Poking Tigers

Poking a tiger is not like playing 'Pin the Tail on the Donkey.' If you plan to poke a tiger you'd best know precisely where its tickle spots are, otherwise shit will be the exact opposite of funny. The Onion thought it was being arch and funny over the weekend when it called a 9 year old actress a cunt. It wasn't funny. The actress was black. It wouldn't have been funny, cutting, or satirically relevant if the actress had been white, olive, or a glowing avatar. Some things you just don't do. You don't call a 9 year old a cunt and expect that to not get back to her. Then there was the fashion magazine, Numero, that featured a photo spread of a 16 year old white girl bronzed to look brown, captioned "African Queen." It's a fashion magazine. The only thing worthwhile to come out of fashion is the movie 'Zoolander.' Everybody knows fashion is fucking stupid. "No, he/she's not just a model, he's a supermodel." Expectations are automatically lowered in that arena. But we're in 2013 now. This is the future. Nobody gets to sing the theme song from "Kimba, the White Lion" anymore. Tarzan doesn't get to beat up an entire village of black folks. The African continent is not the supporting character/black friend of the cool white world. In case anyone is still unclear, that shit was foul back in the day, that shit is foul today, that shit will get your ass kicked. Race is a huge tiger. Don't pretend otherwise. Instead of celebrating a little 9 year old girl who'd done a good job at a difficult task, the decision was made to poke a tiger. That's as baffling as denigrating an Olympian because of her hair. Which happened. Instead of an editorial board nixing the idea of painting a child black in the pages of their pedo-fetishistic magazine, heads nodded in agreement and said, "Yes, this is a good thing." Will there be outrage? I actually hope not. Outrage is just publicity misspelled these days. Instead, I hope there's a gigantic, mile high wall of TIRED slamming their way. Bone-tired, gut-tired, Son of a bitch, what the hell-tired TIRED of this shit. Tired and bored with it. Move the hell on, get the hell out of the way, be thoroughly ignored to the point of eradication. Then there was everything that didn't get reported on the news or shared on Facebook. Sexisms, racisms, isms, schisms--petty fucks trying their best to get under the skin and rattle the bones just to hear what a full life sounds like in comparison to their empty homes. You can only hurt somebody who's more compassionate than you. Many, many examples of people poking tigers. I wish they'd realize how tiring it is to see that finger coming all the time. I sent a note to Numero magazine. It said this, clearly referencing their 'African Queen' spread: "We are tired of you. We are tired of the attitudes that foster such tunnel vision. Signed, Clarence Young, American of African descent, 47 years on this earth." That's it. We're tired of giving you the satisfaction of outrage. Tired of tolerating yet another "Ha ha, I'm not racist" moment from you. Tired of talents marginalized, heritages gentrified like so much cacao into Cocoa Krispies, tired of the stupid games you play in order to make money. We're tired of your laziness, your insipid thought patterns, and especially the ways you pander to your idiotic base. I'm not going to engage you in a dialogue, a diatribe, nor reverse demonization. I'm going to hope that you get a million billion emails and letters saying simply "We are tired of you," and that those million billion emailers and writers turn their backs on you. Forever. We know your pressure points. While you've been indiscriminately poking tigers, we've studied your anatomy. We know what gets you. We know what sticks in your craw. FTDS stands for 'fuck the dumb shit' my friends. It was something me and my friends in high school bandied about. I'm grown. They're grown. We don't plan to wait on you. FTDS. Good bye.