When people talk about their pets, one of the first things they mention is the color. There are all kinds of elaborate and non-judgment inducing names for the colors of pets: tabby, smoke, calico, brindle, fawn, grizzle, merele, chinchilla, tortie, and of course any combination of the above.

It doesn’t stop there: in addition to the basic black, white, and brown that people come in, cats and dogs also come in blue, orange, lilac, pewter, apricot, cinnamon, chocolate and golden. It’s really quite a lively range of descriptors. People unapologetically choose their pets by their colors. “I really want a black lab.” We’ve all heard it.

We’re not as comfortable when it comes to people. A popular complaint about identifying people of color is this, “I don’t know what to call them. They keep changing what they want to be called, and if the I say the wrong thing, I’m going to offend someone, and I’ll be called a racist.” In an effort to curb this fear and potential offense people often modify racial descriptors with flattering adjectives to soften the blow of identifying race in the first place. People fear that pointing out race makes them racist. They forget to consider that it is their intention in pointing out the race that matters.

My gallerist did this just the other day. He said, “My daughter is getting a place with…(pause) one of her nicest, (pause) African American friends.” I’m sure he didn’t mention his daughter’s roommate’s race to everyone. He made a point of telling me this because I, like the roommate, am black. To cover up for the obvious “connecting two black people is fun” game, he added how nice this roommate is, as if this was the most important part of his sentence.

Alternatively people will insert the phrase “who just happens to be” in front of the racial identifier: “My daughter is moving in with a really nice woman who just happens to be African American.” This strikes me as odd. Did the roommate accidentally turn black? Now that’s a story. Tell me about that. How did they “just happen” to be this race?

Why is it that we describe pet colors and breeds so easily but when we talk about people we stumble, stutter, and prepare for battle? Is it because dogs never fought for their rights in our society? Is it because cats never asked to be called one thing or another? Is it because we choose their descriptors for them, and they have no say at all in the labels we assign them?

If you apply a biological approach, the color of pets and the race of people is pretty much determined by the same mechanism: genetics. So what makes race such a drastically different and difficult conversation among humans? We have to admit, finally, that race is not just a matter of genetics, it includes our historical interactions.

Facing a person’s race means facing the history you have with them and their group, not just facing a difference in “skin color” as people often try to oversimplify it. We carry our collective history with us everywhere, and the first reminder of that is our skin. It is our discomfort with and denial of our history that tensions around race invariably arises.