April 20, 2025

I can’t lie. I’ve always been more of a cat person than a dog. And it’s interesting when I say that because American men often think about a house cat instead of the big cats. So, they immediately say that they’re dogs, while thinking about a canine’s larger body size and aggression in comparison to a house cat. But what dog can deal with a lion, a tiger, or a jaguar in the jungles? Or even a Black Panther?

The problem is, too many American men only thought locally. But I never thought that way. I always thought about the world around us, and I was interested in traveling to different places, which I’ve been able to do and plan to do a lot more of.

But I actually related more to the word and psychology of cats from watching old Black movies and listening to Black male jazz musicians, who called each other cats all of the time.

“Yeah, man, I met this cat back in Chicago a couple years ago who was mean on the horn. I mean, this joker blew his trumpet like he was trying to be the second coming of Miles Davis. He was bad! You hear me?”

These super cool Black cats never said the word dog unless they were talking about an actual animal. But they called themselves cats regularly. Then I studied their behaviors.

Cats were looked at as being more individualistic hunters. They protected their space, demanded respect, and were not followers of man. Cats seemed to do their own damn thing. In fact, independence is cat behavior. And that’s exactly how I was. I’ve always been an independent thinker and leader who did his own thing rather than compromising as a follower of a group.

But whenever I thought of dogs, I thought more about leashes, walks with men, backyard gates, and a whole lot of barking for no damn reason. I also thought about pack behavior and group mentality, like wolves. And I was not a wolf nor a dog. I was an independent, determined, and ferocious cat, and I was proud to say it.

I also watched a lot of Asian Kung Fu movies as a kid, and there was no such thing as having a dog style of fighting, but there were plenty of tigers, lions, dragons, cranes, and monkeys, which all seemed a lot more interesting and complicated than dogs.

Then I ended up buying a Jaguar car as an adult, which only solidified my interest in the big cats abroad, especially after reading more about the jaguar’s dominance in South America, the tiger’s dominance in Asia, and the lion’s dominance in Africa. So, I was locked in. A cat was the right thing for me to be, like the old school jazz musicians who I admired.

Then the legendary movie, The Lion King, came out in 1994. That was actually some years before I bought my Jaguar SKR sports car from Ford in 2001. And this Lion King movie went on to prove that a lot more people thought nobly about the big cats than dogs. I don’t believe any dog movie could have ever risen to The Lion King level of popularity. With nearly a billion dollars made at the box office for the first film, this proud Disney franchise became an international gem. Then they produced it again as a live action remake in a 2019 that made even more money, breaking a billion and a half US dollars worldwide.

However, while watching the factual delivery of each Lion King movie, including the Mufasa prequel that was released around Christmastime last year, I noted that the writers had to be a little crafty when trying to depict what really happens to the old and young male lions of a pride.

In the three Disney movies that were sanitized for kids, there were few outright battles between the male lions. But in real life, male lions fight each other for dominance and territory constantly, which we saw more of in Mufasa, The Lion King prequel.

In real life, the young male lions don’t get lost or runaway, they are actually kicked out of the family group and abandoned to seek and find a fresh pride of their own to take over. That’s how it works in the jungles of Africa. A young male lion has to learn how to dominate or die. And he’s not allowed to do so in the house of his father, unless the father allows several of his favorite sons to join his rein in a coalition, which immediately makes them all more powerful.

Nothing is more exhilarating in the jungle than seeing five grown male lions walking together in a pride. Just look it up on your cell phone. A family of five adult male lions is absolutely vicious. There are stories of African male lion coalitions taking over thousands of miles of land, while killing dozens of other lions in their quest.

But instead of depicting the true and unapologetic rules of the jungle, The Lion King treated us to a human-like betrayal story of a deceitful brother, Scar, who takes over the pride after successfully plotting against the dominant brother, Mufasa, and his son, Simba, who is expected to be the air to the throne.

In real jungle life, two lion brothers would rarely fight each other after being together for years in a pride. Neither one of them would benefit from that, and if a dominate brother had been dominant for their entire lives, then the less dominant brother is already used to that and would not challenge him. What would typically happen is that another group of ambitions male lions would show up to battle the brothers with a goal of taking over the established pride for themselves, while killing off the young cubs to start over with new offspring of their own from the leftover females. And if a dominant male lion is too old or not ferocious enough to win that battle, he would either be killed or would flee for his life to start over again or die in the jungle, old and alone.

At that point, he would become what I call a “displaced lion” which happens to a lot of dominant males who survive the onslaught of a fight to the finish battle for their pride and territory.

Ironically, the same situation is happening to a lot of Black American men right now. They have become “the displaced lions” who have been challenged by the brutal and unrelenting psychology of slavery from the moment they stepped foot on American soil from African slave ships that were paid for, navigated, and manned by White Europeans.

In fact, Black African men were not even allowed to be dominant. And you had some of the biggest, strongest and bravest African men being killed first to set an example for the rest of them that the White man would not tolerate their insurrections.

Therefore, numerous Black American men learned to be gentle giants who spoke softly, while controlling their natural urges for power, because it was dangerous, not only for them, but for their whole family, who could be executed for have a revolutionary spirit. In fact, entire Black towns have been burned down in American for being revolutionary, whether it was in economics, education, Religion, culture, music, or even farming and agriculture.

When a Black man or woman showed any traces of excellence, ambition and dominance, the White man got nervous, jealous, insecure, and angry, while terrified that the Black man and his woman would eventually take over. So, the obvious goal became keeping the Black man down at any and all costs, because a dominant Black man was indeed frightening, and no opportunistic, greed-inspired White man wanted to see a coalition of five dominant Black men. At no time.

Until Texas Western University allowed five Black men to start for their 1966 college basketball team that won a National Championship over the all-White Kentucky Wildcats. But that’s a whole other story and article, along with the flight victories of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, and the undeniable history of the Black cowboys of the American West.

Ironically, the physical, mental, and creative skills of Black male and female athletes, professionals, and artists, continue to stand out as dominant, innovative, driven and exceptional talents. However, despite the years of progress and the millions and billions of American dollars that Black talented individuals now earn for their consistent contributions to the nation, the masses of Black American men remain the highest unemployed group in the country.

In fact, Black women have now surpassed Black men with more jobs, more college degrees, and more secondary degrees, to the point where Black women feel similar to the lionesses of Africa, who do the majority of the hunting just for the man to pop up after the kill to eat. And the sisters are getting tired of it, while not being allowed to marry a dominant, money earning man in groups, like the polygamous African marriages were able to do to avoid the issues of recessive men and stray women.

So, everyone married up to keep the communities strong and connected in the motherlands, where remaining single for too long could kill you, just like the lionesses of Africa. Only the strong and connected survive, not the displaced loners.

Nevertheless, when we now look at the Black male of America, where more than a quarter of the population ends up spending time in prison, while another quarter graduates from college with degrees, we still have nearly half of the Black male population trying to figure out what to do in life. We can’t all become rappers and actors, basketball and football players, taxi and bus drivers, or pimps and drug dealers.

We are now in year 2025 and must be held more accountable to keep pushing ourselves to believe in and achieve higher goals for our manhood. There’s a reason why we have more testosterone, height, muscles, energy, bone density and aggression than the average woman. But if we’re not going to use any of that masculinity to our community advantage, then what’s the point in having it?

Honestly, we still have more “lazy and shiftless” behavior from our young and older males than we can afford right now, particularly with so many young, educated, employed, and ambitious women running of tolerance to deal it. So, our divorce rates are the highest in America as well, breaking up thousands of young Black families that still need a father’s love, discipline, and perspective that Black children are not getting anymore.

We now look more like tigers and jaguars hunting and eating alone than sharing with a full family pride like the African lions do. African lions also spend more time with the cubs that they sire, where economically and emotionally broke American brothers are often not allowed to, while battling over child support, custody, and unforgiven hurt from Black vengeful mothers. Hell, outside of our successes in sports and entertainment, Black men just can’t seem to win, at least not on a mass community level.

Even when the legendary politics and leadership of Barack Obama landed him in the White House as the first and only Black President of the United States of America for eight years from 2009 through 2017, during Obama’s watch, Black men were assaulted, arrested, imprisoned, disrespected and killed in broad daylight all over America. It was as if the national White police authorities decided to send a clear message that “even though you guys got a Black president now, we still run the country.” And they were making sure that we didn’t forget that.

So, as I continue to get older and think about my own legacy and contributions to the culture as a Black man, I often fantasize about moving on from America and the constant stress of trying to prove yourself and your worth to a nation that loves you when you entertain them, while hating you for everything else.

Yup. Before I become a full-fledged “displaced lion” in America myself, with no woman, no kids, no purpose, and no status that means anything, maybe I’ll stop fantasizing and just leave the country instead of only talking about it, so I can see if I could find new love, a new purpose, and new energy in an exotic place like Brazil, Thailand, or even back home in Africa.

And if I don’t choose to stay there, at least I could visit, explore, and write about it as viable option for myself and other cats who no longer desire to follow behind “the man” like dogs in America.

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author who has published more than 30 books and counting and won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction after graduating from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.

Check out this poem: The Weight We Carry Together by EL Tehut-9

To learn more about Omar Tyree click here to visit his Hot Lava Entertainment website.