JBSXXX10.1177/0021934719836421Journal of Black StudiesParker 836421research-article2019 Article Journal of Black Studies 2019, Vol. 50(4) 367 –387 Who Let the Dogs in? © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: Antiblackness, Social sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934719836421DOI: 10.1177/0021934719836421 Exclusion, and the journals.sagepub.com/home/jbs Question of Who Is Human Lynette Parker1 Abstract This article illuminates how the lived experiences of Black men in comparison to experiences of dogs in society highlight antiblackness as the prevailing sentiment in America. This juxtaposition illuminates the psychological project embedded within antiblackness—to dehumanize Black people by elevating dogs alongside other racial groups that have been deemed as human. The article demonstrates how dogs have not only been embraced by Whites, but have been given access into spaces and granted civil liberties for which Blacks continue to struggle. The article looks at the role of dogs in a country that once categorized them as nuisances and marked them with distain by identifying them along with Blacks, Mexicans, Jews, Irish, Chinese, and Japanese as the “undesirable” elements of society. Today’s acceptance of and advocacy for dogs as a social phenomenon demonstrates the possibility of an ideology shift by Whites, while simultaneously demonstrating their dogged determination to hold to an ideology that cast Black people as less than human. Keywords race, antiblackness, social exclusion, humanism, speciesism 1Reach Institute for School Leadership, Oakland, CA, USA Corresponding Author: Lynette Parker, Reach Institute for School Leadership, 1221 Preservation Park Way, Suite 100, Oakland, CA 94612, USA. Email:
[email protected] 368 Journal of Black Studies 50(4) Today the dog world is in the throes of political and ideological convulsions of a kind not seen since Victorian times, when the dog as we know it was invented.