In the early 1980s, during her high school years, May-lee Chai’s family experienced a significant event when a Chinese restaurant opened in their small town in South Dakota.

“The food was amazing!” Chai, who now teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University, recalls.

However, despite the delicious offerings, her parents’ friends routinely declined their lunch invitations, influenced by the rumor that stray cats and dogs were on the menu.

This completely false rumor caused the restaurant’s owners, who fled the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, to ultimately sell their business and leave, as shared by Chai with YSL News.

For more than a century, immigrants in the U.S. have been unjustly accused of serving pets as food.

This week, many, particularly those from minority backgrounds, were outraged as prominent Republicans like former President Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate JD Vance echoed baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were consuming household pets.

This topic stirred painful memories for Chai and many others. “I’ve been hearing the stereotype of immigrants coming to consume pets since childhood. This is a very old form of racism,” Chai mentioned on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, garnering over 225,000 views and 18,000 likes.

Erik Crew, a staff attorney with the Haitian Bridge Alliance, is deeply connected to Ohio’s history, as his family moved to Springfield after the end of slavery, part of the Great Migration from the South to the North.

When Trump repeated the debunked rumor during a recent debate, Crew felt a wave of disappointment.

“These anti-Black propaganda narratives suggesting that ‘savage immigrants will harm and eat your family’ have been used for hundreds of years,” he told YSL News on Wednesday. “They aim to create division and incite hatred to gain political power. It’s truly disheartening and tragic.”

He added that this type of racism is nothing new.

“This has been a tactic used by white supremacists for an extensive period,” he said.

The Legacy of a False Narrative

The roots of the immigrants-eat-pets narrative are unclear, as noted by Scott Kurashige, an author and historian focusing on race and Asian American history.

As early as 1883, the falsehood was prevalent enough that Wong Chin Foo, a prominent Chinese American journalist at the time, offered a $500 reward (equivalent to roughly $14,000 today) to anyone who could substantiate claims of Chinese people consuming rats or cats.

“This is fundamentally flawed reasoning,” stated Kurashige. When cultural practices align with what is deemed acceptable by mainstream American society, they receive a pass, whereas practices seen as “savage,” such as eating dog or horse meat, are labeled backward.

“In a broader context, there’s been a longstanding division between mainstream white American cultural practices and those of Haitian communities, indigenous groups, and people of color,” Kurashige observed. “Often, these distinctions are tied to stereotypes.”

He continued by explaining that most eating customs are rooted in culture; for instance, some communities thrive without consuming pork while others abstain from meat altogether.

Kurashige asserted that the racist stereotypes in the U.S. manipulate misunderstandings of global culinary traditions, falsely implying that immigrants might treat pets or pests as livestock.

This false narrative has been weaponized by politicians since at least the 1880s to dehumanize immigrants and incite political division, according to Chai, who analyzes this topic in her academic work.

For instance, during his 1888 presidential campaign, Grover Cleveland had trading cards printed illustrating Chinese male immigrants in the act of consuming rats. Chai noted that the portrayal of Chinese laborers as a threat to white American workers draws parallels to how Trump has depicted immigrants as a risk to primarily workers of color.

Moreover, Cleveland’s campaign aimed to paint his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, as supportive of Chinese immigration, thereby framing him as anti-American.

Stereotypes Reflected in Pop Culture

The stereotype has received acknowledgment and satire in various aspects of popular culture.

In a humorous episode of “ALF,” a show that aired on NBC between 1986 and 1990, the alien character is seen preparing to eat a cat in a sandwich.

In her novel “Dragon Chica,” released in 2011, author Chai discusses the “racist stereotype that Asian immigrants are said to consume dogs.”

In “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” season 5, Larry David persuades wedding attendees to believe that their food is actually a friend’s dog. This leads to chaos, with guests getting sick, and concludes with David almost colliding with the very much alive dog.

Implications of ‘Misinformation and Disinformation’

Niccara Campbell Wallace, who directs campaigns for the Rolling Sea Action Fund aimed at enhancing civic participation, criticized the misleading statements promoted during the Trump administration.

“We are still propagating falsehoods that leave Black Americans and citizens generally bewildered about reality,” Campbell Wallace explained. “There’s a prevailing uncertainty.”

When rumors proliferate, they morph into stereotypes. Such stereotypes can then be leveraged politically by some politicians who benefit from them.

This troubling pattern has persisted over many years, particularly during high immigration periods and economic hardship, as noted by Russell Jeung, who teaches Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

He pointed out that Chinese immigrants accounted for a mere .02% of the U.S. population in 1882, yet that year, Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited immigration from China for ten years.

Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate — an organization focused on fighting discrimination and prejudice against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — emphasized the harmful effects of such stereotypes.

“Creating fear benefits politicians, allowing them to highlight convenient scapegoats. These groups often lack a voice, especially if they are undocumented,” he noted. “Bullies typically target those who seem more vulnerable.”