Reddit reviews Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon

Yeah, maybe they got bit by a pit once. My mom was attacked by a golden retriever and for a quite while afterwords she was understandably leery of goldies. The difference being that golden retrievers aren't vilified in popular culture due to their association with dog fighting.

Here's a really good book on the topic.

Someone literally wrote a book on it:

https://www.amazon.com/Pit-Bull-Battle-over-American/dp/0307961761

https://splinternews.com/the-racist-story-behind-the-pit-bull-s-fall-from-americ-1793857029

Check out Pit Bull: the Battle over an American Icon, it does a great job at explaining where all of those awful prejudices came from and how ineffective breed bans are.


It's a really good read, too. I've suggested to people in locales like yours to start a kickstarter to send the book to their municipal government, maybe change a few minds.

https://www.amazon.com/Pit-Bull-Battle-over-American/dp/0307961761

Check this book out for well researched and written information about myths and misconceptions about pitbulls.

I think trying to equate the prejudice towards dogs over the discrimination actual people face is at best tone deaf and at worst a bit insulting, but the general idea is actually a fairly accepted history of why views towards pitbulls shifted.

There's a good book here that examines this issue and explains how the rise of pitbull popularity among black and latino groups corresponded to the rise in negative attitudes towards pitbulls, and they note a lot of the parallels of how they're characterised as a result of this association.

Most people think they're looking at a pit bull anytime they see a dog with short hair, muscular body, and a blocky head.

Even people who work with dogs for a living are unable to reliably identify breeds by sight (http://stories.barkpost.com/study-proves-difficult-visually-identify-pit-bulls/). What often happens is that a dog that has attacked is labeled a "pit bull" because people expect pit bulls to be vicious. The breed designation of the offending dog is most often made by a journalist, a cop or a witness, and almost never by genetic testing.

This exhaustive book outlines the many ways pit bulls are maligned in popular imagination, and gives a fascinating look back at the "bad dog" breeds of past generations, for any who have interest: https://www.amazon.com/Pit-Bull-Battle-over-American/dp/0307961761

If you're interested to know why those statistics aren't valid and why everything surrounding pit bulls is as it is check out Pit Bull by Browen Dickey