Wasn't my racist mind that came up with the three of your article. Wasn't my racist mind that chose to lead off with that quote either. Or made thr point that pets are bought today.
Pets weren't domesticated for survival. They were domesticated out of the same sense of compassion you see across all species. The same sense of compassion that will lead to a duck feeding fish, a dolphin rescuing a dog from drowning, a dog rescuing a fawn from drowning, or a zoo gorilla protecting a human child who fell into its enclosure. These things happen.
You also see unlikely cross species friendships crop up from time to time. This is what happened between humans and animals.
Did animals end up being part of our survival success as a species. Yes. But our close proximity to them has been negative to our survival as well. The biggest threats to humanity have been diseases that jumped species. Smallpox came from rodents but was spread by camels into Europe. Bubonic plague came from rat's and was spread by fleas carried by all warm blooded animals, which means into homes by pests and pets.
You also conveniently ignored that many other people's have kept pets as status displays. The whole "pet parent" thing as it is today is economic in nature. It's a created industry from propaganda. Same as the cosmetic industry. Same as the car industry. Same as the fashion industry. Same as a the patenting industry.
What you're seeing and judging as genetic backlash from colonizers is marketing propaganda to get people to spend money. And it's clearly very effective. No other people are spared that by not being white. Once status can be displayed by owning and how you keep an animal or anything else, people will engage in the practice as soon as they have the means to. Arabian horses are a good example. Indigenous Americans in the American southwest used to keep parrots from Central America as pets. Cats in Egypt. Again, the list goes on and on.
It's ststus. Why else would you put a dress on a dog? Or have ugly Christmas sweater pagents for your dog? How exactly is THAT supposed to be a lacuna for the generational trauma of not getting to keep slaves anymore?
You are right about the down spiral in mental health. You're right that our history certainly plays a factor in it. But youre creating a cause and effect where your time lines simply don't match up, your observed phenomena exist beyond the populations you claim it is bound to for a specific reason. Ergo, your conclusions, while interesting, just don't check with reality as you've states them.
White people kept pets long before they kept slaves. They kept pets when they were slaves to the Ottomans and the Turks. Prisoners, lifers, have been known to make pets out of rats, mice, and birds. The current iteration of pet ownership "pet parenthood" has come about pretty much become mainstream in this century but it started emerging late in the 20th century, long after slavery was abolished in western culture.
The shift has been one that had been noticeable in my lifetime and I can tell you, nobody was thinking about what they missed from having slaves. As I said, most of us never held slaves in our family lines.
