But Why Can’t I Draw Scott as a Dog?, TW Racism, Racist Imagery

Comparing a person of color to an animal is racist. There’s no two ways about it. It is dehumanizing and disgusting. But Scott is a werewolf you say, NO.

Let’s break it down. Something like this:

(credit)

is not racist or dehumanizing. Why? Because this artist did not portray Scott as a pet, or somehow less then the other characters. This artist chooses to portray the werewolf transformation as a total change into a wolf and also specifies that it is the wolfpack. It’s also important that all the werewolf characters are drawn as wolves, instead of humanizing some and only drawing scott as an animal.

Casting Scott as Scooby Doo (1, 2), drawing him as less than human (1), putting a collar around his neck, or making a joke about him being the pet of another character (1, 2) is dehumanizing Scott and it is racist.

The idea that people of color are less than human is a cornerstone of racism. Anthropologists and other scientists used the argument that POC were less than human for centuries to justify slavery and colonization. It’s called scientific racism and it was considered to be concrete science and used to justify slavery in the US, Apartheid, and the Holocaust. In the same vein of thought the US employed propaganda during WWII depicting the Japanese as bats, monkeys, and rats:

Their untrustworthy ‘ratness’ was used to support the internment of Japanese-Americans.

And before you say it, it doesn’t matter that these huge events happened decades ago, the act of comparing a POC to an animal to dehumanize them and delegitimize them still happens today. At the 2012 Republican National Convention two of the attendees threw nuts at a black camerawoman saying “This is what we feed animals”. Latin@’s are frequently compared to dogs, specifically Chihuahuas (hello taco bell dog). In May of this year a Republican congressman compared immigrants (and we all know he meant Latin@ immigrants and undocumented Americans) to dogs as well, saying the US should only let in the ‘best’ immigrants like how a dog buyer wants the “pick of the litter”. The same man wants to put an electrified fence at the US-Mexican border because “we do that with livestock all the time.” It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t your intention or you didn’t mean it that way. You can not erase the history of this practice and by doing it, no matter how light hearted it is, your are supporting racism and a culture that views POC as less than human.