In the US, pitbulls are specifically associated with the black and hispanic communities, so when someone talks about pitbulls being “inherently” violent dogs, it’s usually not a big leap for that person to then imply that the “owners” ( ) are inherently violent people.

It threw me for a loop the first time I heard it too, since like a lot of US racism, it’s so pointlessly buried in seemingly unrelated stuff, but it is apparently pretty common over there for anti-pitbull sentiment to be more anti-pitbull owner sentiment disguised with a literal dog whistle.

The arguments that people use to say that pitbulls are inherently violent are the same as the arguments that were used to say that black people are inferior or genetically distinct to white people, which have been scientifically proven to be false. Research has shown that intelligence, personality and behaviour cannot be traced back through genetic lineages because the imagined distinct lineages do not exist.

The same is true for pitbulls, while the breeding that was done to create pitbulls could have resulted in distinct personality features, the assumption that these features are still present in modern pitbulls in unscientific. Most modern pitbulls are mixed breeds and are characterised as pitbull by their appearance rather than their personality. So at this point there does not exist a “lineage” that defines the personality of a random pitbull, as its lineage is so diverse.

Pitbulls used to be the US unofficial national mascot, and white people hated when “urban” citizens started getting them. There was a concerted push against them after that.

::: spoiler The statistics often cited are disingenuous. Innacuracies come from relying on visual identification. A lot of dogs are mistaken for pitbulls; boxers, rhodesian ridgebacks, black mouth curs, even lab mixes. As well as other “urban” breeds some also like to say are violent like bulldogs and cane corsos. All fall under “pitbull” when running the numbers. Neither of these are inherently more aggressive than other breeds. Of course the severity of the bite can be much worse with larger dogs.

But aggression is influenced by training, upbringing, and socialization. That’s literally it. It doesn’t matter the kind of dog. :::

Let’s talk it out!