On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a black man, was killed when he was arrested by a white police officer after supposedly using counterfeit money at a grocery store in Minneapolis, US. Another black man killed by a white police officer in the US.
After this incident, numerous protests against police violence towards black people spread across the United States and internationally, showing the ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner as a viral movement against this racial injustice.
Although I didn't personally meet George Floyd, I can tell you something about him: he wasn’t a saint. And his murder didn’t make him a martyr. He was just another sad and unacceptable case of racist brutalism coming from the police force in the US.
People may think that shouting for justice, going out in protest, holding those banners and supporting black people will make a difference. I wish that was the case but reality shows otherwise. No matter how much we complain, no matter how many people claim for justice against racism, it won’t make a slight difference, more the contrary. Racists will feed on this outrage as a wolf feeds on the fear of its prey. I know it may sound harsh and quite savage but it’s true. It’s just tossing more wood into the fire.
Despite being a civilized species, in our deepest nature, we still are just like animals. Rage, fear, domination, harass, bullying...are just primal feelings we all experience now and then. Right, some people are more prone than others towards them, allowing them to rule their life, but in any case, we will never get rid of them completely for it’s within our DNA.
No matter how much noise we make on this matter, there will always be many racists people out there. Same as people hating Muslims, people hating jews, people hating gays and lesbians, people who like killing animals for fun, pyromaniacs who enjoy burning forests… Among us, there are many kinds of people with behaviour issues but their number hasn’t increased much from a hundred years ago, we are just more people on the planet. Which means the probability of finding your neighbour to be a psychopath, is also higher than before.
Following up those Geoge Floyd protests, we have seen some bizarre vandalism movements in the UK and internationally against monuments of famous historic individuals, just because they had some relation with human slavery.
Christopher Columbus’ statues are among those affected by this racial inequality activists. But wait for a second...Please, raise your hand those of you who didn’t know this guy killed and rapped pretty much all the native Americans back in 1492 and the following years. See, that wasn’t a secret, wasn’t it? So why the hell do we have to care so much about it right now? Is cutting off our friend Christopher’s head going to change anything he did in the past? I wish it was as easy as that.
And now that we seem to be bored and making funny decisions, let’s change street names, let’s destroy famous monuments and statues and anything with a slight link with slavery and racial inequality, why not? Is there nothing better to do out there these days?
A few weeks ago, the famous writer and creator of the Harry Potter saga, J. K. Rowling, made some unpopular comments among the trans community in Tweeter, which provoked some angry replies from other famous personalities. Also – and this is interesting – several writers have quit J. K. Rowling’s literary agency due to her controversial tweets.
Does this mean you are going to burn down your lovely collection of Harry Potter’s books just because your opinion differs from its author? Don’t you think we starting to get a bit crazy here? Because in that case, I think we need to start double-checking some stuff here. Let’s see...my favourite singer doesn’t like cats; well, you can go to hell then for I love kittens. What else...my favourite actress loves sushi and I hate it; so another one that goes to hell. And so on.
I thought we could have some free speech around here. I mean, as long as you respectfully express yourself, there shouldn’t be any problem on stating your personal opinion about anything you want to talk about, right? Well, looks like I was wrong.
In this lovely world ruled by social media, you are always under the spotlight. No matter what you say, you will always be likely to be reported as racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or any other funny term describing your inner mental problem you didn’t even know you had. Nobody is perfect, right?
Please, let’s try to be sensible and have some common sense here. Let’s respect any living thing no matter its colour, shape, origin, religion, genre or sexual preference. Let’s enjoy the fun together in peace and respect everybody’s opinion without making a fuss of it.
See, in this world where EVERYBODY seems to be supporting the LGBT+ community, where there are plenty of protests against racial inequality and where staring into a woman for more than two seconds is considered as harassment, being a straight white caucasian male seems to be a pretty defenceless individual right now.
So I’m thinking that from now on I’m going to mimic Batman’s behaviour. I’m gonna go out only by nights, jumping from roof to roof in a pretty dark costume – no racism intended here –, among the safety of the darkness with some lovely corona-free bats as my only company for I know they will take me as I am.
We still have so much to learn from the animal kingdom.
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