This Article explores the ways in which antiblackness haunts nationwide
breed-specific legislation of today. Dogs have long featured
as a constitutive element in the antiblack dynamics of police power.
Central to slave patrols of the past, dogs remain essential to current
law enforcement practices. The blackening of breed-specific legislation
in legal and political discourse is a critical, subtle, and sophisticated
way in which white Americana enacts its humanity and continues to
regulate blackness. In bringing together historical and legal material,
this Article explores how breed-specific legislation intervenes to define
the boundaries of blackness. In other words, this Article investigates
how breed-specific legislation helps make blackness legible and familiar
in an era defined by shifts in racial identity. Ultimately, this Article
is concerned with how racial slavery lives on in modern times and
how breed-specific legislation is part of a long unbroken sequence of
antiblack violence, punishment, and surveillance.