My yellow lab does not like black people. If we’re walking her she doesn’t react negatively to whites or Asians, but if we happen upon a black person her fur on her back ridges up and she growls.
Our Miniature Pinscher growls and barks at almost every single one of our black friends. This includes our long-time housekeeper who is at our house several times a week. When I take her with me on errands and we are stopped at a light, if the folks in the crosswalk are black, she will growl and bark at them as well, so I presume it must be a visual cue.
I’m of 100% East Asian descent. I’ve spent the better part of the past decade working in developing countries, mostly in Africa (East, West and Central) for various different organizations.
Dogs can be funny.
In most of rural Africa, there are village dogs that are rarely aggressive towards any human, regardless of race, day or night. At night, I often heard dogs raise the alarm until a local human would whack them. Well, I’m assuming, but barking/howling followed by a human yelling and a dog yelp followed by silence is pretty good smoke as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve seen a lot dogs (mostly mutts) belonging to long term expats and/or their families. These dogs definitely tend to be racist, despite the fact that most private homes are staffed by at least one or more local nationals. The moment a strange, unidentified black person would walk in, they’d display alarm/aggressive behavior. Unknown white guy? No problem.
I remember one pup in Uganda that was given to the new incoming chief of medicine, who was African, and his South Asian wife. He and his wife would have big parties every weekend so this dog was raised with exposure to a full spectrum of humans. Eventually, the same behavior developed in this dog. Unknown African, problem. White guy? No problem.
Later, I worked a few years for Medecins Sans Frontieres. In the HQ of one particularly large mission in the Congo, there was a house dog on our residential compound. This dog had been at the compound for several years, which means that he had seen dozens of expats cycle through, never knowing one for more than a year, most never more than a few days. The only constants in his life were our local Congolese staff, mostly the guards/radio operators and house staff. On a daily basis, they fed him their leftovers and provided him with 24/7 company. He was never aggressive towards any non African who would walk into the compound. Africans, local or expat, always merited investigation. He’d always remain suspicious of locals whereas with expat Africans who lived in the house, he’d immediately pick up the cues that this human wasn’t a threat and/or unusual. I always assumed that the dog’s assumption that whites were automatically non-threats was a learned behavior or a situational cue he picked up from the guards.
Anyway, these dogs were all mutts and I’ve seen this pattern happen over and over again in different countries in Africa.
On the other hand, I’ve never noticed a detectable racist pattern with dogs in Korea, Japan or China, despite them being exposed to all sorts of ethnicities. Not as strongly pronounced, anyway. Same with dogs in SE Asia, especially in rural parts that have never or almost never seen any different ethnic groups.
that’s probably because the dog wants the new race intruder to save them from his masters’ hungry stomach.
(joke, I’m of Korean blood)
When I was about 10 we had a wired-hair terrier. He was very playful and friendly with everyone in the neighborhood. I come from a white family and the neighborhood was all white. But when the black guy from the utility came monthly to read the meter, this dog would raise hell. He wouldn’t stop barking and growling the whole time the guy was there.
This does not establish a pattern for that dog because he wasn’t exposed to any other black people, so it’s possible he just didn’t like this one guy. But he never reacted like that to anyone else.
My dog (Miniature Pinscher) barks at black people. I’ve just chalked it up to her never being exposed to anyone but her white owners, as she has a tendency to bark at the unknown.
My first dog, a lab, was an equal opportunity lover. He just wanted to kiss and cuddle with everyone. The dog I have now is a terrier mix (just the vet guessing.) He is an equal opportunity barker.
My dog is a little fearful of all men (she’s a rescue, so I think she maybe had some abuse before I got her), but she freaks the fuck out when dark skinned black or hispanic men are around. Shaking, snapping, barking, etc.
Wow, I just happened to start ar thread about this very phenomenon.
When I was a teenager we had a very lovable sheepdog. She had the sweetest disposition and everybody loved her . . . except . . . she would go into a barking frenzy at the sight of a Black person. She was like that even as a small puppy and never grew out of it, no matter how many Black people she was in contact with.
I had a male Swedish Vallhund (corgi-type dog) that barked at some people, but not others. He really seemed to have a thing about fat ladies (embarrassing for us), and then we noticed that he didn’t like backpackers, and he barked at kids. (Never growled or menaced anyone, just barked.) After a lot of careful watching, we concluded that he seemed to be calling our attention to people who were shaped different than us. He’d be fine with a guy until he put a kid on his shoulders, for example. (He didn’t mind hats because we wore them.) He didn’t seem to care about the color of anyone’s skin or uniform, he just preferred everyone to be middle weight and between 5 & 6 feet tall. We trained him not to mind wheelchairs and crutches, but it sure was hard to explain to fat ladies why he was barking (“He’s just saying ‘hi’.”)
When I was a kid, we had a mixed breed mutt that we adopted that hated black people. It would growl and hunch down when it was around anyone of a dark color skin.
Another time we had an adopted airedale dog that would growl at only adult white males. That dog hated my dad and any other adult white males it came around. We eventually were able to get her to calm down around my dad.
These two experiences led me to conclude that racism in general is a learned behavior and with time maybe it can be unlearned.
I have a small and very white Jack Russel Terrier that turned out to be racist. The first time she met one of my (male) black friends she got her hackles up and started barking. Her usual reaction to meeting someone new is very happy, curious and submissive.
This happened several times, and was repeated the firts time she met another black friend, female this time. I have with time managed to condition her out of this behaviour and she no longer reacts negatively to people with darker skin color.
Some possibly relevant facts:
Both of these black friends come from Somalia and are afraid of dogs. This is very common for people from Somalia, where it is absolutely reasonable to be afraid of dogs considering what sort of dogs there are there and what they are used for (mainly guard, attack or wild dogs). They are not accustomed to dogs being used to pets and may well have projected emotions that my dig picked up on and reacted to. As a small (11 lbs) dog she’s not used to people being afraid of her.
She did not have this negative reaction against black children, only adults. Which may be connected to the earlier point, the children being less afraid of dogs due to not having much experience or knowledge of them from their home country.
She has not shown any simmilar behaviour towards middle eastern, mediterranean or asian people (I’ve got a fairly culturally diverse network of friends), only black people.
In her defense it was a lot easier to get her to overcome this prejudice than it has showed to be in humans who suffer from this condition.
I think this is silly and impossible, though I have heard it for a long time. Dogs can react to associations of bad memories (eg. past abuse as mentioned in earlier postings) or read subtle and often unintentional reactions by their owners.
I live in a community, 200 families, make up of 6 races. White British, Nigerian, Chinese, Dayak, Malay and Indian. Have 2 dogs. A pariah ( origin so mix never know what it is ), a Rotti. The Rotti care the hell who approached the gate he will jump and growl. The Pariah growl only at the Malay and Dayak, who are the garbage men, the postman and newspaper man, because they in a way frighten of him, will withdraw and as their job depict, get done and gone but will always very friendly to the Chinese and English guys who came visiting to the house in spite of the Rotti disgust for any stranger. Okay, the point is the Pariah carried out the races preferences and dislikes to the same races wheresoever he went. The dogs visited parks and places. I do think they can tell races but their emotions are caused by their daily encounters and perception from that.
Well just a boring Monday afternoon thought, I hope it serve some purpose
Christian
I’ve had two black pugs and they both growled and/or barked at black people, which is sort of ironic and extremely embarrassing.
We had a Husky mix that freaked out when we had someone, who she knew, visit us wearing sunglasses.
My dogs are only racist in the sense that they are wary of people that seem wary or afraid of them. Here in St Louis, that (unfortunately) tends to correlate with African Americans. I can only guess that it is because black culture in the area tends to value dangerous-looking breeds like pit bulls and people deliberately train them to be aggressive. Obviously I’m painting with a broad brush, but it must be a common enough practice that far more black people appear to associate dogs with aggression than other races I’ve come across while walking my dogs.
My three dogs are all mutts, but one looks like a shepherd mix and the other two are sharpei and possibly pitt mixes. They look like tough dogs. I have seen black women and children cower and even scream in fear as I pass by with all three of them. Never white people.
Nowadays, I tend to cross the street or veer out of the way when I see black people come up. Not that I’m afraid, but because I try to be a polite dog owner – and avoid frightening or inconveniencing other people whenever possible. However, I do worry that I’m sending signals to my dogs that will make them even more wary.
I have a racist dog hangs head in shame part Pomeranian part Chihuahua and he hates black people, and really tall men.
So Michael Jordon would be a double whammy for him, right?
My neighbor, a very tall, very dark skinned (and very beautiful) woman from Africa had a Jack Russel who loved me, my kids, our other neighbors entire families, and any other white people who might wander by and her. But he would go into hellhound mode at the sight of any black person, especially a man. She had to keep him leashed at all times.
I asked her why, and she said he had his reasons. She finally brought her boy friend home, at his request, and introduced them. Over time (a couple months) he won the dog over. He was a sweet, gentle man from the same place as her. The dog still had a problem with other black people, but would usually tolerate them.
My old dog used to go apeshit at halloween costumed kids.
mangeorge