The Elephant In The Room
“The elephant in the room” is a phrase used when people choose to ignore something enormous, because it’s uncomfortable to deal with.
The elephants at London Zoo looked gray and stoic standing around under cloudy British skies, contained, trapped, a hostage to their fate.
The elephant standing on the back of a flatbed truck, riding through the Rajasthan desert in India, looked relaxed taking his commute ride home.
There are no elephants where I live in California, but when I think about what I’m ignoring that’s uncomfortable, the word that comes to mind is racism.
A heartless act of human savagery brought down a gentle giant of a man a year ago. A heinous transgression and abuse of police power took place. Only this time, the predator and his pack were caught on camera for all the world to see and the world bore witness to the crime and said “no more.”
Killing wild elephants is a crime that goes mostly unpunished. Despite the ban on the international trade in ivory, tens of thousands of African elephants are killed every year for their ivory tusks that are made into ornaments and sold mostly to China.
I can‘t conceive what it must take to be present to the death of an elephant. To stand, camera in hand, and watch the brutal slaughter of our beloved “Dumbo.”
Darnella Frazier, I applaud your fearlessness on May 25, 2020 when you stood near the intersection of Chicago Avenue and 38th Street in Minneapolis and bore witness to the slaughter of another child of Africa.
You will be haunted by what you witnessed and the feeling that you didn’t do more to stop the murder of George Floyd. If I were your coach, I would help you accept that you did more than enough that day. When you stared down the face of evil and filmed his murder, this was a selfless act of love. Through your camera lens, the world became witness to his murder, and we say “no more.”
