Cecil the Lion, Systemic Violence, and Public Outrage

by Chris Alarie

The story of an American dentist named Walter Palmer hunting and killing a famous, endangered lion named Cecil has dominated the internet news cycle this week. The incident has spawned a surprising amount of outrage on social media and news sites. But the internet echo chamber has taken this story in an unexpected direction with writers using this outpouring of anger at Palmer as an opportunity to excoriate the public for not directing the same sort of outrage at undoubtedly more important subjects, particularly police brutality and systemic racism. These arguments that people care more about dead lions than dead humans strike me as being being both spurious and besides the point,¹ but they still have lead me to consider some of the reasons why it has been so maddeningly difficult to inspire the public at large to exhibit the appropriate level of outrage at systemic violence and racism.

One reason why it might seem that more people are upset about one dead lion than the objectively more horrifying systemic injustices faced by people of color is because it is a comparatively simpler story with more clearly defined morals. The outrage directed at Walter Palmer may seem to be more significant than the outrage directed at Darren Wilson, Daniel Pantaleo, Ray Tensing, or any of the countless other perpetrators of police violence because, essentially, nobody is defending Palmer while in nearly every case of police violence, people come to the defense of the police officers. These people defend the police for a number of reasons, ranging from having an abiding belief in the criminal justice system to having a vested interested in the continuation of standard police procedures to outright racism.² That these defenders of the police exist is, of course, deeply distressing and is, indeed, a key obstacle to truly confronting the problems of systemic violence and racism. But the defenders also serve to at least partially obscure the extent to which the public does care about fixing these issues—a problem that does not exist in the case of Cecil the lion.

Another reason why the killing of Cecil the lion may seem to be easier for the public to condemn is because it can serve to symbolically represent the evils of hunting endangered species in the way that any single case of police brutality can not—something that actually indicates that people value human lives more than they value a single lion's life. Indeed, it would seem that part of why this incident with Cecil has garnered so much attention is because it is symbolic of the problem of poaching as a whole. Rather than expressing outrage at every example of an endangered animal being killed by a hunter, people concerned with animal rights can direct that anger at Walter Palmer, with him serving to represent all hunters and poachers. By contrast, it would be both impossible and wrong to do the same with any particular case of police brutality. Indeed, to hold up, say, Michael Brown as a singular martyr representative of the victims of police brutality in a similar manner to how Cecil is a martyr for all poached endangered animals would indirectly diminish the humanity of Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Oscar Grant, and every other victim of police brutality. Similarly, to isolate any particular incident of police brutality is to risk separating it from the structures and history of systemic racism. Understanding the significance of incidents of police brutality involves navigating a complex dialectic of valuing the individual human life while also appreciating how it fits into the complicated history of structural racism. Even if, hypothetically, Darren Wilson had been justified in killing Michael Brown,³ the incident still would be important because of how it fits into the complex fabric of police violence against people of color. Ironically, it is because the lives of victims of police violence are valued and because the entire systems of police violence and structural racism are so important that it makes them harder for the public to rally around than a single lion.

It is, ultimately, depressing to realize that it is easier for the public to collectively address the comparatively less significant cause of animal poaching⁴ than it is to identify and confront police brutality and systemic racism. This actually points toward another reason why it may seem like people care more about Cecil the lion than they do about the victims of police brutality: the despair and emotional fatigue that we all have to confront when faced with repeated examples of systemic racism. It is overwhelming and profoundly distressing to confront the structures of police brutality and systemic violence against people of color⁵ on a repeated basis—certainly almost immeasurably more so for those people of color who must live with it every day. When compounded with the despair that arises from any loss of human life, it can be difficult to maintain the proper level of outrage on a continual basis. This is not an excuse, but rather an explanation. The case of Cecil the lion can seem more important to people because they can compartmentalize it; they can express their outrage and then move with their lives. Police brutality is different: people of color cannot compartmentalize it;⁶ white people should not compartmentalize it.⁷ But, again, the greater importance and significance of the fight against police brutality and systemic racism relative to the importance of fighting poaching perversely serves to make the case of Cecil the lion seem more important to people than it actually is.

While I find the comparison between people expressing outrage at Walter Palmer's actions to people expressing outrage at any of the sadly innumerable examples of police brutality and systemic racism to be facile and misguided, I agree with the underlying calls to direct more attention and outrage to dismantling our racist power structures.⁸ As I have discussed above, there are a number of aspects of these problems that make them more difficult to confront than a comparatively less significant but more simple problem such as animal poaching. But ultimately, I think it would be more useful to focus energy toward overcoming these obstacles than it would be to chastise people for being upset that an endangered lion was killed.

Chris Alarie is Senior Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.

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1 They are also almost assuredly false. Hundreds of thousands of people protested the Michael Brown and Eric Garner decisions over the course of multiple nights throughout the United States and many thousands—if not millions—of people care deeply about ending these sorts of terrible injustices. As far as I can tell, the most significant action that people have taken against Walter Palmer is to give him bad Yelp reviews and post angry signs at his office. Mostly, people are just taking to Twitter and Facebook to complain. Similarly, I have personally seen more examples of my social media friends furthering the argument that people care more about Cecil the lion than police brutality than I have seen examples of people actually expressing outrage at Walter Palmer.^↩
2 Even in the case of those motivated purely motivated by racism, the defenders of police often use racially coded language rather than overtly expressing their racist beliefs, both as a result of the complicated racial dynamics in the United States as well as furthering and further muddling those dynamics.^↩
3 I would like to note that I do not believe that Wilson's actions were justified. I am just posing a hypothetical.^↩
4 This is not to say that animal poaching is an insignificant problem. Anybody who knows me knows that I am not particularly interested in animals in general and even I find Palmer's actions to be highly offensive. I am just stating that poaching is a less significant problem than police violence and systemic racism.^↩
5 Not to mention the similar structures of oppression in place against women, the queer community, the poor, the mentally ill, etc.^↩
6 Because it is an ever-present threat in their everyday lives.^↩
7 Because, among other reasons, our continued support of the oppressed from our position of racial privilege is an essential facet of the process of dismantling the white supremacist power structure^↩
8 I also agree with these articles' criticisms of how the media handles police brutality and systemic racism.^↩