Breeds and Races

Before I came to live in Ahimsaland I worked as a substitute schoolteacher for about three years in San Diego, Merced and Roseville/Sacramento, California, USA.

Almost every working day I was in a different classroom in a different school teaching different subjects to different age levels of students from kindergarten to grade twelve.

Because of California’s mixed population, I have been exposed to the children of just about every race of human being on the planet and I have come to believe that the races are more different than we are taught to expect as teachers in this multicultural, multiracial democracy, the USA.

Biologically speaking, all human beings are members of one species, homo sapiens, and can interbreed. Well and good, but, to me, the racial differences I have experienced as a teacher are more like the differences between breeds of, for example, dogs.

No one experienced with dogs expects a Spaniel to behave like a Bulldog or a German Shepherd to behave like a Border Collie, yet all these animals are biologically of the same canine species. They can interbreed and are all “dogs”. Yet within the canine species, each breed has its specialty, its champions, its strengths and its weaknesses. All dogs do not receive the same training and are not expected to compete outside their breed. Greyhounds are not expected to race against Chihuahuas–- Poodles are known for their intelligence and Dalmatians for their spots–-but they are all equally dogs and no breed is born “better” than another-–just different.

Humans have purposely bred dogs and other animals for certain specialized qualities for many generations and humans, using their intelligence as a guide, sometimes breed themselves between races. This seems absolutely OK to me.

I have heard of Americans spoken of as a “mongrel” breed because of the interbreeding of other "purer" breeds.

So be it, since mongrels might survive when more specialized pure breeds would die out. With Americans, (and with human beings generally) only time will tell.

Anyway, right or wrong, this notion of the different “races” of humanity being like different “breeds” of dogs has helped me cope with some of the behavior I dealt with on a daily basis.

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