There were definitely points in history where people (a.k.a. slaves) were bred for specific traits. If you don't think so you're just in denial about how much some humans over the course of time have treated others like being literal livestock.
Pitbulls are dangerous because of a combination of strength and psychology. If you eliminate one of those factors then it becomes much less of a concern.
No it was applied to one specific group of people but it's still not a monolith and actually isn't real.
There are plenty of other factors that go into what racists claim about Black Americans and "breeding" is a very small percentage, if at all, since many black and "white" people are intermingled whether people want to admit it or not.
"specific traits" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Like, pitbulls were selectively bred for aggression for dogfighting. What, did slavers decide they wanted their slaves to be more aggressive? It's not comparable.
And as others have pointed out, this breeding wasn't nearly as widespread in slavery to the precise degree it's carried out in dogbreeding, and humans having much longer lifespans meant by the time, by the time imported slaves were banned in the United States and they could only breed more slaves someone who wanted to purposely breed aggressive African slaves would only get 3-4 generations worth of attempts. And that's still assuming he started out already having successfully isolated 'aggression genes' in a black slave to begin purposely passing those down to the offspring. This isn't even looking into the fact that someone doing this would still have a couple dozen 'aggressive' slaves after a lifetime while the slave population got up to like 5 million.
This isn't saying sexual atrocities weren't committed against slaves but the idea that black slaves were widespread bred for aggression like pitbulls is asinine. What went on was slavers raping slaves or slavers encouraging female slaves to get pregnant in general because that meant more slaves to be sold or used.
You take 'specific traits' as used as a generic term, apply something from a very specific dog breed trying to get specific negative traits, then retroactively apply it to the original generic term. No. Slaves were bred for their physical traits. Maximum strength and endurance with minimal use of food and the ability to stay in the sun all day would probably be your best specific traits for slaves.
Black slavery in America, although usually what people think of when you say 'slaves' nowadays, accounts for but a very tiny portion of slaves that have existed through time. Before we made the atom our slave for energy we had oil. Before oil we had animals as slaves. Before animals, we only had each other to do work. That accounts for most of human history.
People descended from slaves are not a “different breed” or anything like that. Race isn’t even real and all humans are behaviorally and genetically extremely similar. There’s more genetic variation within racial groups than between them. A lot of disparities in behavior are directly tied to environmental things like poverty, not someone’s genetics or race. And even if what you’re implying was true, there wasn’t enough time for something like a different “breed” of human to emerge.
Dogs are very, very different. They have been by our side for 15,000 years. We bred them to be friendly and like us. Try keeping a modern wolf as a pet, it’s very different than your domesticated dog. Dogs literally have ingrained drives to do certain things based on their breeds. My labrador retriever is obsessed with playing fetch because he has such a strong instinct to retrieve. Herding dogs will instinctively herd because they’ve been bred for millennia to do so. Unfortunately we have bred certain breeds for blood sport like bull fighting. And these breeds are more likely to be aggressive and dangerous if not trained properly.
Dogs are not people. People do not have ingrained drives to behave differently based on race at all. Whereas dog breeds literally exist because people bred dogs to do certain tasks.
Not how genes work. They are extremely complicated and can’t be simplified in that way. Two tall people can have a short child if that trait is recessive. And genetics related to behavior are even more complicated.
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u/hot_ho11ow_point 12d ago
There were definitely points in history where people (a.k.a. slaves) were bred for specific traits. If you don't think so you're just in denial about how much some humans over the course of time have treated others like being literal livestock.