Headlong Pursuit

A little over a month ago I posted this on Facebook:

CITIZEN SCIENTIST!Prophet has been training for a while with Sits & Wiggles Dog Training to assist with the Gotham Coyote Project. This entails finding coyote scat so the biologists can check DNA and recent meals. He went along on a field day in Pelham Bay Park, shadowing Scout, who is the experienced dog, but they found nothing that day.Today, on a regular walk in Van Cortlandt Park, with no instruction to search, Prophet insisted on leaving the trail, zigzagging the ground with his nose. When I got bored and started to walk back to the trail, he gave me one loud bark, and continued to search. Then he looked up triumphantly, and there it was: coyote scat. I carefully put it in a poop bag and noted the GPS location.
Yes, Jorge, I treated him profusely. (We ❤️R+)
Yes, Ferdie, I treated him right at the sample.
I suppose I should confirm that the sample is, in fact, from a coyote, but I am fairly certain and I am really proud, so...

He has located more since then, near the same spot.

Today we had a different experience.  He had been following some kind of sign off and on all morning, but it is hard for me to know what: a deer? a feral cat? an opossum? some other dog?  We walked around a deer carcass that has been there for a couple of weeks and is now picked almost clean.  Then we stopped atop a steep, broken, rocky slope where we often stand to check out the Northwest Woods.  There was only a dusting of snow on the ground today from yesterday's flurries.  Here is a photo of that spot from two weeks ago when it was actually snowing in earnest.

I started down the slope just behind the rocks in the left of this photo.  Honestly, I was curious about the possibility of getting an even better camera angle than this.  Prophet seemed happy to be going somewhere new.

Suddenly, his hackles went up, he began snarling and he disappeared around a corner.  When he reappeared he was angrily pacing back and forth, looking for a way down.  I clearly should have summoned him immediately.  But my curiosity often gets the better of me and I was lost in wondering what in the world he had discovered.  So, instead of calling him off, I stood and watched while he jumped down and disappeared again.

When Prophet reappeared, he was in headlong pursuit of an adult coyote.  The coyote rocketed down that slope and then made a quick turn onto the footpath below.  Prophet was two or three lengths behind.  The coyote pivoted onto the cross country track and now I saw Prophet open his stride, using his whole body to generate speed.  Did I mention that I was shouting?  From the instant I realized that Prophet was chasing a wild predator I was bellowing: "Prophet! Come!"  Repeatedly.  To no effect whatsoever.  I saw not one twitch of an ear, not one hesitation, to indicate that he heard my voice or that he was anything but completely single-minded in his pursuit.

I was standing near the top of a steep ridge, the winter woods clear of foliage, so I could see a good long way.  Nevertheless, Prophet quickly disappeared from view as his quarry cut back in another direction around the next little hill.  I had not stopped shouting.  I didn't know what would happen next.

In a moment, Prophet reappeared, looking around.  I called to him again and I could see him respond to my voice by directing himself back up the cross country track toward me.  Unfortunately, a runner now appeared, heading in his direction.  I really don't like him to encounter runners without them seeing me and seeing that Prophet is in control, but they were both at least a hundred yards from me.  The best thing I could think of at the moment was to have the runner hear my voice and see Prophet responding, so I called him again and watched him race past the runner, almost without turning to look at him.  I wonder what was in that man's mind.

When Prophet returned to me at the top of the slope I put him in a long down-stay and hoped that this -- along with a refusal to give him a treat -- was sufficient evidence of my displeasure with his failure to respond to my first (or second... or third... or fourth...) summons.

Now I wonder these things: 
What would Prophet have done if he caught that coyote?  
Was he really trying?  (I think he has another gait, a sprint, faster than the run he was using.)  
Does this behavior constitute play or is it something more serious?
How do I encourage his curiosity and boldness without allowing him to upset the critters that live in the park?

That last is a longstanding concern.  This morning, Facebook offered me the opportunity to share an old posting of mine.  It is a picture taken last December by one of the Gotham Coyote Project's camera traps in Riverdale Park.  It clearly shows a man and a dog happily posing for a photo.  It was taken way off any established trail.  I enjoy walking away from the marked paths (figuratively, too!) but looking at that photograph a year ago made me wonder what Prophet and I were disrupting by being there.  If the biologists chose an out-of-the-way place, a location they thought belonged to the coyotes, then why were we even there?

It is the Bronx.  There is no way around that.  But there also has to be some mutual respect.  I didn't throw stones, or lay out poisoned meat, or shoot at that coyote.  And I guess Prophet gets to make some choices, too.  For me, it is an ethical conundrum.

Identity Politics. Political Correctness.

I first heard the term "identity politics" in the early '80's.  It was difficult to pin down its meaning, but it seemed to be a description of a view that actually shunned any theory of injustice, capitalism or racism in favor of deciding that some "groups" were privileged and others were not.  Instead of examining the historic oppression of African-Americans, Native Americans and Mexican Americans, "identity politics" seemed to just identify them as victims, therefore good guys.  The correlation was that women, gay people, physically handicapped people, survivors of domestic violence, etc., etc., etc. were also victims and therefore analogous to oppressed nationalities.  There seemed to be no class analysis attached to this, no colonial analysis, no analysis at all.  The good thing about identity politics was that it stood for equality.  The bad thing about it was that it allowed all sorts of privileged people to ignore their own privilege because they also had a non-privileged identity to claim: woman, incest survivor, etc.

About the same time that "identity politics" emerged, I noticed that the phrase "political correctness" had escaped the limited confines of the Marxist circles and made its way into the general discourse of college campuses.  This was not purely coincidental; it developed a new meaning, tied to identity politics.  Among Marxists, political correctness referred to avoidance of language that was ambiguous about the particulars of one's theory, strategy and tactics.  Did you use the word "race" when you believed that oppression was "national"?  A no-no.  Did you quote Fidel or Che?  The only acceptable sources were Marx and Engels.  (Also Mao or Enver Hoxha, depending on your circle.)  Some folks defied the plain meanings of words, preferring, for example, to say that two positions were "dialectically opposed" when they clearly meant "diametrically opposed."  They had to get a reference to dialectics in, even if they showed their failure to understand that idea just by using its name.

The political correctness of the early '80's was much more widely understood.  If it, too, delineated an "in" group, that group was much larger than the circles of the '70's.  Again, it was about avoidance of language, but this time it was about language that was offensive to the "groups" I referenced above.  It was politically correct to say "Native American" instead of Indian, and to say "African American" instead of Black.  It was politically correct to use people-first terminology instead of "handicapped."  The good thing was that it is evidently preferable to avoid labelling people with terms that they regard as misleading or insulting!  I think that is just elementary courtesy.  The bad thing about this political correctness was its failure to go beyond asking people what label they prefer.  By focusing on names, the "political correctness" of the '80's reinforced the idea that recognizing these identities would somehow do away with injustice.  It obscured the differences between systematic racism and other kinds of obstacles to equality.

Now it is 2016 and the terms "identity politics" and "political correctness" have come to play a giant part in the discourse of the racist right.  Their meanings have clearly shifted, too.  During this last presidential election campaign "identity politics" came to refer to any recognition that there is inequality in America.  More particularly, when a speaker disparages "identity politics" it means they are angry that people whom they don't consider human want to be treated as human.  Look at the people who criticize what they call "identity politics" and what they are calling out.  It is always about the rights of a group that is denied their rights.  Call attention to disparate police violence against people of color?  Identity politics, shut up!  Call attention to homophobia?  Identity politics, shut up!

The same thing is true of the new use of political correctness.  Call out a presidential candidate for boasting about his sexual assaults?  Political correctness, shut up!  Ask a presidential candidate to clarify his claims that Mexicans are rapists?  Political correctness, shut up!  The use of the term "political correctness" as a pejorative has morphed: instead of being content with mocking common courtesy its critics have graduated to mocking humanity and mocking truth.  If I ask them to treat others as humans and to speak truth, then, in their eyes, I deserve to be attacked for being "politically correct."

Language matters.  That is the reason that homophobes prefer to speak of their "religious freedom" to cruelly discriminate against others.  That is the reason that racists piously respond that "all lives matter" when confronted about the horrors of police impunity in encounters with people of color.  It should be clear to everybody that they don't care about the teachings of their gospels.  They are utterly transparent in their failure to value all lives equally.  They choose phrases that mask and prettify their intentions.

As a society we want a politics that treats all of us with respect, not one that categorizes us.  That is why the enemies of respect prefer to dismiss the movements of oppressed people as "identity politics."  As a society we want creative and free expression, not some arbitrary rules about acceptable language.  That is why the enemies of freedom prefer to dismiss calls for humanity as "political correctness."

Don't believe me?  Look at the ferocious venom our racist right reserves for the idea that every human deserves to be cherished.  Listen to the way they hurl the expression "snowflake" at young people with whom they disagree.  It is their ultimate insult.  And they have so succeeded in this that people all over the political spectrum agree, and use this in the same way!

We cannot allow ourselves to believe that the worst weakness is the demand to be seen and heard.  Stop using any of these phrases.  They are ways of capturing our minds.  During the presidential campaign the racist right was insistent on identifying the international enemies of freedom as "Islamic."  We resisted that characterization.  We can also resist their insistence that elementary decency be demonized.