Do gorillas matter more than Black families?

THE KILLING of 17-year-old gorilla Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo in early June after toddler Isiah Gregg crawled into the animal's enclosure was perfect fodder for the "internet rage machine"--a sad outcome caused by a supposedly derelict parent that lent itself to the easy, sneering disdain all too typical of social media.

After Isiah fell to the ground near him, the 450-pound western lowland silverback gorilla dragged the boy through a pool of water before standing over him as a horrified crowd watched.

Zoo officials made the decision to kill the gorilla after determining that it was displaying threatening behavior, and that any attempt to tranquilize Harambe would take too long and risk further harm to Isiah. The toddler suffered serious injuries and was briefly hospitalized.

Immediately, "Justice for Harambe" grew as a slogan on social media and in the real world. Dozens of petitions circulated, and protesters held at least one demonstrations outside the zoo.

One petition, signed by more than 500,000 people as this article was being written, called on the Hamilton County Child Protection Services to investigate Isiah Gregg's parents, Michelle Gregg and Deonne Dickerson and hold them "accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life."

The petition went on to say that those signing "actively encourage an investigation of the child's home environment in the interests of protecting the child and his siblings from further incidents of parental negligence."

Online, many people jumped at the opportunity to denounce Gregg's parents--particularly his mother Michelle, who was at the zoo with Isiah and at least two of his three siblings--as unfit for not watching Isiah and "letting" the toddler fall in harm's way.

A photo of Michelle Gregg's children, including Isiah, was taken from her social media account and used widely. The Cincinnati preschool where Gregg works as a site manager had its Facebook page flooded with angry postings and threats.

Days after Harambe was shot, the unrelenting media attention and online death threats forced the family out of their home to stay with friends.

FAR FROM the picture of Michelle Gregg as unconcerned, distracted or lazy, witness accounts suggest that Isiah did what toddlers have always done--he slipped away to try to reach a goal that interested him.

As witness Deirdre Lykins recounted on social media, it wasn't only Isiah's mother who couldn't catch him as moved toward the enclosure--no one in the crowd of bystanders was able to reach him before he went into it. "None of us actually thought he'd go over the nearly 15-foot drop," Lykins wrote, "but he was crawling so fast through the bushes [that] before myself or husband could grab him, he went over!"

Anyone believing that their own small children are watched 100 percent of their waking hours either has selective memory or the money to afford an army of private nannies. And those without kids who think they would never have a problem corralling multiple small children on an outing are deluding themselves.

Under capitalism, the responsibility for raising children is on individuals, and families without financial resources have few options to cope with the burden. And kids with even the most attentive and loving caregivers and parents still suffer accidents. (The irony, of course, is that our society simultaneously berates parents for not giving children enough freedom and independence, thereby "coddling" a generation of young people who are supposedly self-absorbed and unable to stand on their own two feet.)

For the self-righteous looking to assign blame, they have a better case with the zoo, where officials apparently thought a three-foot-high fence surrounding the gorilla enclosure that Isiah quickly slipped through was secure enough.

At Slate.com, former Knoxville zookeeper Amanda O'Donoughue explained that such design choices are not merely about the welfare of an animal, but attracting visitors:

In recent decades, zoos have begun to redesign enclosures, removing all obvious caging in the attempt to create a seamless view of the animals in a more natural-looking habitat...Walkways are lined with basic guard rails and shrubbery that can be breached, with strong enough intentions. This is fine--until little children begin falling into exhibits. This, of course, can happen to anyone, especially in a crowded zoo setting.

In other words, zoos are businesses that have to balance safety concerns and the needs of the animals with selling an experience to visitors.

While not debating the ethics of keeping animals in them, on the whole, U.S. zoos are safe for both workers and visitors. Some 178 million people visit zoos and animal parks in the U.S. annually. Since 1990, there have been 93 animal-related injuries at U.S. zoos, and 15 people-- mainly zoo employees--killed by zoo animals.

IT'S HARD to recall a public outcry as loud or sustained over one of those deaths or injuries as in the case of Isiah Gregg. So what was different this time?

Well, for one thing, Isiah and his family are Black.

In 2014, when a 3-year-old boy at a zoo in Little Rock, Arkansas, fell into a jaguar enclosure and ended up in critical condition after being attacked by the animal, there was no outcry for that child's family to be investigated for a "lack of supervision and negligence." In fact, the name of that white child and his father and grandfather, who were with him at the time, were never released to the public.

Similarly, in November 2012, a 2-year-old boy fell into an exhibit of African painted dogs at the Pittsburgh zoo and was fatally mauled--and there was no similar outcry.

Yet on Fox & Friends last week, the vapid talking heads not only anted endlessly about the incident, but repeatedly raised the idea of charging Isiah's parents with a crime.

One of their bizarre rationales? That Isiah's father, Deonne Dickerson--who doesn't appear to have even been at the zoo when Isiah fell--has a criminal record. Fox host Brian Kilmead asked one animal expert: "Some blame the parents of the child, calling them neglectful as reports surface the father has a lengthy criminal history. Is someone to blame here or was this just a tragic accident?"

Likewise, in the Daily Mail, Laura Collins pointed out that "[c]riminal filings against Dickerson stretch over a decade and include burglary, firearms offences, drug trafficking, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct and kidnap."

As Shaun King wrote on May 31 for the New York Daily News, not only did Collins never point out that Dickerson wasn't at the zoo, but "[b]uried deep in the story was the fact that he is gainfully employed and appeared to be a loving father from the myriad of photos found on him."

King continued:

Even if he was there, do you sincerely think anyone would be talking about his criminal history if he was white? I don't...

So why in the world is the criminal history of this young boy's father in Cincinnati being spread all over the world other than the possibility that racists saw an opportunity to do what racists do? Even if the young boy's father was there, is the suggestion that he had criminal intent by allowing his son, who he is shown doting on all over social media, fall through the enclosure?

People often ask why guys like me "make everything racial" as if we made the system this way. We didn't. Race and racism are obviously deeply entrenched in this ugly world and stories like this are required to fight back against it.

AS THIS article was being written, Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph T. Deters announced that Michelle Gregg wouldn't face child endangerment charges--which only set off a new wave of online attacks against the family.

But for an indication of the level of racism embedded in the discussion around what happened to Isiah Gregg--and generally in cases concerning Black parents--consider that at his press conference announcing the decision, Deters said his decision would have been different "had she been in the bathroom smoking crack."

Sickeningly, this bigotry is not that exceptional. Black families face disproportionate intervention and investigation at the hands of the state--and all too often, normal childhood behavior is pathologized and criminalized when it comes to African American children.

The statistics are grim: In the U.S., Black children are more than two-fifths of the foster care population, though they represent less than one-fifth of children in the country. In some cities, including Chicago and New York, the vast majority of kids in the foster care system are Black. According to Northwestern University law professor Dorothy Roberts:

Spend a day in the agencies that handle child maltreatment cases in these cities and you will probably see only Black or Latino parents and children. If you came with no preconceptions about the purpose of the child welfare system, you would have to conclude that it is an institution designed to monitor, regulate and punish poor families of color.

There also is a particular irony to the fact that this happened at the Cincinnati Zoo, which historically was one of the few accessible entertainment venues for Black families in Cincinnati. The local amusement park Coney Island was segregated until well into the 1950s--its pool wasn't opened to Blacks until 1961--meaning that Black families often took their children to the zoo for fun instead.

No one is happy about Harambe's death. But that misfortune is being compounded by a particularly vile wave of racism, and we should push back against it and say no more to the scapegoating.

People aren't wrong to care about the lives and treatment of animals--whether in captivity in a zoo or not. They aren't wrong to feel sadness at the death of a gorilla.

But the current media circus has thrown a reality of 21st century America into stark relief: A society that can muster outrage over the death of a gorilla all too often fails to summon the same horror about the deaths of young Black men killed by police each year.

As one internet commenter put it after Harambe was killed:

I love animals as much as the next guy but since that gorilla was shot on Saturday, law enforcement has shot and killed 11 people in the United States. Maybe take a break from showing off your expertise on parenting and zoo enclosure design to ask why you see one of these things all over the news and social media, but not the other.