Because Michael Vick F'ed Up Race Relations in America!

If you know me, then you know there’s one topic I’m intimately familiar with, and always eager to share. Unfortunately, not many people share my investigative “energy” so to speak. Well, this is my venue, and as such, I choose today to begin the first in a returning series I call, “Why do Black/White people do that?” My first topic:

Michael Vick.

Now that the story has died down a bit, and Americans are once again snug in their beds, I find it an opportune time to shed light on what I feel is a serious issue in this country. No, I’m not talking about dog fighting, although I do take animal cruelty seriously. I’m talking about our blind denial as a nation that race related problems no longer exist, or are not as bad as they “used to be.” “What,” you say. “Dog fighting, and race relations?” Before you go jumping off that deep end, let me explain.

First and foremost, what Vick did was totally wrong. I’m sorry, but there’s just no excuse for it. It’s not like he DIDN’T KNOW it was a crime. That’s like saying, “Well officer, I didn’t really see the harm in running a stop sign in a school zone, when there was nobody around and nobody coming.”

You may not agree with the law, but you know intrinsically why it’s there and why breaking it is wrong. You could blow that stop sign everyday, and the one day you finally hit a child, your response would be, “Well, I blow through that stop sign everyday. I can’t be blamed for a pattern I learned.” Well duh, dumb @$$, that’s why the law says stop at a stop sign.

So Vick gets busted, and suddenly everyone’s throwing up race flags. Black people are supposedly shocked. Why is Vick getting roasted over the press coals so fiercely? Must be because he’s black. It involved animals, but really it’s about the gambling right? And hell, if he’s going to get blown up over some gambling, then bring back Pete Rose (whom fans wanted to place in the hall of fame years after his gambling debacle). Or Wayne Gretzky and his wife. No sir, if we’re going to blast athletes on gambling, it had better be on an even playing field. Gretzky and Rose didn’t get attention like this; defamation like this. Mother f-it, it is racism, and we’re not gonna stand for it!

Seemingly, white people are in moral outrage. How could a man do this to animals? Living, breathing, flesh and blood. Beings that can not speak for themselves; who knowingly, and without end, work to please their owners. Like children that never fully develop, they know only what you teach them; they know their conditioning. To take advantage of something so trusting, so helpless, all in the name of money and sport, is disgusting, inhumane, and the actions of someone who is beyond contempt and reproach. Not in America, not on my watch.

Here are the two questions? What’s the worse offense; that he supported organized gambling or that he abused animals? How does either one have ANYTHING to do with race?

I agree with Howard Bryant who wrote an article on ESPN about the division the Michael Vick case had once again illuminated. As Bryant put it,

“Forget, if you can, the idea of equality. Like objectivity in journalism, it doesn't exist. The world is too big, individual experiences too sharp and unique, for common experience to belong to everyone. We didn't all have the same starting points, but we want to believe in that far-away ideal -- and justice for all -- because it is all we have. But accepting that ideal for what it is -- a goal, and not a standard -- might make it easier to talk.”

If you could, for a moment, suspend your disbelief and possible visual images of what that man had done, and instead break it down to two factions: Those that view animals, in this case dogs, as subhuman (being below man in the evolutionary chain) and those who view animals as companions (a family member if you will).

If you grew up with pets, as I did, that slept in the home, and sometimes in the bed with you, it’s hard to comprehend how someone could treat an animal this way. I loved my dog, with every fiber of my being, and a similar passion can be found in people that dress their pets in clothing, parading them in bows and tied bandanas when they’ve come fresh from the groomers.

Personifying them with humanistic qualities (you swear up and down that your cat talks to you in his own special way), to the point where some even pay health insurance premiums to ensure ‘Deeohgee’ gets her annual shots and examinations. It’s no wonder that you’re outraged at something like this. I feel you. But you make the assumption that everyone else does or should feel that way about animals, and that just isn’t the case.

Now when I was a toddler, I learned to walk by holding on to Pablo’s dingy white fur, letting her drag me through the grassless dirt yard of my elderly aunt and uncles home in East Long Beach. Pablo, to my recollection, saw the front side of that house only once, when her chain had somehow come undone and she had wandered to the street to see what she could see. I have felt bad for that dog my entire life. I just couldn’t imagine being chained up behind a house, everyday of my life. Waiting for companionship, which was only guaranteed twice a day, when her kibble was laid out for her in a dirty tin pan on the back porch, covered with a ladle of water to make “gravy.”

Granted, my aunt and uncle were well into their 80s when I came along, but that didn’t change the fact that THAT was how they knew to keep a dog. They never once walked that dog. I think I asked Auntie once if she had, and she snapped that, “she ain’t never walked no dog,” and something else about that dog having plenty of room out back. Flies would eat away at open sores on Pablo’s ears, and when I would come over, I’d spend a good 30 minutes with her swatting them away.

I loved that dog. My aunt and uncle ‘loved’ that dog too, but to them, a dog was a dog. They weren’t going to go hungry for that dog. If the dog got sick, the dog got sick. If the dog died, well, the dog died. That dog was well over 15 by the time she kicked the bucket, within a week of my Auntie passing. ‘Til this day, I don’t find that a coincidence. She knew them and that back yard; she didn’t know any better. And she held on until she didn’t need to hold on any more.

So what’s my point? My point is that it is highly conceivable that Michael Vick knew he was committing a crime per se, but didn’t really see what the big deal was as far as the dogs were concerned. I mean, they were dogs. Not people, not small children, the elderly from some forgotten rest home. Dogs? Animals? They are decidedly below people on that evolutionary chain. If you’re going to be mad at gambling, be mad at gambling. Being mad about some dogs? Ah hell naw. That assumes that dogs were just as important to Michael Vick, or to anyone else for that matter, and you can’t make that assumption.

The fervor built up was tremendous, and made me wonder, when the Vick story died down, would these same people be pursuing the countries where bull fighting is revered, and the eating of dogs and cats a daily normalcy. Certainly we don’t allow that in the States, which is why we get so riled up, but when it comes to outside our borders…. We leave that to PETA and other outlandish groups, so we can sit back and ridicule them about how “over the top” they get regarding other people’s beliefs towards animals. Yeah, okay.

So how did this become a white/black issue? Let me demonstrate. People who take their pets to the vet, get them groomed, humanize them, dress them, treat them as one of the family; well those people tend to have discretionary income that they can afford to do those things. A dog is purely a luxury. A companion who’s main job is to be an extension of the human family, or at least a prized accessory. Occasionally, you expect he or she to bite an intruder in the leg, or at least notify you that someone’s in the house.

People without that added income typically keep dogs for protection, and in rural areas, the dog is a work animal. It, like a cow, has a job. His loading, is most certainly not free. If you’re living in a less than desirable neighborhood, the last thing you want is a “friendly” pet who welcomes strangers into your house. You keep him tied in the back, because he’s a dog, and that’s where dogs go. Anything beyond a water hose and a bucket of soap, is taking it to the extreme when it comes to grooming. And hey, if Fido bites the dust, he bites the dust. You’re worrying about keeping food on the table for the kids, getting to work on a daily basis, and trying to stay sane. A trip to the vet isn’t going to happen.

I can hear you already. “You can’t say only white people take care of their pets and black people are always broke,” yada, yada, yada. Well, I never said that. That’s what YOU were thinking, and that’s how $#!% got f-ed up. The Vick drama was never about race; it was and is (as Bryant mentioned) about class. I can step foot into the state of Louisiana and find over a dozen white folks in less than five minutes that fit the second description I listed above. Just as I can drive through Culver City and Ladera Heights in Los Angeles and find a dozen black people that fit the first description in the same amount of time.

It’s like running stop signs. You treat animals the way you know, the way you believe they should be treated in relation to you. I’m not saying this justifies dog fighting, but I am saying that if you don’t think animals warrant that many rights to begin with, then it’s not so ludicrous an idea to step into dog fighting. Or any other organized animal ring. If something means more to me than it does to you, then at best we can agree to disagree. To the extent that this got out of hand, I blame all three of “us” involved: whites, blacks, and the media.

I blame black people for not finding the right words to better articulate our point(s). How hard is it for one person to get up and say, “To some people, animals are not that important. They do not warrant the same level of rights and protections. That is the belief of some, not all. As a public, choosing to focus our rage at the type of gambling he was involved in creates an environment where you have to question whether or not color is an issue. Are we saying we can get past gambling in sports so long as it’s humane?” It’s not perfect, but it is beyond what Whoopi did on The View, which was trite. She never really clarified her statement, and left it sort of hanging in this black/white haze, almost as if it was intended to spark controversy.

I blame white people, because they assume too much. Stop assuming that, because a man (I don’t care what color he is) gets drafted into the NFL and is making tons of money from playing and endorsements, that suddenly he’s learned a whole new etiquette and has “reformed” himself from the life he once new. Are you for real? If I couldn’t balance a check book before I hit the lotto, don’t count on me still having that money when you roll back through.

What are you expecting when you give these kids, black or white, all this money as a way of saying, “thank you” for having genetics and athletic ability above and beyond the norm, but you don’t teach them anything about how to handle the money, the fame, or silly little things like morals and societal norms. It’s not like he woke up one day and said, “I’m Mike Vick. I think I’m gonna take a chance on these endorsements and my career and get into some bull-ish like dog fighting to make some extra cash.” WTF!!! Oh, and like your cousin Jim Bob wasn’t fighting dogs back in Mississippi. (You knew I would go there.)

I blame the media for continuing to be the gullible @$$es we’ve come to accept them to be. Not once before I read Bryant’s article, or since, have I heard one attempt at making plausible sense in this matter. Why wasn’t Matt Lauer, Katie Couric, Larry King, somebody, asking the question “Is this really a race issue?” Imagine if they had, how would the pundit respond to that? “Well yes Matt it is, because blacks don’t take care of their pets,” or, “Yes Matt it is, because white people are so much more humane to their animals.”

Maybe that should’ve happened. Maybe if it had, it would’ve forced some sort of dialogue about something! Let’s face it, we all think “something” about the “others” be they black, white, yellow, brown, or indigo. Up to this point, our only visual role model for racial equality was Captain Kirk. And even Captain Kirk learned the golden rule early on. She may be hot, she may be green, but you’re a fool to think this is going to work out.

That’s the key. We are never going to whole heartedly agree on everything, and get along like it’s all a bed of roses. Quite frankly, I don’t want us to. PC-ism was supposed to make us all feel more comfortable together, but there’s something to be said for knowing your neighbor is a Klansmen. You may not get invited to his barbecues, but hell, do you want to?

I haven’t been on this earth a very long time, but this much I do know. As a country….. forget that. As a global people, we are on some bull-ish! It’s time for PC to go, and reality to finally take a spin in the driver’s seat. Otherwise it’s going to take more than mediators and an off the cuff blog to handle this implosion. The truth hurts, but at least it lets you know you’re still breathing.

You can check out Howard Bryant’s article, ‘Vick case has us confounded by the race issue again’ at:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=bryant_howard&id=3035358