It’s hard to believe that it’s now been 20 years since I
used to watch The Lion King every day with my two and a half year old cousin. We watched The Lion King like she was
studying it for her Master’s thesis. We would
watch The Lion King three or four times a day.
“Watch it again, Miss Avity!
Avity! Watch it again!” We sang the songs together, we did the
dances; suffice it to say that I was extremely knowledgeable about that movie. Every time we watched it, every single solitary
time, she would ask me some existential, philosophical, metaphysical question
that a 2 year old should not have even been able to ask. She asked questions that I couldn’t answer
and that would have me stumped as to how to respond. I would struggle to explain to this
beautiful, inquisitive little girl about the concepts of life, death, and
morality and how it all wove together in a movie about a damn lion.
Here I am today, two decades later, and I’m still very much
struggling with the concepts of life and death and morality as it pertains to
Simba’s cousin, Cecil. (You didn’t see
him in the movie? He didn’t have a
speaking role so it was easy to miss him. He was the one that had black on his
mane.) Anyway, Cecil the Lion was a
“famous” lion who was hunted and killed as a part of a blood-sport safari package. His killer, Walter Palmer, is a dentist from Minnesota
who paid $50,000 for the thrill of killing Cecil. I
must, out of necessity, put the word famous in quotes because Cecil wasn’t
really famous. It wasn’t like he was a
Barnum & Bailey star performer that millions of people had grown up loving;
he wasn’t the lion that ate Siegfried.
Or was that Roy? Anyway, he didn’t
have his own reality show; he wasn’t on a t-shirt. He wasn’t the latest toy craze he; didn’t
have a stuffed animal fashioned after him that parents had to get their
children because they were having meltdowns in Toyz R’ Us. Cecil wasn’t even on social media. He didn’t have a Twitter, Instagram, or
Facebook page; there were no memes with Cecil’s image that had gone viral. The nation is mourning a lion that . . . 99.9%
of the people in this country had never heard of before his death, in a country
that 95% of the people can’t find on a map if you paid them. But, oh, poor Cecil. Oh the horror, oh the tragedy. Posthumously, Cecil has become the nation’s
golden child. Their outrage and fury
have reached a fevered pitch over the death of poor Cecil that is unparalleled.
Walter Palmer is a wanted man. Everyone is out for his blood. Every conceivable form of social media has
got him in their crosshairs. He’s had to
shut down his dentistry, he’s in fear for his life; there is even talk of
extraditing him back to Zimbabwe to have him prosecuted. Celebrities are speaking out, people are
crying. Walter Palmer is the most hated
man in America.
I will tell you this, and of this I am 100% positive, if
Walter Palmer had killed a Black man in cold-blooded murder, all caught on
video, right here in these United States of America, he would be a national
hero right now. He would have a GoFundMe
account where people would donate millions of dollars to him. He would be the bastard love child of Fox
News and the NRA. White people would be
OUTRAGED if there was talk of prosecuting him.
People would find ways to excuse his actions as long as his victim was a
Black man. People would be chanting his
name, only this time, it would be to hoist him on their collective shoulders
and cheer him on as not only innocent, but justified in his actions.
White America cheers when a Black person is murdered in cold
blood. They celebrate it. Every day in a national holiday when a Black
person is killed in this country because it’s always their fault. They
shouldn’t have been so uppity. They
shouldn’t have been so menacing. They
shouldn’t have resisted. They shouldn’t
have been walking in a neighborhood they didn’t belong. They shouldn’t have been playing in the park
or buying a toy in Wal-mart. Clearly, he
shouldn’t have been running away or working on his own car in his own driveway. She shouldn’t have been sleeping on the sofa
or asking for help for her broken car. They
shouldn’t have been driving without a license or had a broken tail light because
those are crimes punishable and justifiable by death. They shouldn’t have been arrested 20 years
ago. In essence, they shouldn’t have
been a NIGGER.
The murderers of Eric Garner didn't get indicted. The
coroner ruled his death a homicide and no one was held accountable for his
death. The police department turned their backs on the Mayor for asking for
further accountability after the incident. People posted pictures of themselves
wearing t-shirts saying, "I Can Breathe," they posted videos of
themselves being choked like it was funny. LEGIONS of white people posted online,
justifying the murder of Eric Garner for resisting
arrest, saying he shouldn't have been selling cigarettes, saying he was fat and
it was his fault. Yeah, but poor Cecil the Lion though.
Walter Palmer’s life is in
ruin. He was forced to issue a lie, I
mean an apology saying that he didn’t realize that he had killed a protected
animal and how very sorry he was. Conversely,
Darren Wilson said he would kill Mike Brown again if he had to do it all
over. He wasn't even the tiniest bit
apologetic. He retired from the Ferguson
Police Department amidst rumors that he had in excess of a million dollars
donated to his defense fund. A fund,
incidentally, that he never had to use because he was never even indicted. His flimsy story, contradicted by every
eye-witness, even by the autopsy report, was never questioned by John W. Public. (I’ll give you two guesses what the W stands
for.) The public swallowed it hook, lie,
and sinker. White people went so far as
to photoshop pictures of Darren Wilson making him look bloody and bruised when
in actuality, all he had was a case of rosacea.
White America said that Mike Brown DESERVED to die because he stole some
cigars. No, this isn’t 1815 when Black
men were killed for minor offenses all the time, when whites would kill niggers
for any tiny infraction. I want you to
listen very closely to what white people are trying to say. White people are boldly proclaiming, loud and
clear, that they want to go back to the good old days when they could murder
Blacks for offending their lily-white sensibilities. Being
Black in America is a crime. Being poor
in America is a crime. Being
under-educated and unemployed in this country is a crime punishable by
death.
George Zimmerman has shown the world time and time again
that he’s volatile and unstable, that he’s actually a thug. But the overwhelming number of white people
believe that he was justified in killing Trayvon Martin because he was in fear
for his life, intimidated by the big, Black man who clearly was not where he
was supposed to be. Lions are
predators. They are one of the most vicious
animals on the planet. They kill for
food, they kill for territory, they kill for control. Where are the tweets about how Cecil deserved
to die, how he was a threat, where is the defense of Walter Palmer for killing
a threat to society?
Black lives don’t matter.
Racism is not in the past, don’t let it go. Racism is alive, well, racism is flourishing
and thriving with the help of Fox News, the anonymity of the internet, and the
unabated ego of white people. The
evidence is there, as plain as day, that white people loathe Black people, they
value animal life more than Black human lives.
Kid yourself if you want, delude yourself into believing that the
presence of a Black President or interracial relationships symbolize the end of
racism, that the playing field is level in some way but I promise you that
there are white people in relationships with Black partners and people who
voted for Obama who have justified and excused the murder of Black lives in
this country because the victims weren’t educated enough, weren’t assimilated
enough, weren’t “white” enough. And I
can promise you, that some of the loudest and most virulent and repulsive
racist voices, those espousing the most heinous and prejudiced beliefs are the
very same people OBSESSED with Black sexuality in secret.
I went to an exhibition on lynching once. It showed pictures of white people gathered
around corpses of burning, dismembered Black bodies, smiling and happy like it
was a day at the fair. White people used
to send out invitations to lynchings, they sent out postcards with pictures of
Black people hanged like charcoal piñatas.
White people would put the severed genitalia of Black men on display in
jars of the people they murdered. If
that isn’t the height of racism, if that isn’t the epitome of arrogance, I
really don’t know what is. Racism is deeply-ingrained
in American culture and nothing has changed.
We are still hated, vilified, and
stalked like prey, like wild game on a safari.
Am I supposed to believe that the same people who dress up like Trayvon
Martin for Halloween and who troll Black websites to call Black people niggers
are not the same people who would take selfies of themselves in front of the
mutilated bodies of Black people today?
I would like to conclude by saying that hunting for sport is
nothing less than barbaric and should be outlawed in every corner of the
planet. Anyone who finds pleasure,
entertainment, or enjoyment from killing is a sociopath and needs to be kept
away from society for the collective safety of the entire animal kingdom, human
beings included. If there is one thing I’ve
learned from this event, one existential question about life, death, and
morality that I can now answer with certainty and authority, is that Black
lives don’t mean a god damn thing in this country other than expendable
entertainment for the racist, white masses.
