Whose Best Friend? Dogs and Racial Boundary Maintenance in a Multiracial Neighborhood

Abstract

In human–animal studies, dogs are often framed as promoters of interactions among strangers. Yet very few of these studies discuss how racial structure shapes human-to-human engagement. Similarly, race scholarship and urban studies have failed to incorporate human–animal studies fully to better understand racial dynamics and inequality in U.S. cities. I use in-depth interview data from an 18-month study of Creekridge Park, an urban, multiracial, and mixed-income neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina, to explore the role of dogs for white residents. I focus on identifying if dogs helped bridge social differences between white residents and their Black and Latinx neighbors in a racially and economically diverse neighborhood. I find that while my white respondents shared many examples of dogs facilitating neighborly relationships and friendship, these relationships were largely between same-race individuals. By reinforcing a white, urban, middle-class habitus, white residents used dogs to maintain interracial boundaries and feelings of safety, as well as navigate racial-ethnic differences between themselves and their Black and Latinx neighbors. These findings point to the necessity of more research that addresses racial structure and human–animal studies to better understand contemporary urban spaces.