Are foxhunters an ethnic group?

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A pro-foxhunting group, Hunting Kind, says it’ll be going to court to prove that fox hunters are an ethnic minority, which they’re convinced will protect their hunts from the barbarian anti-foxhunting hordes. The group’s chair argues that people who support foxhunting suffer persecution by animal rights extremists and that their hunts are an extension of natural selection because they only kill the foxes that are old or weak or slower than a pack of dogs. Or who, you know, overindulge in suicidal ideation. 

“I can tell you for a fact [foxhunting] is not cruel,” he said, “because I take no delight in the suffering of an animal.”

Point proven, then. 

The group claims it meets the five qualifications for an ethnic group: 

  • A long and shared history of culture which is distinct from wider society
  • Distinct customs of their own
  • A common geographical origin
  • Common ancestors
  • Common language or literature

Irrelevant photo: a begonia

Where’d the five points come from? I haven’t been able to trace them to any source. The 2021 census says a person’s ethnicity “could be based on” culture, family background, identity or physical appearance. That’s four and sounds kind of tentative.

The Law Society says its “usually been used to refer to long shared cultural experiences, religious practices, traditions, ancestry, language, dialect or national origins.” That’s seven and not what you’d call rock solid.

Basically, ethnicity’s a hazy term. But let’s not get hung up on how many characteristics it takes to solidify a bunch of people into an ethnic group. What’s striking here is that the desire to be one speaks to a longing on the part of a privileged group to be certified as unprivileged so it can claim the privileges of the unprivileged.

Did I lose anyone on the hairpin turns back there? 

Are foxhunters privileged? Well, foxhunting started out as an aristocratic passtime. In its current form, it dates back to the 19th century and was strictly for the upper crust. These days the hunts are marginally more democratic: you don’t have to be an aristocrat but you do need deep pockets. As George Monbiot explains it, “Not everyone who hunts today is a member of the aristocracy–far from it. But this is the way in which you aspire to become one. To look posh you buy a Land Rover, green wellies, a tweed hat and a waxed jacket: the livery of field sports. You buy a house in the country. You get yourself a horse and you join the hunt.”

You can see why they long to be certified as society’s victims.

 

A bit of history

Farmers have long had it in for foxes. They attack some of the smaller farm animals and they have beautiful fur. It doesn’t do to be too beautiful, friends. I’m telling you. In this case, it led to fur envy: the aristocrats could wear that fur themselves and tell themselves they looked foxy in it. But it wasn’t until the 18th century, with the decline of the country’s deer population, that fox hunting turned into a sport. Because, hey, if they could go out hunting deer they had to kill something, didn’t they?

What happened to the deer? Well, history just loves irony. England’s landowners–a rich and powerful class of people–discovered they could make more money by getting rid of those annoying people who lived on the land and farmed it. They enclosed the land, making smaller fields and raising sheep in them. It’s called the enclosure movement. Cue massive displacement and poverty, not to mention political unrest, but never mind all that, there was money to be made.

In enclosing the land, they got rid of the places deer liked to breed. It wasn’t the most important result, unless you’re a deer, but it left a wealthy group of people in need of something to kill. And there was the fox, who had no hand in all this, with its beautiful coat and inconvenient need to eat. 

To turn up the volume a bit, along came the Industrial Revolution, with its improved network of roads and its new network of railroads, making the countryside more accessible to would-be hunters living in towns and cities. For a few days, they could pretend to be country gentlemen. 

Or gentlewomen. 

Awkwardly for anyone who argues that foxhunting is about pest control, the enthusiasm for foxhunting led to a shortage of foxes, which led to huntmasters buying pests for the hunters to eliminate. They were imported from France, the Netherlands, and Scotland, and in England organized gangs stole them from land that happened to be well stocked. 

Does any of that make them an ethnic group? Well, England’s aristocracy is inbred enough to have a common set of ancestors, but we just shifted ground there from foxhunters to the aristocracy as a whole. They have a few words or phrases the rest of us wouldn’t bother using but they’re stuck sharing their basic language, literature, history, and geographic origins with the rest of us. 

Not me, of course. I wasn’t born in Britain, but there aren’t enough of me to make them an ethnic group. 

36 thoughts on “Are foxhunters an ethnic group?”

  1. Subcultures, are not considered an “ethnic group”, they’re, a part of the mainstream culture, and, this is just, playing with words of, ideologies, like how the government in the country I’m living in, try to, ’’split up the masses”, to make their, bullahits sound, reasonable.

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  2. Well written and good entertainment 😀👏 I tend to think of ethnic groups as linked to DNA. The problem with foxhunters going down that route though is that it would exclude many people including the Royals, whose ancestors are more recent arrivals to British shores😀

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    • Ha! Good point. The reading I did made me realize that the idea of an ethic group is one of those things we begin to believe is real and well defined because we have a phrase for it, but it’s sort of like a pointillist painting: the closer you look, the more the picture falls apart.

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  4. I’m quite sure most of my ancestors were ‘Common’ but whethr there were enough of them to be classed as common ancestors is open to interpretation. I am Welsh though so surely that makes me part of an ethnic group? The gentry and the aristocracy are easy targets for many people, some would say it’s jealousy, but many of them would prescribe to Oscar Wilde’s description of Fox Hunting, “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!” Not all of them ‘Tally Ho’ after a stirrup cup, and they do generally care about the land. I would not describe Foxhunters as an ethnic group but certainly would class them as a ‘Breed apart’ for wishing to display the bloody tail of the victim as a prize after the event. The tail being virtually all that is left whole. The fox does what a fox will do, and the Dogs do what they are trained to do by people of all classes who think that sitting astride a horse imbues them with superiority, and that killing an exhausted animal proves they are great hunters. It, doesn’t. It proves that blood lust is forever near the surface in too many people.Huge Hugs Ellen.

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  6. Agree with all the comments above and propose that said group should be renamed Hunting Unkind (and Undesirable, Unpatalable, Unappealing – add your own adjective here)

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  7. I get that charging around the countryside on horseback, with excited dogs and hunting horns, making lots of noise and generally whooping it up is lots of fun. For the people, not the foxes, of course. So it sounds like what they need is to develop a robot fox. Something to chase that animal lovers won’t object to. And foxhunters have to be rich to afford all the horses and dogs anyway, so maybe they could throw a bunch of money towards the project.

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  8. Since when does blamming big holes in little bambies (or other things a hunter does while hunting) create an “ethnic group” ? Everybody can become a fox hunter if he spills money like germs – so much for the common ancestors & the origin. The other stuff (a special language, customs and the handshake) posesses any other group of “zünftige Handwerker” too. That’s a trade, not an “ethnicity”.
    This is frivol, arrogant and unfunny. Can’t they just shut up and shoot anything that moves on the coutryside for a week or two, and that’s it ? Tah !

    BTW – The robot fox mentioned above : The army has a robot dog. Comes with a fully automated 0.7, don’t know which level of autonomy is already reached. This may need some tweaking.

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    • My best guess is that if the quarry doesn’t suffer, the chase won’t feel real enough. They already shoot clay pigeons. I have no quarrel with that, but I’m not sure it satisfies the same impulse.

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    • Given that we–and by “we,” of course, I mean “I”–haven’t been able to find a solid definition of ethnic minority (or majority, or ethnic anything else), I’m not sure about killing for food as opposed to for inedible items, but I am fascinated by the privileged developing oppression envy. It’s a strange old world out there.

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  10. Believe it or not, when I was renting an old farm in the1970’s, the local Hunt would come through the fields every fall. The hunt started several miles over on one of the Firestone estates (Yes, THAT Firestone…) and wound its way up hill and over swamp to my area. My landlord may have known when they were coming, but he never deigned to let me know, so I would look out the kitchen window one weekend morning and see the hunt approaching, hounds and horses and all. While my two dogs – an Elkhound and a dachshund mutt sat by just watching. I hurried outside too be sure my dogs minded their own business, and we all stood and watched in amazement…until one of the – minions ??- walked over to my dogs and flicked the riding crop he carried at them, like a lion tamer holding back the animals. The dogs didn’t move, but I did-I walked right up and said “My dogs aren’t causing a problem, but if you touch one of them I will beat your ass.”

    He went away and in a few minutes one of the hunt masters came over to sort of apologize for the “inexperienced” young man’s behavior. I replied that I knew foxhounds could be dangerous, and we had no idea of causing a problem – but he didn’t need to come after the residents. So we parted amicably. The hunt went on across the road and up the hill (toward the interstate) and the dogs and I went in for lunch.

    BUT – no foxes were harmed either, because it was a “drag hunt” – the Jeep came bouncing through the day before dragging the scent pack.

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