Yahoo Lifestyle My Immigrant Family Stole A Goose Egg From A Park And Ate It. Here's What I Want You To Consider.
The reactions to the now-viral story of Haitian immigrants from Springfield, Ohio, being accused of consuming animals that weren’t rightfully theirs — from cats and dogs to ducks from a public pond — have been as varied and divided as this country itself.
In my politically divided household — my husband is a Republican, I’m a Democrat — what we believe largely falls along party lines: Hubby is convinced that at least some version of the story is based in reality, whereas I’m more convinced that this nationwide obsession about what’s allegedly happening with immigrants and Americans’ beloved animals in a Midwestern town reflects a xenophobia as old as time.
Still, there is one reaction to this story that I have not heard and that I am embarrassed to confess, but think I should: I can relate to the fake news version of this tale. I’m not from Springfield and have never been there, so my intel on what is happening on the ground there is only as good as whatever Apple News feeds me.
The consensus among these sources is that there is no wrongful consumption of animals of the sort that Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans are claiming. But as a first-generation immigrant and one of those academicky, social scientist types who likes to think really hard for fun, I’d argue that even if there was — hypothetically — a case of someone uninformed or desperate enough to eat, say, a duck from a pond, wouldn’t that say more about their circumstances than anything about their character?
Once upon a time, I was new to this country, and in a small town in the middle of this great land, I remember stealing an egg from a nest in a public park. I didn’t do this as a prank, as maybe some other child may have done. I did it for the sole purpose of eating it, because as many Asian people or most foodies can tell you, eggs laid by fowl that are not named “chicken” are extra delicious and extra expensive. Yolky, darkly yellow and exceedingly rich, they make cheap chicken eggs taste like balls of chalk by comparison.
My parents — also immigrants relatively new to this country — were in on the caper. It’s been a couple of decades, so my memory of the exact logistics of the event are fuzzy. I can’t remember if I, being small and a nimble elementary schooler, was the one to grab the egg from the nest buried in the bushes, or whether my father, being both a man and a grown-up, was the only one in our little tribe brave enough to risk the fury of wild animals. The one thing I do clearly remember is a pair of geese immediately emerged from the bushes and chased us all the way to our car.
We survived and lived to relish the salted goose egg as the extravagance that it was, especially during an era when our family of three lived off a single post-doc salary meant for one broke graduate student. I haven’t thought about the incident much in the 30-plus years since it happened ― until Trump’s and Vance’s comments set off a fury of public reactions, including a series of bomb threats, an uptick in anti-immigrant hate, and round-the-clock media coverage that has turned an otherwise quiet Ohioan jurisdiction into a target for relentless scrutiny.
The troubling part is not just the fact that political candidates can perpetuate a false rumor and throw a town — and an immigrant population — into vitriolic chaos. It’s just as disturbing that if a person did take wildlife from a park, their (extremely isolated) actions could be used to judge an entire population of innocent people.
Psychologists — myself included — have long warned about the Fundamental Attribution Error, which occurs when we witness a behavior and immediately assume that it has something to do with the person’s inherent character rather than a byproduct of their situation. For example, if you see someone doing something you believe is wrong — like taking an animal or animal product that isn’t theirs from a public park — you can either assume that they’re a bad person, or you can infer that something else about their circumstances might just as easily explain their behavior. Maybe they didn’t know taking the item or animal was illegal. Maybe they were hungry enough to do something forbidden to feed their family.
There’s also the Ultimate Attribution Error, which is similar, but involves someone from an “ingroup” seeing a person from an “outgroup” do something, and assuming their behavior is caused by their inherent disposition or even genetics, rather than their situation. This can lead ingroup individuals to view actions by an outgroup individual as representative of that entire outgroup, rather than an isolated incident involving this single person. These beliefs, in turn, lead to further othering and prejudice of the outgroup.
The good news — or the bad, depending on your level of pessimism about human nature — is that judgment biases like these transcend political groups. They’re called the Fundamental and Ultimate Attribution Error for a reason — anyone can fall prey to them, as the aftermath of the last presidential debate proved. But the even better news is that our big brains are (hopefully) smart enough to realize our mistakes and do things differently. Once we’re aware of these psychological errors and how they work, we can utilize this knowledge to avoid misunderstanding situations and refrain from approaching them with the bigotry we’ve seen in recent weeks.
I have the gift of having grown up in an immigrant household and, yes, we once thought it was OK to take a goose egg from a nest in a public park. I wouldn’t do it again, but I now have hindsight on my side and the means not to need to do something like that to survive. Maybe you’ve never been in the situation my family found itself in, but surely all of us at some point have done something questionable. If we’re lucky, the entire population of people who share our ancestry or social circumstances didn’t get punished for it too (and that’s if the act in question really ever happened and wasn’t simply a vile ploy to stir up division and win votes).
In the days and weeks since Trump and others made those unfounded accusations against immigrants in Springfield, we as a country got a firsthand glimpse into just how dangerous such ideas can be. I don’t believe the animals in that town were or are in any danger, but even if there was an incident of the kind overtaking social media and politics, it shouldn’t dictate how we feel about immigration or how we treat those who went through incredible lengths to call this country home. If anything, it should make us want to help folks with less than us, not hurt them, and we should never use their actions to judge an entire population. After all, I suspect that these days, it might be easier to be wildlife in any town in America than an immigrant facing racist lies.
Christine Ma-Kellams is a cultural psychologist, writer and college professor. Her other articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Business Insider, and many more publications. This past spring, her first novel, “The Band,” was released by Atria (Simon & Schuster). You can find her in person in one of California’s coastal cities or online at ChristineMa-Kellams.com.
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CORRECTION: A prior headline for this story misidentified the type of egg that the author remembers taking from a park.
