Can Dogs Be Racist?

My friend swears it’s true.

“Patch is racist,” she whispered to me one day.

I made a face, but she persisted, pointing to the Asian woman across the street. “Watch this,” my friend said.

We kept a safe distance as we walked past the woman. Patch showed growing tension in every inch of his body, and when he began snarling and lunging toward the woman, I directed my friend off the path.

“See?” she said. “And it’s not just that woman. I’m telling you — he’s racist!”

That got me wondering: Can dogs be racist? Are they actually capable of it?

My guess was that racism is a human concept and not something a dog is capable of grasping. But I decided to do some research and here’s what I found:

“Dogs will respond differently to people who are unfamiliar to them, or smell or look different than those to whom they are accustomed,” writes Alexandra Horowitz, author of the best-selling Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know.

Then are we simply labeling a dog’s fear of the unknown as racism?

Apparently so.

Raina Kelley wrote a terrific article in Newsweek on the subject a few years ago, saying, “Dogs can’t be racist because they’re dogs. To be racist is to harbor a belief that a group of people have abilities or personality traits solely because of the color of their skin … Dogs don’t act on belief systems or value judgments and they don’t understand the abundant stereotypes in our society.”

There you go. Dogs don’t judge based on stereotypes — we humans have made that our domain.

But dogs will avoid people, places and experiences that have produced negative results. Did you ever know a dog who reacted to men, people wearing hats or sunglasses, even children? It’s pretty common.

If you think you have a dog who’s uncomfortable with something/someone he doesn’t often encounter, you should:

• Get the help of a positive, reward-based trainer or behaviorist
• Find a safe place to expose your dog to the unfamiliar person or thing (“Safe” meaning your dog has plenty of distance from whatever is making him uncomfortable)
• Reward your dog when he can be around the unfamiliar person or thing (even at a great distance) and not react. Ask him to look at you, tell him, “Good dog!” and give him a yummy treat.
• Be patient and don’t push it. Changing your dog’s association from “This person/thing is scary” to “This person/thing is OK” takes time.

We all have a great tendency to anthropomorphize, which just means we like giving human traits to our dogs.

But racism isn’t a concept dogs came up with; it’s a concept we came up with. Let’s not bring these wonderful creatures down to our level.

Did you ever feel your dog was racist? Let us know in the comments section below.

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