And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Since you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.
(Matthew 25:40)
#LivesMatter
In the hours since I began writing this article this morning, I have learned about two instances of what appear to be racially motivated crimes, which I discuss below. Both were allegedly perpetrated by white men; one of the white men was an on-duty police officer at the time of the crime.
This week, the murder of a famous lion by a white American man made Jimmy Kimmel cry on stage.
Cecil’s death has made Facebook very upset as well. Cecil was a famous free-range cat. The internet loves cats. How could anyone kill a beautiful animal with a gun? Facebook demands. Some lions are in zoos! What kind of monster kills an animal that is also in zoos?
But Cecil was not a person, despite his name. The internet loves people as well as cats. How could anyone care more about the death of an animal, tragic as it may be, than the deaths of hundreds of people? Facebook also demands. Some people are in America! What kind of monster kills people in America?
What kind of monster kills _______?
In literature and Christian mythology, the lion is allegorical for Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace. The Lion King is allegorical for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Both Hamlet and Jesus are human beings who may or may not be fictional princes and who died young, at the hands of people who wanted power and who feared their potentially legitimate claims to that power.
Black Americans are human beings who, unless they are actual princes, live under apparently constant threat of dying young, at the hands of people who have power and who fear their legitimate claims to equal power.
Lions — I cannot stress this enough — are not human beings. Their affiliation with human characteristics and beloved cultural heroes* does not actually grant them the qualities of those heroes. They die at the hands of people who have power (in the forms of weapons and money) and who are impressed by their own ability to kill something they could not kill without the aid of their weapons and money.
Lions, unlike Jesus and most black Americans, — but much like Hamlet — are constantly plotting murder. Lions are cats.
Christ told his followers to love each other as they would have others love them. He also told his followers to treat every person they met as if that person was Jesus. He did not say anything about treating lions like Jesus. He did not say anything about loving lions as you would have lions love you. Lions are cats and constantly plotting murder.
Last night, a story broke out of Ohio, where Raymond Tensing, a white police officer, was indicted for the murder and voluntary manslaughter of Samuel DuBose, a black motorist. DuBose was unarmed when he was shot in the head by Tensing during — in what is now apparently a potentially fatal interaction, given the events of this summer — a routine traffic stop last week.
It’s sad when a lion dies. It’s sad when a man dies. Heck, it’s sad when a houseplant dies. It’s sad when anything dies if you liked it enough while it was alive.
It’s sad when anything dies if the death seems senseless.
As many people on Facebook have argued, no one would be paying attention to Cecil’s death if he hadn’t been a famous, GPS-tagged lion monitored by Oxford University and ideologically anthropomorphized by a human name. Cecil’s death seems more senseless than other animal deaths because we liked Cecil better than we like many of the other animals that are hunted for food or sport. It’s estimated that dozens of lions have been killed (legally or illegally) in Zimbabwe over the past 20 years, and their deaths did not incite internet outrage on this scale, if at all, because we didn’t know them enough to like them.
As many people on Facebook have also argued, fewer people are paying attention to the deaths of black Americans that occur at the hands of white Americans— even though they all have the humanizing characteristic of a first name — than they are to Cecil’s death, not only because we knew Cecil but didn’t know these black Americans before their deaths, but also because lions are generally more beloved and less maligned than black Americans, even though an unarmed lion is a billion percent more capable of killing an adult man than is an unarmed black American.
Cecil was a celebrity during his lifetime, and so we mourn his death and celebrate his legacy. We’re mad at the guy who killed him. We think that rich white dentist is a disgusting example of a person. He did not treat that lion as if it was Jesus.
The black Americans who become posthumously famous because of their deaths are mourned, but they are scrutinized and dissected, too. We’re suspicious of the people who allegedly killed them, but we’re also suspicious of the victims; we wonder, What might they have done to deserve it? Did they, unarmed with weapons (eg teeth, claws, strength), threaten their murderers to the point of necessary action in self-defense? We do not treat these black Americans as if they are Jesus. We do not even treat these black Americans as if they are lions.
This morning, Atlanta authorities announced that they are “looking for two white males who were recorded on surveillance camera” placing Confederate battle flags on the grounds of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the “spiritual home” of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
One of the flags was planted right underneath a sign that said, “Black Lives Matter.”
“Perhaps the message is that black lives don’t matter,” [Dr. Raphael] Warnock told HuffPost. “I certainly view this as a cowardly act by misguided individuals.”
“Cowardly” is a word that has been used often to describe Dr. Walter Palmer, murderer of Cecil the Lion. “Misguided” is a word that is used often to describe people who commit crimes or act with poor conduct, if they are white.
Killing a lion with weapons and luring it out of a sanctuary with bait are cowardly acts. Dr. Palmer did not hate Cecil. Dr. Palmer was, perhaps literally, “misguided” about the legality of his hunt, although he is responsible for his own ethics.
Acts of hatred are not “misguided,” they are hateful. Acts of violence are sometimes “misguided” and reactionary, but deliberate acts of hatred — especially nonviolent ones — are not. They are the opposite of love and acceptance; they mean to communicate disrespect and instill fear. They would make Jesus very unhappy if he was around to witness them.
Dr. King was, I daresay, more significant to the Civil Rights Movement than Cecil the Lion was to animal rights advocacy in Zimbabwe (or anywhere). Whether Cecil was or will be used as a tool for animal rights advocacy, Dr. King, like Jesus, actively worked to advocate for the rights of disenfranchised people, against the will of other people who maligned him. He deliberately put himself in potentially dangerous situations because he loved other people and he loved Jesus, whose message he approximated pretty closely; while he would have preferred that change occur without violence, like Jesus, he was aware of what might happen to him, and he knew that even if he died — perhaps especially if he died — in the name of the cause, people would take notice and change would eventually come.
When Jesus told his disciples to treat other people as if they were him, he was trying to communicate that no one person is more important than any others, and that if you would do something for a man you respect, you should assume that everyone you encounter deserves that same treatment and respect; #LivesMatter, and no man is the arbiter of their significance.
We’ll see if Jimmy Kimmel gets choked up if and when he talks about the Tensing indictment.
*regardless of your religious or historical beliefs about Jesus, he’s inarguably a famous literary protagonist, and I’m considering him here as an influential cultural figure more than anything else; Hamlet, likewise, is an influential cultural figure, although not necessarily “heroic”
