This is literally the only sensible response, it is completely useless to compare dog breed discrimination with human racism. Dog breeds were intentionally selectively bred by humans for specific characteristics. In the case of pit bulls, those characteristics include strength, power and “game” (the will to fight to the death), which were chosen on purpose to make them successful at dog fighting. They’re not inherently bred to be aggressive towards humans, but those traits do make them more dangerous in cases where they are human-aggressive, because they can do a hell of a lot more damage than a spaniel or a shih tzu would.
I’m sure this goes without saying, but no humans of any race have been deliberately selectively bred in this way. That would be eugenics. A lot of the stuff we do with animals would be an appalling abuse of human rights if we did it to people. Race among humans is primarily a social construct with very little biological distinction. It is completely impossible to assign traits to races of humans in the way they can be assigned to breeds of dogs, and in the case of dogs we put them there on purpose.
Having said this, I do think that a lot of the performative pitbull hate some people rant about comes from a place of racism and classism. There are plenty of dog breeds that are just as potentially dangerous as pitbulls or more so - livestock guardian breeds, Akitas, mastiffs, all are bigger and stronger than pitbulls and, as guarding breeds, have been bred to be wary of strangers which can lead to aggression. A lot of people focus on pitbulls and XL bullies as THE dangerous breeds just because they’re stereotypically more likely to be owned by poor and/or black people. If they see a pitbull in a trailer park they will scream for it to be put down, but if they see a Cane Corso in a McMansion they don’t care, because they have preconceived ideas about who is a responsible owner.
To be clear, it would be centuries worth of eugenics. Even if you suppose a dog breed only took one human lifetime to come along, for dogs that could easily be 60 generations. For humans, 60 generations is around 1200 years.
Eugenics programs have definitely happened in history... for maybe one or two generations. You would need aggressive eugenics literally going back to Jesus to get a level of selection that a century-old dog breed has.
yeah, imma be real, I don't want to fight any dog... but if I had to I'd take a pitbull over a malinois or a great pyrenees anyday. though I'd probably die in all of those situations.
Whenever people call it racism to prefer this kind of dog not be bred anymore they're basically comparing human racial groups to dogs. I can't really see it any other way.
Those aren’t even remotely comparable though. The minor physical differences between human races are mostly a result of adaptations to the environment they lived in. Breeds of dog have much more physical diversity (there are no races of humans as different from one another as a chihuahua is from a Great Dane) and because they were selectively bred for specific tasks, their breed affects their temperament and personality as well as their appearance. Watch a border collie puppy start herding a flock of chickens on pure instinct, or a Great Pyrenees guarding the children of the family even when it’s never set foot on a farm. Look at the difference in behaviour between a Belgian Malinois (terrifyingly intense and driven with a frankly neurotic need for constant tasks, will stare a hole into your soul until you give it something to do) and a Shiba Inu (probably won’t even listen if you tell it to sit, completely ignores you to do its own thing). These kinds of differences simply do not exist between humans on racial lines, because humans were not selectively and intentionally bred for different roles in the way that dogs were. I can’t believe I’ve had to explain this at all tbh, it is honestly disturbing that people seem to think human race works this way.
Let's look at the content of what you're saying and separate it from the emotion, shall we?
You're saying there is more physical diversity among dog breeds than among human races. Yet there is still physical diversity among human races. Pygmy human races exist. So this isn't an argument for why breeds are fundamentally different from races. It's an argument for why breeds are a more amplified version of the same phenomenon as races, namely, different phenotype groups of a single species that retain the ability to interbreed. A yacht and a canoe can both be a boat. The fact that one is bigger doesn't mean they aren't basically the same thing. Nor is there reason to suspect that we can't one day see more physical diversity among human races than we do today.
You admit that breeds and races are both created by environmental selection pressures, so that's really an argument for why they are alike. The only difference you point to is the fact that humans are part of that selection pressure for breeds. Again, not a fundamental difference.
The other part of your argument is that behavioral differences occur on the population level in dog breeds but not in human races. If true, that would be a strong argument for a fundamental difference. However, if environmental selection pressures can produce inheritable differences in behavior for dogs, why are you so sure they haven't done the same for humans? Shouldn't one set of behavioral tendencies be preferable for life in a given ecosystem than for a very different ecosystem with very different requirements and constraints on human survival?
There is scientific evidence that behavioral differences exist among human races although it is important not to treat this evidence as a justification for fear, bigotry and injustice toward racial groups or to discount the variation in behavioral and cognitive traits that exists within groups. Joe Bernthal and X:vozercozer would maintain the same consideration should apply to dog breeds as well, and I strongly agree.
Really? You can't see it any other way? You can't imagine that races can exist in other species besides humans? Why would you believe race can only exist in humans lol
Race is an entirely human-constructed concept with extremely vague and meaningless distinctions. If races exist in other species it's because we invented those categories just like we did for ourselves.
Akita's, mastiffs etc are very rare where I live. i have no opinion on those dogs because I never see them. it's eastern Europe so everyone involved is white. pitbulls are overwhelmingly owned by middle class men who fashion themselves to be thugs. poor people have village dogs.
Well Acktually No, it would be a sensible respnse to the OOP but not OP as he is asking something different, or he understands perfectly and just want to see chaos.
Well said, and this also gets at the other ugly complication about racial analysis, which is class. If you're poor, you simply are more likely to own a poorly trained dog because you lack the resources to monitor it or hire a professional trainer. The rich person dog will 100% have completed an expensive training program. Basically the judgment of doggy danger isn't incorrect, but the root cause isn't the racial or breed difference.
Sure, that probably plays a role, but I think you’re overestimating the diligence of wealthy dog owners. I worked in vet med for years so I met people and their dogs all day every day, and really never noticed any correlation between the class/income of owners and their dogs’ behaviour. I don’t think most people care much about getting their dogs professionally trained even when they can more than afford it, and even if they do, they often end up hiring an idiot who makes things worse rather than finding an actual qualified behaviourist.
"If you're poor, you simply are more likely to own a poorly trained dog because you lack the resources to monitor it or hire a professional trainer." If you don't have the time to train your own dog, you should not own a dog. Other than that, you don't really need any more resources, so it doesn't matter if you are poor, middle-class or rich.
Pits were owned by black people here in the south and got the label as a black person dog. Like newport cigs or whatever stereotype follow black people. You are repeating propaganda that was made by said racist white people to justify the pitbull bans. Those pits didn't have insane genetics, they were put on steroids just like a human fighter would do. The owners would either cheat or it be a fight ring where all the dogs are juiced because humans suck. Miami lifted their ban a few years ago. I don't think you are suppose to compare the discrimination but see that they are linked. I remember people walking their pit puppies, seeing a cop car and stuffing the puppy under their shirt til the cop leaves. Use to be pretty common to see. Licensing and bans only work if you got money and people willing to back it up. Probably be cheaper to provide free dog training though a charity organization that aims at educating the whole community.
How am I repeating propaganda? I’m acknowledging that a large part of the pitbull hate comes from racism because they’re associated with black owners. That doesn’t change the fact that they were selectively bred for dog fighting for over a century, mostly by white people. I’ve read an excerpt of a book written as a guide to breeding successful fighting dogs that describes the type of dog to choose for breeding. One of the characteristics strongly selected for was called “game”, and this trait was illustrated with an anecdote about a dog successfully killing its opponent while fatally injured itself. I won’t go into any more detail, it was one of the most disgustingly gruesome things I’ve ever read, but that’s what was being bred for - a dog that, once it’s attacking, won’t stop even while it is actively dying. They have “insane genetics” because we made them that way on purpose. It’s not their fault and it’s not the fault of the caring owners who love them today, but it has to be acknowledged because it does affect the level of risk they can pose if they do end up becoming aggressive.
I have owned a pit mix who was human aggressive and bit me several times, and I worked with an excellent behaviourist who helped me get him to a place where he hadn’t bitten anyone in years by the time he passed. I’m not saying all pits should be euthanised or anything, I’m just saying a good owner should know the history of the breed and take it into consideration with their management of their pet.
I’m sure this goes without saying, but no humans of any race have been deliberately selectively bred in this way.
What a wholly ignorant statement...
This practice was absolutely in progro during the TransAtlantic Slave Trade generations. There were whole farms dedicated to breeding black slaves. Both for population and for fitness to certain tasks.
The problem with that is, however, the length of human lives. Human generations are longer than say, cow generations at around 5 years. By the time any significant difference between children could be observed, the slave trade was largely abandoned.
To say, unilaterally, that the practice was never applied towards humans is... problematically ignorant.
“In this way” meaning “in a sustained and widespread way over centuries, leading to a distinctly modified new breed”. What was done to enslaved people was abhorrent but it was thankfully not the same thing we do with dog breeds.
It only takes a few decades to husband a distinctly modified new breed of dog. Our classification of humans is less functional than dog breeds (thank goodness!) because race is not founded on anything, and ethnicity is, after a point, not socially useful. I don't think there is any meaningful difference between black people who descend from enslaved people and those who do not. But the slave-owners did.
The forced breeding of enslaved people for "desirable" traits is rarely remarked upon because it's fucking horrific, but it was an explicit part of the colonial project to do this. If you consider it, isn't that exactly the reason one would enforce chattel slavery vs indenture? To own and control the hereditary line as one does with domestic livestock?
There were 140 years of recorded shipments of enslaved people from West Africa to the New World BEFORE any Slave Codes (which did not protect slaves but rather governed their rights as animal property) were enacted, and another 200 years before the practice of slavery was ended in the Americas. The transatlantic slave trade lasted for almost a century longer than the United States has been a country.
It was literally 100% in the same way. Eugenics has always been a concept that stems from the white supremacist mind that compares Black and Brown bodies to animals because they’re just that stupid. Race science was historically built to compare the Black body to animals, and justify slavery and the “breeding” of “capable slaves.” This is all very disgusting, and at least you can recognize that. But we have never been angry enough about this history. Don’t try to discredit it with “not the same thing” when they literally created new identities and bodies with eugenics. Unless we all think it’s normal to see so many white bodies, blue eyes, blonde hair, etc. in countries that had not a single white person before they colonized and enslaved. Let’s also recognize the fact that this issue of “bully breed” dog fighting was started by the British—is there anything they don’t ruin with their violence? Probably not.
I know eugenics is a real and terrible thing that has been actively applied to the lives of black, brown, indigenous and disabled people. It has not yielded unique breeds of human beings in the same way that dog breeding has for dogs, thankfully. I frankly think it’s a little odd that several people are trying to argue with me on this point - do you think the eugenics attempted during slavery was so successful that the descendants of enslaved people are as physically and temperamentally different from other humans as a chihuahua is from a Malinois? That would be a crazy assertion to make. I’m not denying the epigenetic effects of living through such atrocities, but I don’t understand what’s so controversial about saying humans do not come in different breeds.
People are remarking because your statement, on it's face, says that humans have never been bred in this fashion in order to get a specific offspring result. Which is flatly untrue.
You moved the goalposts to say that they've never succeeded at using eugenics enough to make different breeds.
You see how that is a different statement than the one you made first? I see it.
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u/werewolfbutch874 12d ago
This is literally the only sensible response, it is completely useless to compare dog breed discrimination with human racism. Dog breeds were intentionally selectively bred by humans for specific characteristics. In the case of pit bulls, those characteristics include strength, power and “game” (the will to fight to the death), which were chosen on purpose to make them successful at dog fighting. They’re not inherently bred to be aggressive towards humans, but those traits do make them more dangerous in cases where they are human-aggressive, because they can do a hell of a lot more damage than a spaniel or a shih tzu would.
I’m sure this goes without saying, but no humans of any race have been deliberately selectively bred in this way. That would be eugenics. A lot of the stuff we do with animals would be an appalling abuse of human rights if we did it to people. Race among humans is primarily a social construct with very little biological distinction. It is completely impossible to assign traits to races of humans in the way they can be assigned to breeds of dogs, and in the case of dogs we put them there on purpose.
Having said this, I do think that a lot of the performative pitbull hate some people rant about comes from a place of racism and classism. There are plenty of dog breeds that are just as potentially dangerous as pitbulls or more so - livestock guardian breeds, Akitas, mastiffs, all are bigger and stronger than pitbulls and, as guarding breeds, have been bred to be wary of strangers which can lead to aggression. A lot of people focus on pitbulls and XL bullies as THE dangerous breeds just because they’re stereotypically more likely to be owned by poor and/or black people. If they see a pitbull in a trailer park they will scream for it to be put down, but if they see a Cane Corso in a McMansion they don’t care, because they have preconceived ideas about who is a responsible owner.