C.S. Monitor reporter in South Africa embarrassed by “racist” dog

VFR reader Laurium writes:

Scott Baldauf is now the Africa correspondent of the CS Monitor. In this good article he talks about adjusting to the huge crime rate in Africa and all the precautions he has to take. He talks honestly about living in a “fortress.” Oddly enough, he calls his article a “backstory,” as though it is merely incidental to his business there and trivial. He ought to read Coetzee’s Disgrace to prepare himself for the white racial atonement that may be expected of him and his wife and child.

His parting shot is the following:

Later in the week, during a pink and orange sunset, I take a dog named Lampo out for his evening constitutional. He belongs to some friends, who found him as a puppy at a local pound. I’ve agreed to housesit, in part because I want to find out if I’m still a dog person, and in part because of one of the letters in my security checklist: F for Fido. My friends tell me the dog is fine around children, but is skittish around men, especially black men. The people at the dog pound told them it had probably been abused.

As we walk past house after house, with barking dog after barking dog, I notice Lampo pays no attention. Instead, he’s watching the stream of housekeepers and gardeners heading home from work. They eye the dog nervously back.

Great, I think, I’m walking a racist dog.

Strange that Steve would blame a dog for following its genetic programming, its mistrust and fear of people who torture it. Whatever we may think about human beings who fear other people, I suspect it is a powerful Darwinian survival trait.

I wonder whether he would call a woman “sexist” if she looked at all men on the street with suspicion and fear after a rape?

Of course, he may be speaking tongue in cheek regarding “racism,” but the fact that he is embarassed by his dog’s behavior—by the fact that the dog learns from his environment in order to survive—says volumes about his politics.

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Bill A. writes:

Nice pick-up from the Christian Science Monitor on the deteriorating situation in South Africa.

But I think you are mistaken about two things:

1) The dog’s mistrust of Africans is not described in the article as at all genetic, but simply learned: “My friends tell me the dog is fine around children, but is skittish around men, especially black men. The people at the dog pound told them it had probably been abused.” The dog learned from his own experience what people can be like.

2) There is no evidence that the dog is reacting only to blacks. “As we walk past house after house, with barking dog after barking dog, I notice Lampo pays no attention. Instead, he’s watching the stream of housekeepers and gardeners heading home from work. They eye the dog nervously back.” It’s not evident that any people are present on the street other than the stream of gardeners and housekeepers.

At any rate, he sounds like a good dog who would be useful to have guarding a home in the South Africa of 2007.

LA replies:

I agree on your first point, But I made sense of it by understanding him as saying that the dog had a genetic disposition to react against people who had harmed it, not that it had a genetic disposition against black people.

I don’t get your second point. Plainly he’s saying that the dog is eyeing black people.

Bill A. replies:

Thanks for your thoughtful reply and question.

From the description, the stream of housekeepers and gardeners going home from work appeared to be the only other people in the street, hence it’s not clear if the dog was watching them preferentially to other people. At least that’s the way I read it. If the author had said that the dog ignored any other white pedestrians, but watched only the black workers, then I would agree with you. As far as I can tell, besides the author, only blacks were present on the street. At least he only describes blacks.

Again, he does sound like a “damn good dog.”

LA replies:

Interesting. We could look at it this way. Let’s assume that all the people on the street were black, and the dog was eyeing all of them suspiciously, but that in other settings he had not eyed whites suspiciously.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 28, 2007 10:22 PM | Send