“Sometimes it doesn’t matter how many smiles you bring people. It doesn’t matter how inspiring you are…”
Dwayne Molock paused, clasped his hands together and brought them to his face, composing himself.
“Sometimes people only see you as one thing,” he said.
That one thing, in his case, is his skin color.
Molock is known professionally as Moshow -- and as the Cat Rapper. His joyful music videos, filled with big-eyed cats, have brought the Baltimore native and Portland resident a large, dedicated fan base. A couple of years ago the Portland Bureau of Transportation recruited him to make a video promoting its “Parking Kitty” app.
But on Wednesday Moshow posted a video that offered no music or cats. He spoke directly to the camera about this moment in the U.S. and how he’s “hurting.” (See the end of this post for the video.)
“I love you all,” he said, but he added that “now is not the time for cat photos and smiling and pretending things are not happening.”
Protests continue across the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, in Minneapolis. The white police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck as the handcuffed man gasped “I can’t breathe” has been arrested.
Molock sought to use his “platform” this week to explain what it was like to be him: not Moshow, not the Cat Rapper, but simply a black man.
“I don’t feel safe,” he said. “People around the world don’t feel safe. And that’s why the world’s where it’s at.”
He talked about the “pre-judgement” he faces regularly, about white women clutching their purses when they see him walking down the street, about white customers in stores assuming he’s stealing.
Moshow acknowledged that this video is very different from the ones he normally posts.
“If you feel like me talking to you here today rubs you the wrong way and you feel like you don’t want to be here anymore, that’s totally fine,” he said.
But he has to speak out.
The U.S. needs more joy, he said. He tries to offer that through his music.
It also needs more justice.
“I want to be able to drive to the store and know that I’ll be OK if I get pulled over,” he said. “I do not know these things. You have to understand. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you.”
-- Douglas Perry
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