America, just stop it already

America, just stop it already.

And they are not even my words, they are the words of Africans, in get this, Africa. But they are my sentiments all the same.

Cecil the Lion this, Cecil the Lion that. Do you even know where Cecil lived, as in a country?

Or is that “country” Africa?

Cecil was Zimbabwean. “Say what, Zimba-what?”

Exactly!

It wasn’t even a month ago when Zimbabwe was all over the 24 Hour News channels and making headlines.

“Get the f*ck out! No it wasn’t.”

Yes, it was. Except no one in America was calling it Zimbabwe, they were calling it Rhodesia.

“Huh, who?”

Exactly my point again.

Dylann Roof, you know the “Charleston shooter” or the “Charleston terrorist“?

The distinction whether Americans called him a “shooter” or a “terrorist” was more dependent on whether the person talking about him was white or black. Yep, the whole #BlackLivesMatter issue continuing to make the news cycles as we struggle with racism in our country.

That murderer. The same one, whose photo wearing the Apartheid South African and Rhodesian symbols on his vest was splashed all across the Main Stream Media, as signs of endemic, world-wide Whites oppression of Blacks.

That helped erupt into an entire movement and controversy about the Confederate Flag flying in the front of the South Carolina Capitol building, as though they just hoisted the flag yesterday.

Right, are you with me now, or should I back it up real_slow_now in review?

Confederate Flag, White Oppression of Blacks, Black Lives Matter, Shooter Versus Terrorist, Charleston AME Church Shooting, Dylann Roof, Apartheid and Rhodesian Flags, Zimbabwe (modern day Rhodesia), Cecil the Lion.

With me?

Great, thanks!

You know why Africans, as in those billion people living on the African continent, and more so those in sub-Saharan Africa as in the Black Africans, are telling Americans to stop talking about Cecil, and kicking a dead lion as it is?

Because, most of us Americans haven’t the slightest idea what happens in Africa or what is happening in Africa, and we’re just talking about Africa and trophy hunting and a lion, because it revolves around another controversy we are continually fighting over… gun ownership, an inalienable right or something not everyone needs.

And, once we forget about Cecil, just like we forgot about Dylann Roof’s photo, and before that “Africans” selling baby elephants to China [which also was in Zimbabwe], we will forget about Africa once again.

And in one case, more so the middle of the three, not those about a lion or cute baby elephants, but the one about the lives of people themselves we should have cared about, just a bit more, and tried to understand just a bit more.

Because, today Zimbabwe is not Rhodesia, a place of White oppression of Blacks.

To the contrary, in a truth that is stranger than fiction really, it is Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. A place of Black oppression, torture and murdering of other Blacks. Blacks, of one geographical region in Zimbabwe, marginalizing Blacks, from another area of the same country.

Isn’t that what racism is in the first place, hatred and oppression of another people due to physical appearance?

But we, as Americans, don’t even know this much, while all along we can tell each other all about a lion, or maybe even have a good recognition of Nelson Mandela and his struggles to overcome the racism of Apartheid.

Cecil, a lion, was important. I was angry myself, seeing it before it went viral in the U.S. of A. But aren’t human lives more important than an animal’s when it boils down to it?

People in Africa are telling us to stop talking about Cecil the Lion because, for just once, they would like us to shut up for one second, and listen to what they are trying to tell us is more important to them, to Africans. And that “more important thing” is human lives.

If you would like to read more about what is happening in Zimbabwe today, please read and weigh in on my coverage of #AllLivesMatter in the wake of the Charleston Shootings and the Confederate Flag being taken down, and see how we missed the opportunity to take a stance against racism in Africa, while we were attempting to address it here too.

Finally, do you know how an African knows if we are from “America” as opposed to Europe?

It is when we ask them, “Where are the lions and tigers?”

There are no tigers in Africa… and that’s the point, we, as Americans, are generally clueless about anything outside our borders.

 

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