Cock fighting in Indiana
IN THE PAST few weeks as I listened on radio and watched on TV the seemingly endless discussions of the Michael Vick dogfighting case, I have heard many popular stereotypes of “bloodsport” being a part of this country’s ethnic minority culture – dogfighting being designated as arising from the “black” or “African-American” culture and cockfighting coming from “Latino” or “Hispanic” culture. Throughout these discussions I was reminded of one of the favorite relatives of my childhood, a cousin of my father’s known to our family as “Uncle Jim.” Proud to claim him as my own “uncle,” I was entranced by this eloquent southern man – an honorary “Kentucky Colonel” and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in good standing – when he came up from Louisville to take his own fighting cocks to do battle with their Hoosier counterparts in barns and back roads in rural Indiana.
