I’ll admit, I went to sleep the night of the election thinking, “Not my America.. you wouldn’t put a non qualified person in office would you?” Forget the person Trump has displayed himself as during his rallies and pretty much highly publicized life. All the racist, sexist thoughts, ideas, comments and behavior, the ill-tempered responses and maliciousness found in the way he regards and treats people. Oh America, I hardly knew thee. I woke up at 1 am just to see the election results ( well, really to pee because I had to) and wasn’t exactly jolted out of my shoes in finding out Trump won the election. I went back to sleep only to get jolted out of my sleep 4 more times before 5:30 am because my sleep was robbed by my heart saying, “OH NO!” and bringing the revelation back to the forefront of my mind so I could process how a person without the qualifications needed for presidency or even any political office could run and get elected, when their smear campaign took flight on the wings of social and economic injustices, prejudice and racism, fear, violence and sheer hate. And then turn around and say, let’s make America great again.
At one of his rallies he referred to a guy that was there in support of Trump’s opponent and Trump had him thrown out, asking the crowd there, “you know what we used to do to guys like that?” Or at another, “punch him in the face, I’ll pay your legal fees”. From what? The charity whose funds you were misappropriating?
Yes. I do know. They’d follow him out to the street and beat the life out of him. Maybe hang him from a tree. Hose them with water or maybe let the dogs at him. They’d treat him like he wasn’t a person, a live being, part of this human race and part of the Creator.
This person is to be our president. With this new found power, do we women now have to wear Forni-guards 2017 so that no person, president, teacher, or next door neighbor feels it’s ok to come up and grab us “by the pussy?” And should we not be wearing some device to protect us from that will we be labeled as “asking for it” because we weren’t wearing one?
I’ve seen so much hate and disrespect for life, children and adults alike scared not because a person was elected, but because of the ideas and the enforcement of those ideas he unleashed through his campaign. The hate that is running ever rampant in this country is a disease that sneaks up on you. It’s like having chicken pox as a kid but also having the shingles virus inside you as well because you had chicken pox- lying dormant then suddenly it rears its ugly head.
My niece asked me, “Tia, now that Trump is president, do black people still get to go to school, or do we just stop?”. She’s 12. She is a consciously aware child who has always watched the news as the world around her turns and often comes to my sister and I for clarification on how this is going to affect her. She thinks she’s not going to be able to grow up and go to college in America and that her life is already over because her race is definitely an issue here. She’s black and ½ Mexican. She heard Trump and all his building a wall talk. To many of you people that don’t have to worry about race being an issue when you walk out of your front door- you don’t realize how powerful a statement like this is. In America, because everyone takes everything to the extreme, one small word can unleash hell for “minorities”. So, though she was born and raised quite literally in the heart of the United States 🇺🇸, the fact that she looks Mexican can trigger anyone to call her illegal or follow her meaning to do her harm- physically, mentally and emotionally. At 12 yrs old, she knows this about the country she pledges allegiance to, hand over her heart With a childlike trust that she would be able to stand with her nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Oh America. You have failed her. You failed her when the root of our oppression found its voice in a person looking to lead this country. The others with deep seated issues that the America that was born on stolen land and built by stolen people would then “allow” those people right to life and liberty under the same flag, chimed in. America, you failed her when you stole a moments peace in the safety she felt being free in America when too many people who don’t look like her tweeted they were coming for her. Or when Trumps on air message stated, “If I Win, its over.
Let me be as clear as I can be. There is not just one America. There is the perception of one America because we share the name. This is much like a word with two separate meanings. The truth is America was great for you if your skin wasn’t brown, yellow, red, black.. if your financial status said you got to eat tonight and your neighbor (black, white, purple, whatever) starved sitting at the table next to you. If you took more than you needed and too many times by force and never replenished the well, (don’t come for me, yes I watch TWD) if you have used fear and violence for substantial gain, or to eradicate another race for power and control, and nearly achieved it.. or if you can go to sleep tonight content that you’re safe- no matter which way you look at it, you can wake up with the odds ever in your favor because you aren’t the "minority”, then America, my people, has been great for you.
America was great for me too. It has been a great struggle to get work I’m clearly qualified for because I am a woman, a black woman at that. It has been a great burden to carry the weight of my color(as if I should be ashamed) through all my years and trying to walk on egg shells so I seem non threatening because one false move could claim my life. It has been a great failure to my sense of identity to watch the “majority” classify me, label me, stereotype me, and then hold me to those stereotypes without me being able to shake off those chains and show you my wings because you weren’t even looking. It has been a great discouragement to be told to be practical when it comes to opportunities I seek because I would be the only black one there or in it, and I wouldn’t want the stress of that situation dis-enabling me to perform at my highest ability. And my America has been a great travesty to imply that the freedoms we fight for each day are a privilege or have been granted me rather than an inherent right because I exist. Because I am human. America, I won’t wear your chains. I won’t submit to your thinking. And I most certainly won’t run from all of this. So when you say people are in the streets mad because Trump won, you’re not even peeling the bandaid off the wound. You’re choosing to accept your privilege and deny my trauma of my American experience placed there by your hand.
So again, in the name of transparency, I am America,- not in just the name, but I am the sacred land you want to run a pipeline through to tend to your corporate greed, I am the water you pollute and give to children to slake thirst, I am the air you clog with chemicals and death (seriously, I have to use my teeth as a filter), I am the food, the fruit of this earth and I am all of you, both those that hate and love me. I am you and you are me, we belong to each other, we are not a pre-disposed notion of an idea for namesake. If ever I have stood for something I believe in, this is the most crucial in my life at this point. I’m saying I won’t accept the oppression, institutionalized racisms, your corrupt system, I won’t even accept your audacity to even suggest this one America. Acknowledge there are so many, each within the beating heart of every person on this land or calls America home. And each of us will be united or fall. This is the real America.
I don’t hate anyone, and have nothing but love for you all. Come for me if you will. Come for me if you must. Im not scared. I’m ready.
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
2087
turnnoffyourmind
