The Trouble With Untamed Wildlife

I'm on 125th Street, in Harlem, the Mecca of Black America. Home of some of the greatest and most famous black people to rise to actual human status in America. People like Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Diddy, Samuel Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr., etc, and so on...

As I stand on the corner of 125th and Malcolm X Blvd, I watch one of those double decker tour buses ride by, the ones that take tourists all over Manhattan and jam up traffic for those of us who actually live here and have to get somewhere important.

I'm used to the faces I see riding the bus, tourists from whichever area of Europe(name a spot, it's immaterial), or wherever large groups of tourists like these travel here from. They look at what's basically my normal life with a quizzical like fascinated expression and it makes me wonder what their thoughts are at that moment. I would wonder if most of these folks have ever had any real life experience being among black people, let alone being the minority in the area. I wonder if they're looking at me and the other black people through a lens of perception created by generations of media driven stereotype and bias.....And sadly, I wonder if they're looking at us as more of an exotic species of people, not quite the same as them....something to be driven around through, like some kind of exhibit, like those safari things at Disneyland, where you can drive your car around a bunch of wild animals

I wonder if they hear the voice of one of those narrators from those National Geographic in their head, giving them the blow by blow of the nomenclature of the urban black person in their habitat, providing behavioral signs to look out for and what they would indicate is happening.
https://youtu.be/4OV3zxOSQh0

Yes, I am being mostly sarcastic, but not as mostly as what would be assumed, because I truly wonder if black people are truly still viewed as an exotic 'other' species of homo-sapien. How far have we truly come from being looked at as actual exhibits in carnivals, like Sara Baartman, or the Aboriginals?

I truly believe that the programming placed in so many people's minds regarding black people have given them this view of us as not being the same, and the recent rashes of viral videos showing white people calling the police on black citizens for the most asinine reasons, which can simply be summed up as existing somewhere while black, have given me reason to seriously ponder this. From the two gentlemen in Starbucks, to the black women golfers, to the young college student who had the audacity to fall asleep by her own dorm, to the young teenage boy, who got lost on his way to school and almost got his head blown off for asking for directions, to the two kids shopping for prom suits, to the folks having a cookout at a public park, to folks leaving an airbnb that they just finished renting out....but I digress(because I'll run out of writing space with examples).

There have been a litany of incidents, which seem to give the impression that black people are seen as not being allowed to exist within certain places, outside of certain spaces, and thus being regarded as some form of threat.....kind of like when one of those exotic animals at the Disney safari somehow makes it's way to the food court area, docile as it may be...As outlandish as the perception is, it gets even crazier when the logic then becomes that calling the police-a now universally understood recipe for death, as it applies to black people-is the next thing that absolutely should be done....Because????....I sure as shit don't know, I don't understand any of this insanity, and I do apply the word insanity purposely. How do you see another human being and apply this line of logic towards them? Why are you even threatened by them? Why the hell are you even paying attention to them, at all, when they sure as hell aren't paying attention to you?.....Or is that the point, right there? That folks are having the audacity to be where they are, just all up in their space, like they have the right? Who the hell are these....'people'?! doing normal things here?! This cannot be tolerated, this situation must be put back in order!

....But what 'order' is that?.....