Save the Elephants

Think, for a moment, of every time you have heard or seen the phrase: “Save the elephants.” Save the elephants, you see it slapped on the bumper of a beat-up Corolla while you sit at a red light. Save the elephants, your son notices it, it’s a sticker peeling off of a classmate’s jacket – a relic from a trip to the zoo, maybe. Save the elephants, it’s on a muted television in the corner of the doctor’s office while you’re stranded in the waiting room.

You’ve seen elephants before: they’re always featured in those dime a dozen documentaries that cover the animal kingdom. The ones they show you in grade school, the ones that air on cable television in the middle of the day. You’ve seen them at the local zoo, dozens of times. Maybe you’ve even seen one painting like a new-age abstract artist on Good Morning America. When you were a kid, maybe you had a stuffed one – maybe you even gave one to your kid for Christmas.

Save the elephants. They’re worthy of saving, aren’t they? I don’t think the casual Everyday Jill or Joe has anything against elephants, but their daily lives aren’t consumed by the salvation of wild, wrinkled beasts half a world away. They’re busy trying to get by, keeping their heads down at work while they live paycheck to paycheck – snagging coupons out of the local paper whenever they spot them. They’re raising their children, and doing their best to make those years before puberty (years of teenage, hormone-driven angst) count. Eyeballing the days until their next vacation; wondering when their mother will fly up for another visit. Saving the elephants isn’t high up on their list of priorities. Nobody wants to watch the extinction of an entire species, but what can you really do about it? The average human life is dominated by a singular interest: the self. Not necessarily selfishness, but a center of gravity that revolves around our own selves, our families, our jobs, and our hobbies.

Save the elephants, as a message, doesn’t negate the importance of other endangered species. That young woman driving the Corolla with the bumper sticker doesn’t think tigers are less meaningful creatures than elephants, just like the commercial playing mutely at the doctor’s office isn’t announcing over subtitles that sea turtles should somehow be sacrificed in their stead. There are dozens of species in desperate need of help, and each one is worth our time, our effort, and maybe most importantly, our compassion. The actions of humankind have been the cause of this tremendous ecological collapse, and it falls squarely on our shoulders to do what we can to save these animals.

We have an even stronger moral obligation to stand beside people of color. Black Lives Matter. There’s another phrase, one that emphasizes the vulnerabilities of a specific, marginalized group of people. One that, coincidentally, consists of just three words. It’s being chanted in streets around the world; it’s become a revolutionary cry. Black Americans are not tusked behemoths half a world away, they aren’t sea turtles struggling on the coasts of our beaches, they aren’t wild cats struggling to survive in shrinking jungles. They are people. Living, breathing, feeling – beings made of the same flesh and bone. They shouldn’t be like a distant object in your passenger side mirror – something you glimpse in your peripheral vision.

You don’t have to fight for elephants, or leopards, or gorillas. But you should be fighting tooth and nail to root out the racism in this country. Black Lives Matter isn’t saying that black lives are the only lives that matter. But they are the lives being marginalized, being oppressed, and being taken, unjustly, by police. If you find yourself saying All Lives Matter, ask yourself why you feel threatened by the word “black.” If all lives truly matter, will you not devote yourself to seek justice for stolen black ones?

You can put a lot of things on the back-burner. You can care about tigers – they might even be your favorite animal, but you might not have time to campaign for their preservation in the wild. But do you have time to stand on the wrong side of history? Asking you to stand with people of color is another matter entirely.

Open your eyes, and stand steadfast beside your fellow human beings. Their struggle isn’t a war that’s half a world away, the battle is here: it’s in the minds and hearts of Americans, and the world is watching.

I don’t pretend to know what it’s like being Black in this country, but I’ll be damned if I keep silent: tear out hatred, root and stem. Tear out racism, root and stem. Banish the racial caste system that has turned black people into second-class citizens.

I implore you to fight against every injustice, be accepting of others, and forever be willing to listen and learn from the stories of the oppressed.

Save the elephants, but remember: Black Lives Matter. Today, tomorrow, and every day.