Canine Racism

There is a young lady right now in Trinidad who is considering doing her MSc thesis on racism.  Not human racism, canine racism.  A few months ago I came across the term “breedism” – which is what dog people are calling canine racism, most likely because we refer to “breeds” of dogs.  People are categorized according to “races”, hence racism.  Personally, I don’t care what you call it.  Breedism or racism, the effect is the same - discriminatory actions and practices against dogs in general, and Pit Bulls specifically.

I also have to say upfront that I understand how people could be racist.  By that I mean that I consider it quite natural for someone to think that people who look like him are better than people who do not look like him.  I believe that one of the causes of racism, a mixture of fear of the unknown and comfort in the familiar, is a very human reaction.  But because I think racism is an understandable human condition does not mean that I accept that it should be condoned. On the contrary, I think it should be fought tooth and nail because its results are evil. The synonyms for racism are also its results: discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, bias – as  I said, usually extended to somebody because they are from another ethnic background or tribe. Or breed, in the case of animals.

When I heard about what this young lady was doing, I got to thinking – not always a good thing for me to do - about the way animals are discriminated against, exploited and misunderstood.  I have never studied sociology, but I have lived with racism my whole life and have more than a nodding acquaintance with its many faces, so I felt confident that my opinions had value. And I always think best when I write, so here we are.

As I see it, racism has two components. First, racism is the feeling that people who don’t belong to your tribe are not as good as you.  Secondly, it is the belief that your “betterness” gives you special privileges.  It is not enough to say, 'I am a more superior human being (which automatically makes you inferior) because I am African/Indian/Chinese/Whatever' – you also have to say, 'I am superior, you are inferior and that means I get to live a better quality of life than you do'.

Sometimes, it does not stop at the inferior people not having the same quality of life.  Sometimes it extends to not having any life at all. Hitler was a racist – he put the Jews and others in ghettos and then in the gas chambers.  The American settlers were racist – they put the Native Americans on reservations after doing their best to wipe them off the face of the earth.  King Leopold II of Belgium thought nothing of enslaving and brutalizing and murdering Africans from the Congo by the thousands. In these cases, it is difficult to untangle where the hunger for power left off and the racism began that led the various leaders to attempt genocide.  A question for debate at another time might be whether a leader can conquer people without trying to annihilate their race. Can a person be power-mad without being racist, or is everyone racist but not every racist is homicidal. However, what is clear is that, although racism does not necessarily always end in a holocaust, history has shown us that when racism is empowered, it easily can.

Comparing human and canine racism has one obvious disparity.  Unlike humans, dogs are not racists.  Humans discriminate against other beings just for not being like them. Dogs don't do that. So in effect, we are still talking about human racism – but only directed to animals this time. Humans have extended their animosity against people who belong to other races to animals who belong to different breeds.

In traditional racism, the “other” person is de-humanized.  He or she becomes sub-human.  It is okay to rape a young girl if she is not human; it is okay to whip the back of a man into shreds if he is not human; it is okay not to provide proper education, health care, nutrition and housing for whole families if they are not human. Because being human assures everybody of certain rights.  Not human = No rights. Therefore, it is ridiculously easy for humans to extend their racist attitudes and propensities to dogs because they are truly not human to begin with!

You hear people saying all the time, “I hate cats”.  Why? Why do you hate cats?  “Because they are sly.”  “I just don’t like them.”  “I’ve always hated them.” “Because all cats are thieves.”  “They just give me the creeps.”  “Because they kill children by stealing their breath while they sleep.” Just like all Chinese are sly; and all Indians are thieves; and all Africans are potential rapists.  So perhaps I should add one more criteria to the definition of racism.  It must have no factual basis for existing.  All that is necessary is a willingness to believe in stereotyping.

I have always said that I was very fortunate to be born of a mixed union – I am not speaking so much of my mother’s marriage, but of my grandparents’ union.  My maternal grandfather was black as the hinges of hell, and my grandmother was as white as the driven snow.  From a very early age this taught me that stereotyping was bullshit.  In the days when it was widely known and accepted that all black men were lazy and ignorant, I knew that my grandfather was a child genius, went to a British university on a scholarship he got at age 14 and became a very well known and respected jurist.  Also in the days when all white people were cruel oppressors, I could see that my grandmother was the most kind person I knew (or have ever met in my entire life), who would literally give her last cent to any person who told her a sad story.  It was from her that I learned to love and respect animals and to treat everybody as I would like them to treat me. 

So though I grew up surrounded by racism, including racism within my own family, I was perhaps fortunate that I did not buy into it as deeply as I could have because the foundation stone of accepting stereotyping was missing from my emotional makeup.  I countered every given with “how do you know that?”  I demanded proof.  Basically, I was a pain in the ass.  Which is not to say that I did not develop my own prejudices – but I like to think that I at least give everybody a chance to prove their worth before I decide that I am better than they are.  Though it might even turn out that they are more intelligent, or more caring, or more cultured, or more educated than I am, neither of us will be better than the other simply because of our race.

If it is one thing that I have learned about racism, it is that it is insidious.  It hides in laws and facts that nobody challenges. It creeps.  It slithers and slides and envelopes the atmosphere like a fog.  You don’t notice it, even though it is all around you.  And then when you finally notice it, you begin to see it in places where it does not really exist. 

When I was a child, our next door neighbours were a Dougla family.  Their three girls ranged in hue from the first daughter who brown-skinned, to the middle one who was most aptly called Darkie, to the youngest who was better known as “Reds”.  One day, the family was thrown into turmoil when the eldest girl brought home her first boyfriend because it was found that he was “too dark”. Apparently if the couple were to wed and have children, the offspring would not improve the ‘quality’ of the family. Nobody noticed that they were rejecting a young man with the same skin colour as their second daughter.  As it turned out, they did get married and had three boys, all of whom were lighter-skinned than their mother.  The family’s prejudice was groundless.

An elderly woman I worked with once told me about her grandmother, who would not allow anybody to enter her house with their shoes on.  This was in an effort to keep the floors clean.  Or to be more accurate it was in an effort to keep the floor clean of what she termed “Coolie spit”.  She did not want anybody tracking saliva from the mouths of the surrounding Plantation Indians onto her floors.  When I heard this story, I was aghast.  At least I was, until I visited India and realized that mostly everyone does indeed spit continually on the streets, so it is quite likely that the indentured labourers had brought this habit with them to the West Indies.  Although it would seem that my friend’s grandmother was a racist – her prejudice was based in the fact that it was highly probable that people's shoes would have spit on their soles. And the spit would have come from Indians (or Coolies, as they were called).

An important component of stereotyping, is misinformation. There are so many misconceptions and myths surrounding dogs, especially Pit Bulls, that listing them would take reams of paper. These misconceptions are fatal for dogs because they are what humans have used to create their stereotypes and resulting racist attitudes towards dogs.  For instance, dogs bite with no warning.  Wrong.  Dogs always give warning – sometimes several warnings.  It is just that humans have never taken the time to listen to dogs.  For centuries we have been so busy making dogs into our own version of what a dog should be, and training them to do what we want them to do, that nobody has stopped to ask what the dog is trying to tell us.  You may ask, “You really expect everybody to learn to speak dog?” In a word, yes.  At least make an effort.  If you were living cheek to jowl for centuries with any other species that spoke a different language, you would by now at least know a few words – and they won’t all be commands from you to that person. You'd make damn sure to learn what the person said when he reached his tolerance limit with you and was about to slap you upside the head.

Just the other day in the vet’s office, a very nice woman who said that she owned two Pit Bulls sagely informed everybody in the waiting room that people were afraid of Pit Bulls because once their jaws locked onto somebody, you could not prise them open.  This is such an urban legend!  No basis in fact whatsoever, but it is repeated like the holy grail of Pit Bull characteristics.  Nobody questions it, especially if the person repeating the “fact” has even the most tenuous connection to a Pit Bull.  It always surprises me how many dog experts exist around us - and how many of us believe every word they say just because they tell us they know what they are talking about. 

If necessary, I can lie.  But I don’t quite see the point of putting myself to all the trouble of lying for no good reason.  I have a family member who lies just because he can.  How do I know he is lying?  His lips are moving.  I have met other people like that, and always with surprise because I never expect somebody to lie to me for no good reason.   During the attempted coup d’etat in 1990, a man looked me straight in the eye and told me he had just come (to Diego Martin) from Port of Spain where he had seen with his own two eyes the bombing and total demolition of TTT House on Maraval Road.  That building is still standing to this day, 21 years later.  I have read of people swearing that they saw a Pit Bull attacking a person, when it later turned out to be a dog that looked absolutely nothing like a Pit Bull.  I don’t know if their assumption that only Pit Bulls attack humans made them see a Pit Bull, or whether they knew that if they identified the attacking dog as a Pit Bull it would create a better story.  But the fact is that stereotypes can start as a lie.

It seems that an inordinate number of dogs were bred to guard or be companions to Royalty.  In fact, almost everyone I have ever met with a purebred dog talks about the dog’s ancestral links of some kind to long-ago royalty. Take the Shar Pei for instance.  This is a dog from China whose job as a defender of the farmer’s crops from wild hogs was made redundant by industrialization.  Out of work, he then became known as a good fighting dog.  Because of this, in some areas, he is treated with the same prejudice as the Pit Bull.  But I am yet to speak with a Shar Pei owner who did not inform me that this breed was created specifically to guard Chinese royalty.  Likewise, albeit in a reverse kind of way, with the Pit Bull.  Recently, a radio announcer said that the Pit Bull was not a real dog – it had been genetically engineered.  You have to admit that term has a certain science fiction glamour about it – a kind of Mutant X dog.  Well, the truth is that all dogs in the world have had their original wolf genes interfered with by humans – the gene that made this wolf big was mated to the gene that made that wolf big to create the Mastiff; and the gene that made that wolf fast was mated to the gene that made the other wolf fast to create the Greyhound.  So what?  Does "genetic engineering " mean Pit Bulls should be ‘de-caninized’ like how the African slaves were de-humanized?

I hear people saying that they don’t like Rottweilers (too unpredictable), or PomPeks (too snappy), or Pit Bulls (too vicious), and I have a problem.  Rottweilers can be snappy and Pom Peks can be vicious and Pit Bulls can be unpredictable too – they are dogs, not predictably packaged Pringles.  People buy dogs and either do not teach them how to behave, or use such harsh methods that the dogs become emotionally damaged, and then they are amazed at the resulting undesirable behaviours.  They say, “See what I told you?  Those dogs are vicious!”  It is like ill treating a slave until he runs away and then saying, “See what I told you?  These people always try to run away!”

Now they are instituting laws that are targeting specific dogs.  They are called Breed Specific Laws (BSLs).  If laws that targeted specific human races were instituted, the world would rise up in protest.  But using the same methodology of racism, they do it to dogs.  All dogs can bite and all human can abuse; all dogs are capable of killing – a small dog can kill a baby or a child, a larger dog can kill a human or other dog – and all humans are capable of killing everything in sight.  Humans kill more humans in one day than dogs do in one year.  But all humans are given the benefit of the doubt until proven guilty, and even if they might have committed murder, in some cases they never have to pay with their own lives. Dogs are never given a trial, but are killed instantly, no questions asked, sometimes just for seeming to show aggression.  The other day, in the USA, police shot an elderly, chained Golden Retriever for growling at them when they came into its owner's yard.

But this brings us to the point of whether the same rules that we apply to ourselves should be applied to animals.  I have made this point before, and I will make it again.  You are either just or you are not just.  You are either humane or you are not humane.  You can not decide who you want to be humane to and still consider yourself a humane person.  You can not decide to show justice to only one type of person and expect to be considered a just person.  Compassion, concern, care – they all have more in common that just the same first letter.  They are attributes of a civilized person (strangely, also starting with the letter “C”).  I think it is a good thing to strive to be civilized, don’t you?