No I'm not a fascist (at least I hope not...)
I'm trying to understand why we've normalised the idea of eugenics in dogs (e.g. golden retrievers are friendly and smart, chihuahas are aggressive, etc.)¹ but find the idea of racial classification in humans abhorrent.
I can sort of see it from the idea that Nurture (culture and upbringing) would have a greater effect on a human's characteristics than Nature would.
At the same time, my family tree has many twins and I've noticed that the identical ones have similar outcomes in life, whereas the fraternal ones (even the ones that look very similar) don't really (N=3).
Maybe dog culture is not a thing, and that's why people are happy to make these sweeping generalizations on dog characterics?
I'm lost a little
1: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/74/f7/df74f716c3a70f59aeb468152e4be927.png
Because dog breeds are not comparable to genetic differences in humans. They've been actively bred for certain characteristics, going through a lot of generations extremely fast in controlled environments in a way that's impossible in nature. All humans are essentially mongrels. The reason we don't do racial classification of personality traits in humans isn't just because it's morally abhorrent, but also because it doesn't work, while because of the selective breeding of dogs, there can be big differences in their behaviour due to their breed.
It's also important that while a dog's breed does have an influence on it's behaviour, it's not absolute, and you can't actually predict a dog's behaviour through its breed alone.
wait, why? In dogs it took 5-6 generations to see general behavioral characteristics. Why can't the same be true in humans?
Because humans haven't been selectively bred for specific traits.