Dear America

“What’s so frustrating about being Black in America is convincing White people that what is happening to us is real.” James Baldwin

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Dear America,

     Our skin exhibits a kaleidoscope of beautiful shades of black and brown.

Throughout history, the beauty of our inheritance has been discriminatorily branded with fear, hate, intolerance, disrespect, and other unconscionable onslaughts. Assaults fueled by the racist mindsets bred on the soil that proclaims to be “The Land of The Free.”

It is precisely this bigoted mentality and the deceitful assumption of superiority that feeds the forever growing embers of hatred and disregard for the lives, freedoms and equality of Black and Brown men, women, and children.  

      We have been cast into a mosaic of pain, violence, brutality, and death.

This prevailing narrative of America’s history has fallen upon blind eyes, death ears, and merciless spirits. Insensitive to the unrelenting injustice and feigning ignorance that America herself has procreated. There continues to be a conscious dismissal of what has always been clear. America’s obsession with power and control. 

America, your fear of losing both, continues to permeate the mosaic and obstruct the civil rights of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. For centuries in your terror and cowardice, you’ve hidden behind a self-prescribed ignorance, refusing to acknowledge what you have maliciously constructed.

The doctrine of your premeditated agenda has caused racial carnage.  

     Whether in silence or in shouts, they have met our voices and presence with the impact of batons, the pressure of hoses, the attacks of dogs, and lynching. All for the conservation of White supremacy.

Black men robbed of their lives and stripped of their dignity, hang, where their sweat nourished the very soil beneath them. America, you are a country built upon the backs and suckled with the blood, sweat and tears of African Americans, yet you continue to incite the atrocity of racism. And we remain the victims of this unceasing, and perilous sin.

     The stench of this baneful hatred is a lingering odor and harrowing image of gunshots, pleas, and beatings.  Black bodies lay on concrete, trapped beneath the authoritative limbs of the apathetic. Their terrified voices cry out for the mothers who have always been their saviors. These piercing laments go unanswered, leaving a devastating echo of pain and heartache. And you watch as they succumb to their final breath.  

America, this is an unforgivable portrait.

Centuries have passed and your desecrating brush continues to stroke a canvas, dripped in blood and mounted in the sinful exploits of your felonious and immoral character.

      Four hundred years ago, your evil spawn of slavery dismantled families.

And four hundred years later the injustice and debauchery remain a negating and prevalent structure. Your systematic discrimination is a cancerous artery running through, education, housing, and healthcare.

This is a loathing and shameful illustration of “With Liberty and Justice for All.”

We are clearly not the “All” you speak of, nor the inheritors of your liberty and justice. And in your arrogance, you dare to question why we choose to take a knee, protest in the streets, and raise our voices.

     Pull back the mask America. 

Hold up the mirror and acknowledge the disease of racism you have created and brazenly continue to feed. You are the felon. You must face accountability for the casualties of your reprehensible crimes.

  It is time for the foul narration that breeds in the belly of the beast to end.   

In Power,

The kaleidoscope of beautiful Black, Brown, and Indigenous People