 |
| Heroic? Or misguided? |
So
perhaps it shouldn’t be a shock that some people can find offense in anything,
particularly things that once might have been considered sweet and innocent –
but now are regarded as evidence of the callousness oft expressed in our
society.
WHAT
CAUGHT MY attention was reaction to a story by the DNAInfo.com website for
Chicago that gave us a feature story about Chicago Police Department officers
who put their own physical well-being at risk to save a dog.
Specifically,
a pit bull that was stray and somehow got into Lake Michigan and was thrashing
about in the water trying to avoid drowning to death.
The
website reported that the two officers, one of whom is a recent graduate of the
Police Academy. It seems the officer in question was paying attention during
class, in that he used a maneuver learned at the academy to get into the water
and pull the dog to shore.
As
things turned out, one of those television news helicopters was flying overhead
and got video from above for the incident. People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals was pleased to see such kindness to a dog – and DNAInfo reported that
the department was sent a certificate, along with a box of vegan cookies.
NOW
I’M SURE some people will feel compelled to joke that if the activist group
really felt appreciative, they wouldn’t have sent the cookies – or anything
vegan.
 |
| Compassionate? Or cold-hearted? |
But
one group seems to have taken offense to the whole incident – the activists
associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. They’re the ones who in recent
years have been going out of their way to show how law enforcement is focusing
its ire on people of a certain melanin complexion.
They’re
quick to trot out the lists of names of countless young black men who wound up
dying or being beaten severely while at the hands of the police. So perhaps
they’re not eager to see anything placing the police in a positive light.
Or
perhaps it’s the idea that an animal received an act of kindness from police?
 |
| Self-defending? Or myopic? |
IN
ADDITION TO using Facebook and Twitter to promote such causes as the Chicago
Dyke March (on June 24) and the right for free travel to Cuba (a protest on Friday
at the federal building complex), the Black Lives Chicago group had a statement
trashing the report, and PETA for feeling the need to praise police.
“F---
Black people huh PETA?,” the activists wrote on Twitter, while then naming a
lengthy list of Rekia Boyd and other, now-deceased black people who suffered
police abuse.
This
is a confusing situation to contemplate, largely because I can comprehend why
activists would be upset. Considering the tensions that have arisen between law
enforcement and a certain segment of society, some sense of bitterness is
understandable.
Although
I also can hear in my mind all those people now eager to either defend PETA or
criticize the Black Lives Matter movement.
SOME
MAY WANT to claim they’re merely being compassionate to another living
creature, while some may well believe that a dog’s life is worth more than that
of a black person. Of course, many of them will want to believe they’re not
being racist and are entitled to such thoughts.
Which
really means they don’t want to be called out for their nonsense, and may well
be a part of this Age of Trump we’re now in that they want to believe
legitimizes their way of thinking.
That
ultimately is the problem we face as a society – those who refuse to
acknowledge the problem and want to think it is someone else’s hang-ups about
life that are improper. Which often comes down to our own ignorance about
public affairs.
I
had a recent conversation over dinner with someone who passed along an anecdote
about encountering some young people who had no clue what the Civil War was in
the United States. If we’re really at a stage where we’ve forgotten, then it’s
no wonder some of us are spewing stupidity when we contemplate race relations
in our society these days.
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