Before diving into this piece, let us make one thing clear: it is sad that a zoo gorilla had to be shot. I defy one parent to say that they would not want zoo officials to get their child out of harms way, no matter what had to be done if presented with the same situation.
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Any parent with kids understands that kids can slip your grasp and in an instant, do something unpredictable as kids are wont to do. This kid may have even said he wanted to jump in and pet the gorilla, but what 4-year-old doesn’t say random things.
The big issue here is that America still has a major problem with latent racism. Social media is giving it a change to shine beyond where it has before. We now know that we can have a Harvard-educated president and first lady, yet people cannot see beyond their skin color and calling them disrespectful names, regardless of agreeing with their politics or not.
So it should come as no surprise that we have websites plastering pictures of the parents as if they were suspects in a gas station robbery. The dad allegedly has a long history of drug trafficking and the mother is black too. People are piling on and calling the parents criminal. Sure, there should be some sort of looking into the situation to make sure that any blatant neglect did not take place, but in the realm of possibility, where kids get lost in malls, hide out in close racks and such, turning one’s back for 3 seconds to tend to one kid while another hops an enclosure is feasible. It can happen to anyone. You just never hope it is you in this situation.