Guenther has published a book claiming that “white supremacy” is to blame for non-white people abusing animals.
Areomagazine.com reports: In her recent book The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals, Katja Guenther claims that dogs are being killed because of “capitalism, anthroparchy, white supremacy and patriarchy.” She argues that allowing dogs to sleep inside is a privilege reserved for the white and wealthy and that policies against keeping dogs chained up in backyards are intended to oppress people of color by imposing “middle-class norms of animal keeping in which companion animals are considered family and treated accordingly,” which ignore the fact that people of color “are themselves trapped in poverty, may have few options for legitimate income generation and possibly rely on their dogs for … status.”
Unfortunately Guenther’s misguided book is gaining traction. Shelter director Kristen Hassen opines that Guenther “gets it right” in concluding that “racism, classism and the caste system are at the heart of the broken animal sheltering institution.” Arguing that laws to prevent mistreatment of dogs discriminate against “anyone in the US other than white, middle class and upper-class individuals,” Sloane Hawes, Tess Hupe and Kevin Morris of the University of Denver Institute for Human-Animal Connection cite the book in their proposal to relax enforcement of animal protection laws—a proposal that threatens to reverse decades of hard-won progress.