and your mind and do not take such offense.
The post was entitled, "We Are All Animals, So Get Over It!" This is a notion that she adopted from Singer who finds nothing morally wrong in sex with animals or the euthanizing of young children.
However Ingrid treats us with some of her own philosophical stylings:
Generally speaking, mustn't rhinos think that rhino suffering is more important than vervet monkey suffering and vervet monkeys think that their suffering is more important than songbird suffering? I'd imagine so, for a monkey mother who must choose between rescuing her own baby or a squirrel baby from drowning would surely pluck the monkey baby from the water? Just so, humans who define themselves by religion or culture or nationality or skin color think that their suffering can never be compared, no matter how factually, with any other human or animal's suffering. To do so makes them feel belittled, reduced. But perhaps that's just our primitive biology crying out to protect and save our own kind, the more narrowly defined the better, and the rest be damned. I reject that.
Let's be clear, Ms Newkirk is suggesting that an African American person's belief that they are more important than an animal is "primitive".
The more we get to know PETA, the more they reveal how deeply demeaning their philosophy is.
papijoe 8:06 AM
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