{"id":16568,"date":"2019-05-25T20:06:11","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T20:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=16568"},"modified":"2019-05-25T22:18:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-25T22:18:00","slug":"how-dogs-help-keep-multiracial-neighborhoods-socially-segregated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-dogs-help-keep-multiracial-neighborhoods-socially-segregated\/","title":{"rendered":"How dogs help keep multiracial neighborhoods socially segregated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo<\/a>, University of Massachusetts Boston<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Cities in the United States are getting less segregated<\/a> and, according to a recent national survey<\/a>, most Americans value the country\u2019s racial diversity.<\/p>\n

But the demographic integration of a neighborhood doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that neighbors of different races are socializing together. <\/p>\n

Diverse urban areas remain socially segregated in part because white gentrifiers and long-time residents have differing economic interests<\/a>. And the racial hierarchies of the United States are simply not erased when black and white people share the same space<\/a>. <\/p>\n

White residents of multicultural areas tend to overlook<\/a> inequality in their neighborhoods, studies show. That further reinforces racial barriers.<\/p>\n

My sociological research in one such multicultural neighborhood<\/a> identifies a more surprising vehicle of racial segregation: dogs.<\/p>\n

\u2018A very doggie neighborhood\u2019<\/h2>\n

I spent 18 months studying Creekridge Park<\/a>, a diverse and mixed-income area of Durham, North Carolina, to understand how black, white and Latino residents interacted with each other. Between 2009 and 2011, I interviewed 63 residents, attended neighborhood events and conducted a household survey.<\/p>\n

I learned that white, black and Latino residents led rather separate social lives in Creekridge Park. Eighty-six percent of white people said their closest friends were white, and 70% of black residents surveyed reported that their best friends were black.<\/p>\n

One black resident lamented that neighbors weren\u2019t as \u201cfriendly as I had hoped and thought that they would be \u2013 or at least, this image I had in my head of what \u2018friendly\u2019 would be like.\u201d <\/p>\n

White, black and Latino people in Creekridge Park even had different experiences with something as seemingly innocuous as pet ownership<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Many white residents described friendships growing as a result of walking their dogs around the neighborhood, with chance encounters on the sidewalk turning into baseball games, dinners and even vacations together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the dogs that are our connectors,\u201d said Tammy, a white homeowner in her fifties. \u201cThat\u2019s how a lot of us have gotten to know each other.\u201d <\/p>\n

Such positive interactions did not necessarily happen across racial boundaries. More often, I found, dogs reinforced boundaries.<\/p>\n

When Jerry, a black homeowner in his sixties, stopped to chat with some dog-owning customers, who were white, in the outdoor seating area of a neighborhood bakery, the staff asked him to leave. <\/p>\n

\u201cI owned some dogs like that at one particular time. And I was just speaking to them. All of a sudden, I\u2019m a panhandler,\u201d Jerry said, incredulous and hurt.<\/p>\n

Jerry is a black disabled veteran who was wearing his old army uniform that day. He figures they thought he was begging for money.<\/p>\n

The dogs didn\u2019t create the interracial boundaries at the bakery, which caters to a primarily white, middle-class clientele. In fact, the dogs presented an avenue to connect black and white neighbors. But they gave bakery staff a reason to intervene, to maintain interracial boundaries. <\/p>\n

Neighborhood watch<\/h2>\n

The treatment of dogs in Creekridge Park also divided neighbors of different races. <\/p>\n

Tammy, the same resident who said dogs served as \u201cconnectors\u201d in the neighborhood, disliked that her Latino neighbors wouldn\u2019t let their dog into the house, leaving her tied up in the backyard.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Tethering dogs is a common practice in Durham, NC.<\/span>
\n Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One day, when she heard her neighbor\u2019s dog barking, she decided to monitor their backyard with binoculars, to make sure the dog was OK. When the father spotted her doing her surveillance, Tammy lied. She said she was looking at a different dog.<\/p>\n

Tammy was not, however, embarrassed when recounting this story. She felt she was justified in considering the dog\u2019s well-being. She offered the family a bigger dog house and began to take the dog on hour-long walks twice a day. Eventually, she adopted the dog as her own. <\/p>\n

Tammy said that she always intervened whenever she saw dogs mistreated in the neighborhood. However, the only examples she shared during our interview involved Latino families. <\/p>\n

Latino families are not the only Creekridge Park residents who tied up their dogs. The practice is common enough across Durham that a local group<\/a> was formed in 2007 to build free dog fences.<\/p>\n

Police come \u2018almost immediately\u2019<\/h2>\n

Several white residents of Creekridge Park have even reported their neighbors to the police for suspected animal abuse. <\/p>\n

Emma, a white homeowner in her thirties, called the police when she thought her neighbors were involved in dog fighting. <\/p>\n

They \u201ccame almost immediately,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Generally, Emma told me, if she knows her neighbors, she will confront them directly about problems she perceives. Otherwise, she prefers to call the police.<\/p>\n

Given how segregated friendship networks are in Creekridge Park, this seemingly non-racial distinction between \u201cknown\u201d and \u201cunknown\u201d neighbors means that in practice Emma involved police in conflicts only with black and Latino neighbors.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Dogs can connect neighbors \u2013 but they can also divide them.<\/span>
\n Shutterstock<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How white people enforce their rules<\/h2>\n

This white willingness to report non-white neighbors for \u201cunruly\u201d behavior recalls numerous recent incidents nationwide in which white people have called the police on black people for perfectly legal activities.<\/p>\n

In July 2018 a white woman in San Francisco threatened an 8-year-old black girl<\/a> for \u201cillegally selling water without a permit.\u201d A few months before, a white woman dubbed by internet users as \u201cBBQ Becky<\/a>\u201d called the cops on a black family barbecuing in an Oakland park for using an \u201cunauthorized\u201d charcoal grill. <\/p>\n

Other examples of white people using police to enforce their unspoken social norms have occurred at Starbucks<\/a>, a Yale University dorm<\/a> and a Texas swimming pool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In U.S. neighborhoods, middle- and upper-class white residents enjoy a privileged social position<\/a> by virtue of their race and class. They understand that police, local businesses and government agencies exist to serve them<\/a> \u2013 the same social institutions that often underserve or even target racial minorities.<\/p>\n

By drawing arbitrary lines between right and wrong, insider and outsider \u2013 even good pet owner and bad \u2013 white people like Tammy and BBQ Becky use that power to try to shape diverse neighborhoods into their preferred mold. <\/p>\n

As a result of white residents\u2019 focus on their own comfort<\/a> in diverse places, racial inequality can pervade everyday life \u2013 even, my research shows, when walking the dog.\"The<\/p>\n

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, University of Massachusetts Boston Cities in the United States are getting less segregated and, according to a recent national survey, most Americans value the country\u2019s racial diversity. But the demographic integration of a neighborhood doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that neighbors of different races are socializing together. Diverse urban areas remain socially segregated in part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":16562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[6365,450,4756,2732,865,2677,6366,4117,6364,1896,1538],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16569,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16568\/revisions\/16569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}