The Lion Sleeps Tonight

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. 

Q: What is it about society that disappoints you so much?

A:  I am repulsed by the group-think that infects the masses that is clearly immature, quite obviously emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and mentally retarded, which perpetuates racism, sexism, heterosexism, patriotism, capitalism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and stupidity as the norm, as the standard that we should be striving towards.  I’m tired of the media “reporting” that our society is sexually conservative and moral when the evidence is there, for all the world to see, that our society is replete with sexual deviants and perverts who boldly post their videos of bizarre sexual proclivities online, who post ads on craigslist seeking depravity and filth and yet we are told that the only sex that Americans engage in is married and boring and for procreation only. 

I’m sickened by the concept that sex with someone of the same gender is considered a sin when there are millions upon millions of people who are sexually aroused by taking the innocence of children, there are networks of pedophiles who make fortunes from the exploitation of children, and the government knows and they turn a blind eye.  I don’t want to live in a society where the entire financial system is run by white men who are corrupt, criminal, and megalomaniacal, who think they can digitally move funds around to make themselves richer while systematically denying people of color the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because their greed supersedes the needs of the masses.  Those same white men, the same ones who go online and rant how AmeriKKKa is being ruined by niggers, are the same ones, sucking Black dicks in glory holes and paying Black men to fuck their silicone enhanced trophy wives because they hate themselves, they hate their whiteness, and they think that sex with Blacks makes them some sort of animal. 

What about this society disappoints me so much?  The fact that the most beneficial, medicinal plant on the planet is illegal and stigmatized and the Black and brown men who sell dime bags, or a few pounds are imprisoned for life when white men are making fortunes for selling the legalized, medically acceptable form of the exact same plant.  I despise that big pharma is making billions, not millions but billions of dollars selling drugs that cost them pennies to make that have side effects that are keeping people sick and dying.  I hate that insurance companies would rather make a profit than provide life-saving treatments to human beings.  Life is expendable.  Moreover, poor life, Black life, is disposable. 

The stench of racism permeates every single facet of society.  Racist white men dictate, control, and silence the voices of the oppressed, their lies, and their delusions are taught as truth in schools.  Movies convince us that white men are heroes and they always save the day when the police are slaughtering Black people for sport and entertainment and the only people who care are the ones who look like me.  White terrorists are “poor, tortured souls,” and innocent Black victims are demonized and made out to be criminals for wearing the wrong skin color. 

Any thinking, sane person would be disgusted at a society where the Kardashians not only have a show, but where they are celebrities for no other reason than their attractiveness and one-dimensionality and superficiality.  I find it offensive that every single song on urban radio is barely literate and perpetuates stupidity.  It hurts me to my heart that Beyonce, with her blond weave and her endless efforts to appear as white as she can possibly be, is touted as the epitome of Black beauty.  I hate that every single thing she wears, from her 7 inch stilettos that cost the same amount as rent for a 2-bedroom apartment with a master bath, to her see-through, skimpy, tight outfits meant to arouse men is seen as the spokesperson for feminism, conforming to every sexist, misogynist stereotype that exists.  I hate that young Black girls see her as a role model and think her poorly-written songs are anthems for empowerment.  Reality shows that don’t show anything close to reality, are nothing more than scripted melodramas with fighting, lying, cheating, and irresponsibility are enough to drive any sane person off their rocker. 

Any society that claims to be morally right that champions the right to life of a few cells in a woman’s uterus but then systematically denies living breathing CHILDREN free lunches, daycare, and a quality education that will allow them to move from poverty to self-sustainability is an evil nation.  Women only have value if they are attractive, if they are sexy and hot.  Black people, rather than boldly proclaiming that we are beautiful and strong, rather than trying to liberate ourselves from the brainwashing of our slave masters instead try to emulate and imitate them, denouncing our own beautiful, natural hair for their stringy, limp, flat tresses.  We actually believe that diamonds, the bling we think gives us more value, are more valuable than other stones white people steal from the earth at the cost of African lives.  We believe that the more we have their blood mixed in with ours, the more attractive we are.   Black people embrace anything ghetto as inherent to our blackness.  We don’t know any healthy alternatives so we proclaim that our unhealthy, dysfunctional behaviors are justifiable.  Everything is backwards.  What’s to love about a society like that? 

There isn’t much about this society that doesn’t disappoint me.   People thinking 140 characters and a hashtag is a viable form of communication.  Six second videos played over and over that become subliminal brainwashing of stupidity.  Real intimacy and communion with another human being?  There’s an app for that.   “Watch this video and you’ll be amazed at 1:23 seconds.”  Every article, every news article from people who are supposed to be journalists is nothing more a list of 35 reasons you are doing something wrong.  We need some escapism from reality.  Life is so stressful.  Let’s go see Fast and Furious 32 because we need a reprieve from the stress of microwaving our genetically modified food and playing endless hours of violent video games. 

The hypocrisy and willful ignorance of this society breaks my heart.   

What do you have against white people?

The overwhelming and most consistent characteristic of white men is their arrogance.  They believe the world revolves around them.  They feel like they are entitled to respect, satisfaction, entitled to have the last say, whatever it is that they desire more than anyone else.  Even those who identify themselves as submissive are more often than not, arrogant as fuck, because they can’t comprehend that as a black person, I’m not willing to satisfy their desires or conform to their fantasy of what a Black woman should be. 

Running a close second to arrogance in universal characteristics of white men, actually, intricately tied to it, is racism.  They dismiss any experience other than their own as invalid.  Because they don’t have any experiential knowledge of the things that black people discuss, share, or opine, they claim it has no validity.  They form their opinions based on racist beliefs and god forbid anyone who challenges those racist beliefs, they are going to suffer the wrath of the almighty white man. 

As long as white men say, “I’m not racist,” that is supposed to mean that no one is supposed to question their motives.  Apparently, if they jerk off to interracial porn, that means they aren’t racist.   Forget that they are masturbating to nigger porn and it’s perpetuated on the belief that Black men are inherently inferior, or that Black men are sexual savages.  Even when they say, “I want to be humiliated and degraded by serving  the superior Black race,” they really mean, “It would be so degrading and humiliating to serve you because you are supposed to be inferior and I would be lowering myself to beneath you if I did and that’s the ultimate humiliation . .  . in private”  Think about it.  If they believed Black people to be truly superior, submitting to us wouldn’t be degrading, right?  If I had a nickel for every time a white man said, “I’m not racist,” followed by him saying, “Black men don’t raise their children and they love to fuck white women,” or some other racist and offensive stereotype, I’ve have enough money to self-publish my book with change enough to have a big sack of nickels to hit them in the head. 

Some white dude sent me a message claiming how he wanted to submit to a black woman because he had so much power in real life that he wanted to relinquish it by serving a black woman.  He was a 20 something college student.  My question to him was, what the hell sort of stressful, powerful decisions do you have to make as a college student, which beer to drink?  I wanted very much to question his motives further, inquire about why he felt that serving a Black woman was so degrading but oddly enough, he blocked m when I called him out about the fact that he didn’t even have a part time job and he had no really stress or pressure to relieve.  His supposed power was nothing more than his unjustified privilege as a white man.  I can assure you, that 9 times out of 10 when a white man tells me that he wants to submit to me, I can respond by saying, “Meaning you want to be my faggot sissy bitch while I let Black men fuck your slutty white pussy bareback.”  In never fails that they fall all over themselves proclaiming that I’m some sort of psychic mind reader that has tapped into their deepest darkest secrets, like their fantasies are unique or special.  Every fucking day it happens, like clockwork.

White men look at BET or one of those horrid reality shows and think Black women are all pole dancers and ghetto hoochies and that we are just waiting for a white man to come along and validate us by telling us that we are pretty so they can add a chocolate pussy notch on their belts.  White people are becoming more and more comfortable being racist and all they have to do is say, “I’m not racist,” and all is supposed to be forgiven.  White men are becoming more abrasive, threatening, and confrontational when I speak out about racism, when I discuss race outside of a sexual context.  It’s all good when I’m talking about fucking them with a strap-on or making them suck a big black dick, but when I talk about white male privilege, when I talk about institutional racism or the abnormal and delusional behaviors of white men in society, then I become an uppity nigger bitch.

What I find fascinating is the number of white men who have some sort of sick and really psychotic need to create profiles to try to disparage me.  I’m transparent.  My name, my real pictures, my identity are out there for all the world to see with no shame. There’s something incredibly infantile and mentally ill about the number of white men who think it’s unique or hurtful to make up a profile in order to make negative comments about me.   I think it speaks to a  collective white insanity that so many white men have done it, that so many have sat behind their computers trying to figure out how to get that bitch AfroerotiK and the best they can come up with is making up a fake profile to feebly attempt to ridicule me. 

White people who privately acknowledge their submission to black people don’t rid themselves of the racist beliefs that are ingrained in their psyche in this society.  Any country built on the oppression of one race is going to pass on those beliefs as the foundation for all thought processes, institutions, and defacto practices.  The whole, "I don't see color," is nothing more than rhetoric and doesn't indicate anything other than a person not willing to look at their own misperceptions.  You god damn better see my color.  My color is replete with the pain of my ancestors and my daily struggle. 

I had a white gentleman tell me a story once that I found utterly fascinating. He told me, admittedly, that he used to be racist but had a transformative experience. He went on to say that he had procured the services of a professional dominatrix. She blindfolded him and went about her business of degrading him, humiliating him, whathaveyou. Unbeknownst to this man, the white pro Domme had in fact switched with a Black Domme who was responsible for giving him what he felt was the most intense experience of his life. This Black Domme apparently had urinated on him. Well, once the blindfold was removed, voila', his racism was gone. Healed by the magical piss of the Black woman. I suggested to him that racism isn't just washed away with a little piss and that in order for him to truly rid himself of racist behaviors that he would really need to challenge his beliefs, learn, reprogram all that he'd been taught. At that point, he called me a racist nigger bitch.

Time and time again, I have white men tell me that they aren't racist because they are attracted to black women, because they want to submit to Black women.  But, in the same breath, they are afraid to meet me in public in a place where people that know them might see them.  Or they tell me that black women are superior because they are so naturally dominant, never giving credence to the totality of us as women, that we can be frail, sensitive, emotional, nurturing, and basically human beings.  You don't love Black women if all you see us as is an outlet to your fetish.   

I've had white men tell me that they want to be with a black woman to see if our pussies taste different.  Number one, I'm not a scratch and sniff experiment; I'm a human being.  There is absolutely nothing different about my physical make up other than the presence of melanin.  My blood is the same, my tears are the same, my piss is the same, and my pussy is the same.  If there’s a difference in my taste it’s because I’m an individual and EVERYONE is going to have a different taste.   

I had a white man tell me that his wife had a black lover and he would be forced to pay the black man to service him orally and how he felt that was the ultimate humiliation.  He professed that he wasn't racist and how he thought that Blacks were superior.  When asked how he thought Blacks were superior, he listed physical characteristics.  Check it, if he thought blacks were truly superior, he would not feel it was humiliating to suck a black cock, it would be an honor.  I asked him some of the Black people that he thought were intellectually superior and he said Condoleezza Rice and me.  First and foremost, there should NEVER be an occasion where Kindasleezey Rice and I are compared on the same scale.  She is the anti-Christ and I denounce her as a black woman.  Second, it's obvious he had no clue about my intellect; he was merely enamored with my propensity to fit his fantasy of what a sassy Black Domme should be.   

I can't tell you how many times I've had white men tell me, "Oh, I wish I was a black man."  When asked why, the number one reason, "They have such big cocks."  Okay dumbass, you think being a black man is all about fucking white women with an 11-inch dick?  You don't see the correlation between black men and the prison population, Driving While Black, and the inordinately high Black murders by police.  No, you don't want to be a Black man; you want to have white privilege, a big dick AND have white women throwing themselves at you.  White men who say that stupid shit inevitably say, "I don't have a racist bone in my body.  Not since I started watching interracial porn,” as if an orgasm while looking at a black person have sex cures diseased perceptions." 

My favorite?  White man approaches me and tells me how submissive he is to black women.  I tell him I’m not interested in a submissive at this time, white, black, or other.  They tell me that they can (fill in the blank with a degrading and humiliating act) and refuses to accept that I’m not interested in him.  Next thing out of his mouth . . . YOU RACIST NIGGER BITCH. 

On the other side of the spectrum are white men who claim to have no affinity at all to interracial domination and who claim that they don't see color at all.  They claim that it's just a coincidence that they are aroused by my writings and that they have never contemplated race before.  Their rhetoric is all the same:  they are oblivious to color, color doesn't matter, can't we all just get along, I wasn't raised racist, and as of late, "I voted for Obama."  None of these clichés, not one, is an indication that a white man has given up the racist beliefs that have been programmed into the minds of white males since Blacks landed on these shores.  If you don't see color, you don't want me to dominate you.  I am a Black woman, with a different perspective, a different culture, different experiences, and far less privileges than someone who is white and who has a penis.  My ancestors were slaves, I am a descendent of the strongest people this country has ever known.  You mother fucking skippy color matters.  Please don't try to make me into some sort of "chocolate" version of a white woman because I most certainly am not.  In fact, I'm not chocolate at all, I'm Black. 

The only white people who aren't truly racist are those who are willing to be empathetic and understanding, who are willing to concede that they don't have knowledge of racism, and who are willing to listen to those who have experience with it and to those who are willing to speak out, educate, and enlighten others.  The only individuals who aren't truly racist are those who are willing to walk a mile in the shoes of the activist, to listen to their tales of horror, to feel empathy and compassion for an experience that is different than their own.  When white people try to silence me with cries of, "You're the racist," and other such clichés, it shows that they are not willing to give up their privilege, that they are vested in holding on to their patriarchal, misogynist, racist beliefs.  Just saying, I'm not racist," doesn't make it so.  Conversely, trying to silence people of color at the mere mention of issues of race is clear indication of deep-seeded racist mindsets, beliefs, and ideologies.

That is what I have against white people. 

Any more questions?