Embodying exaggerated and "extreme" features of the pit bull that the American public has been conditioned to fear, the American Bully functions as a pointed retort to the socio-economic and political systems that have kept American 'Others' on the margins of society and made sense of this discrimination by way of the understood inherently violent capacities of the Other'd body. We argue that it is the prevalent American fear of disorder – and, in more recent decades, 'disorderly' racialized bodies – that has had the paradoxical effect of both vilifying the pit bull, and laying the groundwork for the emergence of a new breed of pit bull-type dog called the American Bully. We trace the history of pit bull-type dogs in the United States along race and class lines (early 20th century - present), showing how the efforts to control and contain certain humans runs parallel to the profiling and elimination of certain domestic dogs.
This article examines how fear of human Otherness affects the contemporary breeding and marketing of dogs in America.
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