When a Name Gives You Pause: Racialized Names and Time to Adoption in a County Dog Shelter

Abstract

Racialized names carry both penalties and premiums in social life. Prior research on implicit associations shows that racialized names tend to activate feelings of racial bias, such that people are more positively inclined toward White-sounding names than they are toward Black- and Hispanic-sounding names. But to what extent do racialized names continue to matter when they do not belong to people? In this article, we use an original data set collected over six months at a high-volume shelter where dogs are frequently given racialized names (N = 1,636). We also conducted a survey with a crowdsourced sample to gauge the racial perceptions of each dog’s name. We combine these data sets to examine how racial perceptions of names are associated with time to adoption, a meaningful outcome that captures people’s willingness to welcome a dog into their family. We find that as dogs’ names are increasingly perceived as White, people adopt them faster. Conversely, as dogs’ names are increasingly perceived as nonhuman (e.g., Fluffy), people adopt them slower. Perceptions of Black names are likewise tied to slower times to adoption, with this effect being concentrated among pit bulls, a breed that is stereotyped as dangerous and racialized as Black. These findings demonstrate the remarkable durability of racialized names. These names shape people’s behavior and their impressions of others even when they are attached to animals—not just humans.

Strangely Hesitant about Anti-Blackness: A Comment on Quadlin and Montgomery (2022)

“…Distinct among racisms, anti-Blackness is “the notion that the construction of blacks as nonhuman structures the status of all other racial groups” (Ray et al 2017; emphasis added). Anti-Blackness is not an “unreasonable attitude” (QM 2022:231) but rather the very intended logic of whiteness that structures the racial order of humanity.…”

“…QM (2022:211) write that “[d]ogs, by definition, exist outside the human racial hierarchy.” This erroneous a priori assertion allows the authors to then claim the presumed novelty in finding that canines exist inside human racial hierarchies. Yet for centuries racist ideologies have shaped the selective breeding of animals.…”

“…Research must begin with the (troubling) linkages between humans and animals in the construction of racial taxonomies. QM (2022:214) acknowledge that pit bulls are “constructed as Black” but miss the decisive point that the animalization of Blackness determines the racialization of dogs.…”

“…Building on research showing how employers and other gatekeepers penalize human applicants with non-white-sounding names, Quadlin and Montgomery (2022) (hereafter QM), in “When a Name Gives You Pause: Racialized Names and Time to Adoption in a County Dog Shelter,” ask whether these penalties extend to dogs. Drawing on animal shelter data and a survey analysis of racialized names, QM find that dogs with Black-sounding names are adopted at slower rates than those with white-sounding ones, with a concentrated disadvantage among pit bulls.…”

“…As scholars of color with professional lives committed to studying and eliminating racism, we feel race (Bonilla-Silva 2019) and are therefore critical of studies that reify white supremacy and disregard the dangerous role that anti-Blackness plays in the social world. While QM speculate whether the penalties of nonwhite names extend to “nonhuman entities” (QM 2022:211), the authors never name the assumption driving that question: that historically, Black people are penalized as nonhuman. The purported innovation of their study is the application of research on the treatment of humans to the treatment of dogs, but this conceptual leap bypasses critical fields of research and a troubling history of racial taxonomies.…”