dear america
“Safety, safeguarded by violence, is not safety” — Angela Davis, 2020
Being black is all I know and, America, being white is all you know, so where do we go from here?
You have choices and I have limited resources. You have freedom and I have boundaries. We are not the same, yet you say all lives matter. That sounds nice and less divisive, so when I say, more specifically, black lives matter, you're offended. Why is that? Why can't it be both for you? Why does my self-awareness intimidate you? Is it because you too have to become aware of me, of the injustices that my people have endured? Why do I have to settle on your truth without you even being willing to acknowledge mine?
You have the privilege of living in a world so safe, you get to CHOOSE to believe that the pains of others are anomalies. Your choices are a luxury to us. The flag you love is a sign of your freedom, but a fleeting, figment of my imagination because we are different kinds of free.
But you knew this. We've told you for generations that this shit wasn't adding up. It took protesting, looting, and rioting to get your attention; it takes you being inconvenienced and frustrated before you're forced to make a decision. A fucking decision to have a heart! That's it! Treat me like you'd treat the ones that signed your Declaration of Independence.
The blood of black bodies seeping in the soil of the land that wasn't even yours from jump, it's red just like your thieving ass forefathers. We are no different, we have families just like them, but yet you once said we were 3/5ths of a person. Yeah sure, you've changed your mind about it, but I think some of your people still believed what you said the first time. Probably because you're still saying it to them under your breath. You know, like the whole 13th amendment. Or how you make everything systemically harder for black people to get on equal playing ground. That in itself is like a fucking fetish of yours. Every time we become evenly matched, you change the rules. It HAS to piss you off that we don't back down. News flash: we never will!
All we have ever asked for was to be treated equally. That's it. We didn't ask for a handout, we asked to start at the same starting point. We didn't ask for preferential treatment, just to be treated fairly with the same discretion you'd freely give to people that you think are more deserving. You know, the ones have less melanin than Eric Garner, Emmett Till, Oscar Grant, Sandra Bland......George Floyd. Asking became tiresome, so we created our own. We built our own colleges and universities, started our own banks and companies. You didn't like that either, so you starting looting us. You get fancier words though -- gentrification and cultural appropriation.
You killed George Floyd and now, America, you can't breathe. The only difference is, we'll take our knee off your neck before it's too late.
