walter palmer killed cecil the lion in
july. he is from minnesota. now he is in
hiding. there are signs
plastered all over the door to his office. they
call for his head. there are protests. people
yell profanity at his window. they cry for the
slain lion. they scream that cecil was a beloved
animal, and the numbers are already
dwindling. they leave walter palmer
death threats
on the answering machine. no one has seen him
in days. where was all this outrage
in the last two centuries? cecil was from
africa. they were from
africa too. cecil bled red. they bled red too.
cecil should have been left
alone. they should have been left alone
too. cecil did not deserve to
die. they did not deserve to die either. why is cecil
the first thing from africa that white
people feel guilty about killing? where was all this
streaking white-hot, rapid-fire public
disgust? every generation insists that the world has
changed, that the world is not the same world their
parents lived in.
michael brown was killed last year in
august, over a midnight convenience store robbery, over his
skin color. he was unarmed, but
darren wilson didn't care. you would think that
skin color looks the same in the dark.
people are rioting in ferguson. the police keep
shooting rounds of bullets. the air is
thick and toxic with gas. the country is
upset. the police don't try to
understand. in 2013, i wrote #prayfortrayvon on
my wrist with a black pen, and my mother
told me to wash it off. she said,
how dare you sympathize with a black boy.
she said, he was a
hoodlum.
hoodlum or not, he was unarmed. the neighborhoods
are filled with people screeching that america is the
land of the free. they brandish
confederate army flags painted with the
blood of african americans. their tears were
opaque, too.
modern cars line the streets,
but if you really look around,
it feels just like the 1950s.