American Independence Day, July 4th, has always been a conflicting holiday for me as a black person. That conflict was ignored year after year until 2016 when that conflict was illustrated gruesomely after the police murders of two innocent black men, American citizens, just after the United States’ celebration of White America’s independence. Rest in Power Alton Sterling (murdered July 5, 2016) and Philando Castile (murdered July 6, 2016).
America,
Why do you hate me?
Still…
Why do you hate my brothers, sisters, and children?
Why do you continue to kill
And capture our men?
Our fathers, brothers, sons
Locked away in cages
Starved from the sun
America, what is your goal?
Our purpose at first
Was only to be bought and sold
To be a free labor source
In your vicious economic mold, Capitalism
A capitalist democracy
With celebrities
Leading this national hypocrisy
Debating on whether or not Black Lives Matter
When actually
We are in a ripening
Civil Rights Era
A movement the masses struck
Opening our eyes
To the evil disgust
With you that lies inside
You harbor in you America Red,
White
And Blue Hues
Black bodies’ RED
blood White lies and
Blue lives scattered
On every street corner
Driving by
And at protests
In military style, side by side
Because if any life actually mattered
We wouldn’t be pre-judged
Based on hate
And a stew
Of stereotypes
And Fox anchors with racist news
I’m warning you America
To step down
I am unapologetic
And wearing my crown
Of kings and Kinks
My genetics,
Dominant, strong and distinct
America, listen to me!
My ancestors’ built this land
After You stripped it
Of all it had known
With a genocidal attack
On native people’s homes
This land is NOT “the land of immigrants”
Another white lie
Because a passport is NOT a Bill of Sale
From this land you extracted
The original people On a trail
Of so much more than tears
Another white lie
A trail of sickness, dead bodies, broken families
A fate that I also fear,
For my people
Because you do what you do best, America
Strip the land
Sacrifice the poor
Un-educate the masses
And reap the monetary reward
You are evil America
And I know that you want us to go
With your ways so wicked
And you Constitution so cold
The amendments make no change
To the values which stay the same
A story told
To destroy the man
And keep the gold
To guarantee
The all whites stay free
Of guilt, knowledge, and regret
Now every day I wake up
Wishing we’d never met
But I am trapped in this American nightmare
In the land of the Unfree
Where only one type of man
Can obtain his dream
In a world that doesn’t even see
The injustice fate
That is forced upon me
The “American Dream”
Another white lie
Is only a trend of genocides
On those who built this land
With whipped backs
We are under attack
What America did to the natives
It will also try to do to me
Steal, kill and slowly destroy my family
Because America hates me
My fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and sons
Killing, raping, stealing,
And ‘white’ lying to everyone
Why do you hate us America?
My fathers, brothers, and sons
You took them all from me, viciously one by one.
Signed,
