Harambe (1999-2016) is a gorilla who was killed in the US on May 28th 2016 to save a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the gorilla pen at the Cincinnati Zoo. The shooting has led to protests and even an online petition with over 500,000 supporters. The boy was Black, most of the outraged seem to be White.
The boy got through the railing (not hard at all) and the bushes and fell 3 metres into the water. Harambe went to get him and seemed to be protecting him, even held his hand, but did not know what to make of the screaming onlookers.
Harambe was being too rough with him: young humans are more delicate than young gorillas. Harambe is six times stronger than a man and could have hurt or killed the boy without meaning to. So the zoo keeper had Harambe shot dead (a tranquilizer to make him fall asleep would have been too slow).
The boy got scraped up and was hit on the head, but nothing serious. He is fine now.
Tragedy: It is a tragedy that Harambe had to be killed, but it prevented the greater tragedy of the boy being killed.
Outrage: The shooting led to outrage not against the zoo keeper but the boy’s mother! For example on Twitter @blxxm83 wrote:
“So lazy parents can’t control their wild kids and a beautiful endangered animal gets shot and killed because of it? #Harambe #RIPHarambe”
That comes straight out of a stereotype about Black women.
Fox News, meanwhile, brought up the father’s police record from ten years ago – and he was not even at the zoo!
The “Justice for Harambe” petition on Change.org, which got over 300,000 supporters in just four days, wanted to pin the killing on the mother. (Meanwhile, after two years, the “Justice for Eric Garner” petition to get Daniel Pantaleo fired has only 171,112 supporters.)
The police investigated the mother, but the county prosecutor decided against charging her with a crime.
Harambe, named after a Rita Marley song, was born in the US in a zoo in Brownsville, Texas. He lived his whole life in zoos (animal prison). They brought him to Cincinnati in 2014 in hopes he would become a father. When he died, they took some of his sperm.
Harambe was a western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), the kind most people picture when they think of a gorilla. There are 500 in zoos worldwide and maybe like 100,000 in the rain forests along the equator in Africa, particularly in Gabon and nearby countries. Older males, whose hair turns grey, are called silverbacks. The common ancestor of humans and gorillas lived 8 million years ago. Only chimpanzees and bonobos are more closely related to humans.
“Critically endangered”: Western lowland gorillas are in danger of dying out. Their numbers have dropped by more than half in the past 25 years, from Ebola and hunting by humans (for meat, medicine and magical charms), and from parts of their homeland being taken over by logging and mining (for coltan in mobile phones).
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- Also Cincinnati:
- Gabon
- Eric Garner
- Fox News
- Ebola
- human zoos
- human evolution: the last 4 billion years
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Many cared more about the gorilla than the baby. Reading comments sections on different sites many mostly racist trolls were just hateful i wonder where is this society going when people can sit behind their computer screens and refer to a small Black child as a primate. Many called for the mother to be arrested because the kid got into the enclosure. It was really infuriating when the child’s father was reported in mainstream media and they assassinated his character, when they brought up his past criminal record. The father’s brush with the law had nothing to do with the child being in the enclosure with the gorilla. I even had a co-worker joker that the kid should have been shot. See this is how i know that a large segment of the dominant culture is racist as hell. I don’t know what to think about someone who jokes that a small Black child should have been shot instead of the gorilla.
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@Mary Burrell,
The really sad part is that many Americans don’t realize that they are racist. They learn it from their parents who learned it from their parents. Not through a blatant, verbal instruction to be racist but a more subtle, coded way where the comments you hear from you co-worker are laughed at and tolerated.
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It was tragic that this gorilla had to be killed and you’re right there was a vast amount of social media outrage. Many stated that he should have been tranquilized rather than shot to death but where the life of a child (anyone really) is concerned one cannot take the risk.
I personally didn’t see anyone make jokes about this, nor did I see any racist comment. Just a whole bunch of blaming the Mother and outrage at Harambe’s death, because apparently, he was being gentle and loving and suddenly 100’s of 1000’s of people are animal behavior experts and just know the gorilla was protecting the little boy and wouldn’t of hurt him. Really??? Psht!
Blaming the little boys mother is vile, clearly the zoo is at fault for creating an enclosure that a child could fall into. I hate zoo’s anyway. disgusting animal prisons.
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Is anyone really surprised that an animal’s life mattered more than a Black person’s life?
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@Afrofem: No I am not surprised because Black Lives don’t matter in this country or anywhere else in the world.
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Zoe:Actually blaming the mother for this incident is racist. I didn’t see anybody calling for the arrest, or death, of the white parents whose child was eaten by an alligator. All I read was an outpouring of sympathy for the poor parents, and not one word about the death of the alligator. I didn’t see comments of anyone joking about or dismissing the death of their little boy. And no one brought up the parents criminal past.
Calling for the black mother to be punished for child endangerment, but not calling for the punishment of the white parents, (who clearly ignored danger signs near the water,) that’s a racial act.
But yeah, outside the racial crap, the zoo is at fault for creating an enclosure that a child could get into.
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@Anne: No they don’t that’s why many need Jane Elliott to break it down for them that they are. All of white American needs to sit at this lady’s feet and let her teach them about themselves.
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In one of the photos with this post, the woman in orange has a photo with the animal and the words, “BECAUSE HIS LIFE MATTERED”.
I wonder how she would feel if someone thought a gorilla mattered more than her own child? Anti-Black racism makes Whites into sociopaths—-no human empathy and no remorse.
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@Afrofem: Many people anthropormorphise animals.
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This story pissed me off when it broke. Similar as with the stupid lion, some people seem to care a lot more about animals than humans. Which I consider a form of moral delusion. An animal dying isn’t a tragedy.
The zoo deserves some scrutiny, but not for shooting the gorilla. A zoo has to have enclosures 4-year-olds cannot get into, some regulation please!
To blame the mother makes absolutly no sense, unless you have never dealt with a toddler in your life.
The people who blamed the father are obviously racists.
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Compare and contrast that story to this one: http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/15/us/alligator-attacks-child-disney-florida/
Nothing but outpourings of sympathy for the child and not the alligator who mistook the kid for a meal and did what alligators naturally do. Explains why I just couldn’t find any ounce of sympathy for the parents — their kind didn’t find any for ours, after all.
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Is anyone chanting
ALL PRIMATE LIVES MATTER?
😛 😛 😛
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The Disney example is a great one. There were signs prominently posted that said “no swimming”. Yet the parents ignored the signs and put their kids in the water. And in that case a human child was killed. Where is the outrage?
This is a great post that puts the incident in its proper context. The only thing I would add is that if there is to be outrage at all, it should be about why a magnificent animal like a Gorilla was incarcerated in an animal jail.
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@Mack Lyons
That is a good comparison and food for thought.
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In our days of so many animals close to extinction the notion of animal sanctuary’s is good, especially considering many are born into captivity and would be unable to survive in the wild.
Many people are disillusioned with the world and prefer non human animals to people. I can empathise with this. But to argue that the gorilla would not have hurt the little boy and to say that gorillas life was more important than his is absolutely ridiculous. To be laughed at. I’m sad a rare and beautiful animal died. But I blame the zoo. How dare they create an enclosure a child could fall into. Thank you God that it did not rip the child to pieces before the keeper took action. Anyone who blames the Mother should be placed into a tiny enclosure with frustrated, fearful and quite likely mentally damaged wild animals themselves, let them find out then how safe a situation they are in – idiots!
@ Mary Burrell, you are so right about people anthropormorphising (great word (y) ) animals, there is a whole industry dedicated to it.
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I seriously must live in a media vacuum. Before reading this post, I did not know:
A. The little boy was Black
B. His father had a criminal record.
I remember the rest though. I’m firmly in the camp that believes the zoo did what they had to do to rectify a situation of their own making. There’s no way a toddler should be able to gain access to an animal enclosure by themselves. However, once that happened, the safety of the boy absolutely had to take precedence.
I remember less about the Disney incident. I do remember originally placing some blame on the parents and then thinking that maybe Disney shouldn’t make a beach area that leads to dangerous waters. They are an international destination after all and I’m sure plenty of guests couldn’t read the signs even if they saw them.
Both incidents were tragedies just waiting to happen. It’s one thing if you go hiking in the forest in Alaska and get mauled by a bear or get dehydrated walking on the trails in Arizona because you failed to do your research before taking your family on a self-guided adventure. It’s entirely different when you visit a purpose-built facility like Disney World or a Zoo. It’s not like either of these places didn’t know children would be in attendance.
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Be fair, Disney’s company policy is reported as making their workers lie to their customers about the presence of gators, to make them feel safe… Feel free to boycott them if you like…
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I did not know the race of the child! Wow, the vocal protests against Harambe’s shooting make a lot more sense now.
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Hmmm, Mr. Disney, now there’s a discussion!
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“Harambe/e, named after a Rita Marley song….” Harambe, meaning “let’s pull together “, was the slogan, propagated by Jomo Kenyatta the late President of Kenya, to get self-help development achieved at grass root level. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, on the other hand, had a state run development policy known as Ujaama.
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Interesting thought: Racists like to compare Black people to apes. Racists complain about the shooting of the ape. If “Black people = apes” in their mind and “apes = we should care for” then it SHOULD follow that “we should care about Black people”. HAH, racists! Busted!
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I saw the video though, and it was clearly a little white boy? I’m confused?
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If gorillas are critically endangered, with only 500,000 left, but humans are not, with more than 7 billion, then how could the death of the kid possibly be worse than the death of the gorilla?
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“… how could the death of the kid possibly be worse than the death of the gorilla?”
@Charles Myland
Obviously you don’t know that people are created in the IMAGE of the Creator, regardless of how far many humans have fallen and become sociopaths and morons.
I wonder if your sentiment might change if it came down to choosing your own life OR the gorilla’s life!
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@ Charles Myland
Apparently you have no offspring, and no brain.
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HARAMBE Life Mattered
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Gorillas are endangered. People aren’t.
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@John Anderson
No it didn’t. Which is why he is dead.
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@sharinalr – why does a nonendangered human life matter more to you than a critically endangered gorilla life?
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“HARAMBE Life Mattered”
Obviously (to some of us) if he was living in a cage, his life didn’t matter much at all.
Too bad geniuses like you and Charles can’t can’t figure that little point out.
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