The stats have far more to do with who owns the dogs than the dogs themselves. Pitbulls became a status symbol for Blacks in inner cities starting in the 1970s, with the premium going to those who had (by long-established methods) made their dogs the meanest (it's not hard, if that's your purpose). Prior to that, they were generally owned by rural White folks who not only placed no emphasis on making their dogs mean, they had no desire to own one that wasn't positively friendly towards people. It was only since the 1970s that we saw outsized dog bite stats attached to Pitbulls. In fact, Pitbulls tended not even to make the top ten lists of dogs that bite before then.
