People vs. Animals

The president hasn’t demonstrated any desire in wanting to unite the country recently or any modicum of diplomacy, so when he shut down the government for over a month in response to not getting funding for his stupid wall, I must say, I wasn’t surprised. Was anyone?!

What I was surprised about was how little I knew about the effects of a government shutdown and the number of people it impacted. I was surprised by how many people were employed by the US GOV’T living paycheck to paycheck - I’ve certainly been there - and I was surprised by the unapologetic callousness of the Right. I know the latter shouldn’t have come as a surprise considering their profound disregard for humanity, but seeing how politicians really didn’t do anything to stop the shutdown, how disinterested they were in coming to an agreement, how persistently stubborn they were at the expense of people’s lives- it was alarming to witness. I just don’t understand how anyone can continue to support the Republican party as it is now. It’s representing less and less of the American people and they don’t seem to give one f-ck that their base is dwindling. Ah, their base is a whole other ball game. The people who blindly concede to leadership that has no plans to include solutions to their actual problems with any sort of viable policy. Instead, they use fear and white supremacy disguised as patriotism to brainwash people into believing the “preservation of whiteness” is going to solve all of their problems. News flash: IT’S NOT.

The sentiment that these rich, greedy politicians are going to somehow “save us” from economic plight is getting so old, and so exhausting to debunk. Minds that far gone can’t be changed. I still day dream of sending all of the bigots to an island where there’s nothing “foreign,” so there’s just dirt and grass, maybe some trees, and absolutely no amenities that people of color have had a hand in, so they can really “stay true” to their ways and live lives devoid of happiness , wonder, and spices.

Speaking of crazy ideas, I did want to touch on another sentiment I’ve seen being circulated around the internet and that’s- get this- the comparison of human life to animals.

Let me start this off by saying I love animals, though, I’m not a vegan, and I wholeheartedly believe in human rights and animal rights respectively. HOWEVER the strange, and honestly, downright maddening outrage for people who abuse animals versus the justification given to police who kill unarmed people has become beyond bothersome.

I will never forget that moment a few years ago when Cecil the lion was shot and Jimmy Kimmel cried on air. I think this is when I started thinking about the way WP react to animal cruelty vs. human cruelty. The amount of outrage I saw about the lion being shot wasn’t remotely comparable to the emotions from the white community to any of the police brutality at the time. I know there were white people who were and always have been outraged by police shootings but this isn’t about them. This is about a wave of people coming to the defense of this beautiful animal, with genuine sadness. An amazing consensus indeed. We were all stunned and disgusted by these imbeciles. But some of these same people virtually ignored this homicidal epidemic.

My question is, where was that unifying disgust and outrage when it came to police brutality? Instead what I see is the harsh judgment of lives and situations, not a universal upset about the disproportionate number of unarmed people of color being assaulted and killed. People feel it necessary to scrutinize the lives of innocent individuals dying at the hands of police instead of joining the outcry to surface these obviously racist confrontations. It’s not just police brutality that’s subjected to these comparisons, but the treatment of inmates as well. People who are taken into the system somehow lose their humanity in the minds of these disturbing people who are so self-righteous, they believe the life of someone who stole a box of cheerios and winds up in sing sing is no longer worth protecting. No, it was the victim of brutality or prisoner’s fault for “not adhering to simple laws” so they deserve death/mistreatment - I have literally seen someone comment this in response to the prisoners who were protesting not being given appropriate heat. The same commenter later said, animals were innocent so deserve to be treated better than “those criminals.”

And let me also clarify that it is mostly black lives that are under attack in these detrimental, misguided arguments. The fact that animals are brought up at all is a fundamental issue with this country and the thought process about police brutality/the prison system. Animals have rights, yes, and they should, but these rights should not be involved in conversations about the mistreatment of HUMANS. I will never stop saying how slavery’s effects persist today and they are alive and rampant in the prison/judicial system. No. In the fabric of our society, ever so carefully and completely woven in.

I do want to point out the Tiffany Haddish video about her wearing fur until police brutality stops to raise awareness and further show how f-cked up American society is, proving her point through the insane comments to the video. In this respect, it was necessary to raise awareness, and I personally though it was a powerful declaration. It certainly pissed a lot of people off, and I totally understand why, but I hope those people also reexamine their anger and empathize with what she’s ultimately saying. Seriously, go read these comments. So insane.

All in all, animals absolutely deserve to be protected, but SO DO HUMANS- especially unarmed, innocent ones and it’s not helpful or productive to continue bringing up animal rights when it comes to fucking humanity.

Fight me.

Stop Shooting My Little Brother

This country has gone through a lot in regards to race relations in the past oh fifty years. It’s always jarring realizing the Civil Rights Movement was not that long ago and that progress albeit progress has not been anywhere near what MLK envisioned. Sure, little black boys can hold hands with little white girls, if the black boy is seemingly nonthreatening and wearing a suit.

All of our notions about race are just so systematically ingrained in legislation, in media, in bigoted ideas passed down from ignorant generation to the next it’s hard to see a future where none of that exists. 

The mistreatment of people of color is forever torched into American history with a flame that has extinguished hope, burned an unrelenting inferiority complex into millions and laid waste to humanity in a way that is almost irreparable. 

American Slavery is a big deal. It was more than humans being stripped of basic rights, it was more than families living in constant fear of being ripped apart, it was more than slaves being whipped and beaten by slave masters on a whim, it was more than the human spirit being tortured to the point of suicide, it was more than every violent action done to a person you can think of, it was more than dismantling the laws of human nature. Slavery ruined- no, poisoned the hearts and minds of this county and its ramifications continued to haunt our present in ways nobody wants to admit.

During the Civil Rights movement there seemed to be a special place of hatred and violence singularly preserved for black men. They were the main enemy in the minds of millions of Americans because of the mere color of their skin.Their presence was a threat and their lives an afterthought. 

Skin color was (in some minds still is whether it’s admitted or not) equated to intellect, reasoning, responsibility, the capacity for love and understanding. In slavery black people were not allowed to be perceived as human, holding all of these qualities, along with an astounding magnitude of hope, because then the reality that humans were being treated as cattle would settle in and demolish the whole notion of free, renewable resources (HUMANS). 

Again, I talk about slavery because for me that, later to be repackaged as institutional racism, can be the only source of all the unapologetic violence constantly berating the black community for so many years. We have come from an incomprehensible amount of pain and broken spirits to get to where we are today. I am apart of a community that is bigger than me, that holds a diverse array of minds. I am apart of a community that has been and continues to be subjected to atrocious mistreatment and injustice over and over again.

It scares me that black boys are continuously getting shot or beaten with no hope for justice. It scares me that the system that is suppose to protect the lives of all Americans has been so lax with defending the rights of some. It’s even more frustrating that the justice system ignores the harrowing implications of these injustices.

More importantly, it scares me that I have a little brother in Florida who just wants to hang out and be a teenager, but can’t be because being a black teenage boy in Florida can get you killed.

My little brother is tall for his age. He’s lanky and goofy and is one of the funniest people I know. I love talking to him because he has this airy demeanor of wisdom sometimes or this refreshing, wide-eyed infectious curiosity. He asks me questions about life and listens to my clumsy answers with a furrowed brow and at those moments I feel humbled that he actually sits there and listens. We talk about his dreams of becoming the next Dwayne Wade, but I always tell him he could be the next Neil Degrasse Tyson. I love my little brother. I love him so much it makes me want to cry when I hear about these shootings. And I do. I have. I’m crying as I write this. I honestly don’t know what I would do or how I would react if anything happened to him. It makes me crazy even thinking about it.

It makes me physically ill knowing families have lost pieces of themselves because of unfathomable hatred. It makes me angry that there is nothing I can do to quell the rage or sadness the families must feel.

This has got to stop.

Plain and simple.

There is no excuse for this blatant disregard for human life. I don’t feel safe in this country knowing guns are in the hands of maniacs and guilty people get away with murder. 

This is definitely a gun issue, but even more seriously it’s a human rights issue.

It’s time to start protesting. It’s time to start taking action. We cannot keep living like this.

Just... Don't.

I’m tired of black women being objectified even in satirical videos. I’m just tired of seeing black women gyrate because “they’re so good at it,” or because it adds an element of (exoticized) sexiness to a video. I’m tired of people being seen as too uptight, or unable to have a sense of humor because there is this very real ideal they don’t find comical.

I get it. This video what’s her face did is suppose to be making fun of all of the crap women go through in life. It’s suppose to be this retrospective on women in pop culture, but it just seems like time and time again black women are on the outskirts. They’re being represented but not in the same way other women are being portrayed in these grand commentaries on feminism. I’m just kind of over it. I don’t need a pop star telling me about feminism.

I don’t need anyone to continuously defend (never apologize- that would be ludicrous!) their, though stupidly oblivious, sordid decisions. I just want more people to read. Read a book on why these videos satirical or otherwise are incredibly offensive. Read a book about why certain cultures have evolved into what they are and that culture (EVERYONE’S CULTURE) is so much more than what society insists on showing through tiny little filters in the media. Read a book about race. Read a book about race-relations or talk to someone who is black who is willing to explain, why, yes, anger is an appropriate emotion to project when black culture is constantly misconstrued and perpetuated absurdly in flagrantly unbelievable ways. Nobody likes to talk about racism which is why I guess I find myself writing about it on multiple occasions. There needs to be an open dialogue. People should get irritated, bewildered, flustered, startled, alarmed, amazed, confused about racism. It’s a confusing thing considering it’s all a global social construct, but whew. That’s for a different time. Let me reiterate here how perturbed I am by the lack of open discourse not only about race, but race in feminism.

I went to this forum about a month ago, where a whole bunch of “lady bloggers” (some worked for The Hairpin and Jezebel among other feminist/women-focused websites) addressed all sorts of vapid questions about how they fund their sites and how they got to where they are today, but there were absolutely no questions about race and feminism. I won’t even bother to talk about how ridiculous the term “lady blogger” is- OMG *takes a breath* Ok. Then it was the audience’s turn to ask questions. When one lady at the end of the Q&A attempted to get the panel’s opinion about race in terms of the feminist perspective, the moderator simply didn’t get to it. She just ignored it. I was floored. That would have been the perfect setting to discuss issues with minorities in feminism, but even there, WITH MINORITIES ON THE PANEL, no one wanted to talk about it. Mind-blowing. Sometimes, I just don’t care know about society…

Black History Month

I hate it. It’s one month out of the year of the utter most condescension and is, seemingly, this passive aggressive government mandate that does little, if nothing, to better race relations, and help people understand the history of a people who have been treated less than human, to put it lightly, and have been are subjected to ongoing, systemic racism.

To give one month out of the year to a group of people whose ancestors  (my great-great-great grandmother worked on a plantation) basically built this country with literal blood, sweat and tears is not only infuriating but blatantly insulting. Maybe the initial Black History Month back in the 1920s- where it started out as a week- was necessary and possibly helped people cope with the past better (this is a stretch… is there a word for “greater than a stretch?”). That and Jim Crow laws. It’s hard not to be sarcastic when dealing with this subject. I mean, c'monnnn. When will there be a conference about how important it is to integrate Black History month into the school year? 

Also, February is the shortest month of the year which has been argued countless times as an overtly offensive act. Obviously Black History Month is not for black people, because we know our history, or at least I hope most of us do, so this month is to educate people outside of that realm, but very gingerly, omitting unpleasant (real) details about slavery and ongoing discrimination and atrocious physical and mental mistreatment. Nowadays Black History Month focuses on the Civil Rights movement, like black people didn’t exist before then. I mean, there have been some lesson plans on Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Doulass, and that peanut butter dude, but as far as I can remember there was just a brief mention of the fact they were slaves.

On a different note, I’ve been long-meaning to write an essay about how slavery is taught in high school. I distinctly remember sitting in one of my history classes, completely baffled and thoroughly irritated as the teacher espoused this embarrassingly inappropriate rhetoric about how some slaves LIKED being slaves and how some were treated “better” than what we might be led to believe. If only I wasn’t a quiet, mousy teenager who feared the judgmental eyes of my peers, I would have retorted with the obvious response: “They were all still owned by other humans. This is a wildly irresponsible discussion to have at this point, considering we haven’t gone over the actual conduct of slave traders and masters. Families were torn apart. Spirits were broken through physical and mental torture. There were books on how to ‘break your slave.’ Teacher, you’re an asshole.” However, I kept my mouth shut and was silently seething in my seat, sure people could see steam shooting out of my ears. 

Anyway, during this month I can remember three people who were kept in rotation every year, which was not necessarily a bad thing, but it held the class back from learning other predominant or maybe not so predominate black figures. Hearing about MLK for ten years and hearing nothing about Phillis Wheatley or Linda Brent Harriet Anne Jacobs, two former slaves that transcended societal restrictions to publish works about their experiences in captivity. Reading their narratives inspired me not only as a black woman, but as a writer and no one will ever hear of them unless they research or take specific classes illuminating their integral presence in history.

What do you think about Black History month? 

I shall end this with a quote from a brilliant, noteworthy black man with the gosh-darn best narrating voice the world has ever heard.

“I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”

-Morgan Freeman