"Racist" L.A. police dogs think whites taste bad

By Selwyn Duke

Will the slights and salt-in-wound exacerbations ever end? It's not enough that white people are cast as the source of all the world's woes as people find that we, increasingly, leave a bad taste in their mouths. Now we hear that even man's best friend doesn't find us very palatable. Writes The Independent in a piece titled "'Racist' LA police dogs only bite Latinos and African-Americans":

Police officers in Los Angeles have long faced accusations of institutional racism, but now it appears their dogs may be unjustly discriminatory, too.

A new report focusing on the Canine Special Detail of the LA Sherriff's Department (LASD) has uncovered a vast increase in the number of minority individuals bitten by police dogs since 2004.

And in the first six months of this year, every single victim of a bite by a LASD dog was African-American or Latino.

...the number of Latino individuals bitten by LASD canines went up 30 per cent between 2004 and 2012, from 30 to 39 bites. The number of African-Americans bitten increased by 33 per cent over the same period.

Of course, some people will point out that L.A. is already "majority-minority" and that its percentage of non-Hispanic whites continues to decline steadily. They will say that even in New York City – which has a larger white population than L.A. – blacks and Hispanics commit 96 percent of all crime. So who would we expect police dogs to bite in a big city? "I mean," these apologists will say, "K-9s generally don't bite random people on the street."

But I say save it. Don't spit down my back and tell me it's rainin'. This clearly is culinary bias that, given dogs' perceived reputation for being good judges of people, serves to further demonize whites.

And the experts are on my side in recognizing the dangers of racial gastronomic distress. As The Telegraph wrote in 2008:

The National Children's Bureau [in Britain]...has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

Also consider that the National Children's (Polit?)Bureau warned that another sign of bias can be indicated by a child saying "they smell."

Now note that dogs find that we smell.

In fact, I can't tell you how many times a canine has gone sniffing about my person.

Without ever taking a bite!

What gives? I mean, I wash – with soap. What do these beasts of bias find so off-putting?

But now I will take to heart the U.K. bureau's advice that "[n]o racist incident should be ignored...." and propose some remedies:

• Police dogs must receive sensitivity training and be warned about gratuitous and racially disparate sniffing.
  
  
• The word "odor" must not be used. The dogs should be understood to practice "aroma detection." Moreover, olfactory activity should not be pursued in an obvious and offensive manner. Excessive nose twitches are to be avoided.
  
  
• Quotas for canine bites must be instituted. Whites must be afforded bite events in accordance with their percentage of the population. Consider that even in a place such as L.A. there is no shortage of white people in the street who could receive a self-esteem-buttressing tasting.
  

Having said all this, what pains me most is that I've been part of the problem. Why, when I eat chicken or turkey, I'm definitely not partial to the white meat.

So maybe there's a deeper truth here. Even so, do the media really have to rub our Caucasian noses in it?

© Selwyn Duke