Blame the Victim

Throughout the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first, patterns of behavior or ‘trends’ have shaped the American world such as the Big Band Hippie, and Disco Eras followed by the grunge/punk then rhythm and blues waves. American families also change with the times in which pets each family is interested. In the Twenties, a ferret was certainly not a commonplace pet. The ideal pet of the perfect American family is none other that the loyal dog. Dogs have been mans best friend for a millennia or more and, though the breeds may change, dogs have remained the preferred American pet.
Recently, beginning in Ontario, Canada, there has been a growing apprehension and bias against the group of dogs known as “pit bulls”. The phrase ‘group of dogs’ is used instead of ‘breed’ because pit bulls are in fact, a collection of breeds. “Generalizations involve matching a category of people (or dogs) to a behavior or trait…” He continues with, “…(F)or that process to work, you have to be able both to define and to identify the category you are generalizing about.”. It is excruciatingly obvious that this has failed to be done; who knows what “an appearance and physical characteristics that are substantially similar” means?
In his article Troublemakers: What Pitt Bulls Can Tell Us About Profiling, Malcolm Gladwell tells of a conversation/interview with New York Cities police commissioner, Raymond Kelly. He quotes Kelly as having said, “We have a policy against racial profiling… It’s the wrong thing to do, and it’s also ineffective.” Here he continues to list numerous instances of people, all with different ethnicities, that have committed acts of terror. “Look at the diversity here. Who am I suppose to profile?” Imagine that you, a reasonably sane individual, have been told that you look like you might be crazy and therefore, will be institutionalized. This is the situation pit bulls currently find themselves in. They look fiercely intimidating and as a result people assume that they are something that in fact, they are not.
The number of breeds have multiplied and traveled far from the land in which they were bred. Every breed of dog was engineered for a specific purpose; some for burrowing after small game, some for herding, and others were bred for fighting. American dog lovers have taken a particular interest in the pit bull ‘breed’ in recent years; therefore their popularity has grown. With increased popularity, the pit bull is bound to stand out more prominently than other, less popular dogs. Gladwell best captured this concept in his ‘Troublemakers’ article with the words, “The kinds of dogs that kill people change over time, because the popularity of certain breeds changes over time.” This ideal revelation followed an interesting set of statistics in which he listed two, two year spans, one of which there were ten fatal attacks committed by Rottweilers, the other, there were none. Following it he quotes Randall Lockwood, a senior vice-president of the A.S.P.C.A. as having said, “If you wanted a mean dog, back then (1970s), you got a Doberman.”
This ban may be counted as exemplification of ever increasing, poor ‘human-canine relations’. It is simply ridiculous to ban a type of dog because of incidences where people were badly hurt by these dogs because their owner failed to install a high enough fence, or because their owner has been neglectful, or because their owner has trained his dog to be ferocious. Any dog, dachshund or pit bull, which is taught to be violent…will be violent! Contrarily, any dog that is trained, and trained well, to resist any natural urge toward violence. A dog, having had the most neglectful owner and poor care, is bound to have issues just as a child, grown up with parents who couldn’t care less, is destined for a maladjusted life. Does our society consider the tattered existence of the child to be the fault of the child. NO! Courts, Social Services and society in general, place the blame not with the victimized child, either by neglect or abuse, but with the one who did wrong by the child.
Consider a dog, left on a chain for days, weeks with no affection shown it. Now picture a child in the same predicament. Are you not appalled? A child, grown up with parents who cannot seem to feed, or bathe, or console him or her on a regular basis would be expected to act in a poor manner. If the child were perfectly adjusted, clean and happy, one would assume that their parents did all those things. Furthermore, if a person who is considered to be incompetent is persuaded to commit a crime, American courts place guilt with, not the perpetrator but the one who convinced him or her to do so. Therefore, to ban so-called ‘pit bull type dogs’ is to place the blame with the victim. Owners train their dogs to behave in a way that suits their individual needs. The dog is merely a reflection of its owner and consequently free of blame.