#046 ~ Racism

This message pertains to those if you who know me personally.  I write fiction.  The stories I write may or may not be based on real life events.  (A certain MonkeyHam555 confused reality with fiction.)  It's up to the reader to assume everything I write is fiction until proven otherwise.  To everyone else: enjoy!

Racism

Rod Tanzol

“Mommy, can I have a pet chimp? They look so cool in the news!” the little boy, whose eyes were wide and lips were pouty, asked. He anxiously awaited his mother’s response.

“No. Are you crazy‽ They are violent and filthy creatures. You may not have one!” she exclaimed!

The boy began to cry himself into a senseless fit. “But,” he screamed, “I want one! I want one! I want one!”

She threateningly raised her hand to him and scolded him, “I am not getting you chimpanzee!” The boy still cried. She raised her voice, “That’s the end of it! Shut up before I beat you!”

The boy’s mood subsided. His eyes were puffy and his nose was runny. The mother had to take a deep breath; their argument had just raised her blood pressure to dangerous levels. The boy returned to his nonsensical business, and the mother returned to her duties.

-|—|-

The next morning, the boy went to school. There his history teacher appeared distraught. The teacher spoke to the class, “Today, students, I must talk to you about political commentary and racism.”

A student interrupted the teacher with an innocent inquiry, “What is racism?”

The teacher addressed the class, “That’s a good question.” The students seemed mildly interested. “Racism,” he explained, “is when people express hatred towards each other because of skin color or race.”

The class was confused. One girl shared her qualms, “Why is skin color important?” The class looked at one another. They saw every skin color possible, but they thought it was irrelevant to life.

The teacher tried further explaining racism to the naïve class, “Some people feel that people of a skin color are better than people of another skin color. For example, one group might feel that they are more intelligent than another group because of their skin color. People will even express hatred and violence because of this.”

Another student expressed befuddlement, “What does skin color have to do with intelligence. We hate the kid in the back corner because he can’t add two and two, not because of his skin color.” The class conferred. Luckily, the mention student was absent and unable to hear the rude remarks. The teacher seemed incapable of understanding their youthful obliviousness to reality.

A third student added to the conversation, “What does racism have to do with today’s lesson?”

The teacher tried understanding the students’ mindsets. The teacher explained the circumstances of the lesson, “I’ll get to that in a little bit. First, however, all of you may have seen in the news lately that Reverend Al Sharpton is protesting a comic published in the New York Post. It features two white police officers shooting a chimpanzee. One officer then says, ‘Now they’ll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.’ Many protesters feel that this is a racist statement against President Obama. Sharpton is quoted as saying that the cartoon is ‘troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.’ Class, what are your opinions on the matter?”

“I’m not sure,” said the boy from last night, “but my mom said that chimps were dirty and violent. Was she saying that the president is dirty and violent?”

The teacher swiftly terminated the boy’s misconceptions, “No, your mother was only stating her feelings about chimpanzees. Earlier this week, a woman was violently attacked by an unprovoked chimp. It’s still all over the news.”

One student raised her hand and asked, “Does the comic have anything to do with recent headlines such as that attack or the passing and signing of the economic stimulus bill?”

“Very good,” the teacher confirmed the student’s thoughts. He continued, “This comic, most likely, is a commentary or parody of those recent headlines. Now, who wants to dissect Reverend Sharpton’s theory that the cartoon is racist?”

One student explained, “It’s unimportant that the police officers are white. In a black and white newspaper, it’s cheaper to print white people than black people because it uses less ink. On an artistic level, the composition would have been too dark if the officers weren’t white because the uniforms are dark, and everything else is shaded gray.”

“It’s also accurate that the police in the comic are white because the police who shot the chimp were white,” another student added.

“Very good, class, let’s explore the use of the chimp in conjunction with Sharpton’s statement.”

“Well, Reverend Sharpton said that monkeys were a racist reference to African-Americans. However, we all know that chimps are not monkeys. They are primates like all of us in this room. We can’t be certain that it’s an allusion to past racist sentiments and propaganda.”

“That is correct. Does anyone else have anything to say about the cartoon?”

Yet another student added his two-bits, “It makes no sense that the cartoon references Obama. Anyone who understands how our nation’s legislative system works will know that Obama did not write the version of the stimulus bill that was signed into law the other day. Congress transformed the original one into their own version. It’s also not uncommon for people to compare our lawmakers to a bunch of senseless apes. The cartoonist was probably making a statement about how asinine and ineffective the stimulus bill might be or how unrelated headlines can be.”

“You make a very good point,” the teacher reinforced.

A student added her thoughts to the conversation, “I think that Reverend Al Sharpton is a sensationalist and a publicity opportunist!”

The teacher ended the conversation, “Stop right there. That’s a conversation for another day. Let’s get onto our lesson. Today we are learning about Reconstruction.”