Mr. President,
Your election into office meant so much to me 8 years ago. November 4, 2008 I was too young to vote but I was old enough to know that I’d witnessed something historically significant. A land that had traditionally been led by old, rich white men was now seemingly rising out of its racist ways and into the promised land. I was young then. At that time, I believed that what I saw was real. And what I saw was a black man with a black wife and 2 black daughters waving from the highest platform of the country.
November 6, 2012 I was 3 months away from voting age when you were re-elected into office. I was almost sad that I couldn’t participate in what seemed like such an easy choice. But I didn’t know of one soul that wasn’t voting for you. My heart jumped out of my chest when America elected you a second time. Just 7 months ago the same people who voted this black man into office allowed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to die unjustly, murdered walking home while black.
This seemed like a mistake but it wasn’t, I couldn’t believe it. Taglines of Talk Shows and News Casts across the country read “America has a Black President”, “Racism is Over”
Equality,
Justice,
Liberty,
Peace…
…must be manifesting in America because a black man, once the lowest position on the totem pole of the United States, as property, is now prosperous beyond what any racist white person could ever imagine. Although black boys are being jailed and killed at an alarming rate, America is over racism now because there is a black president
That is exactly what they wanted us to believe, hoping that we wouldn’t notice the mass attacks on blacks so long as we had our eyes focused on a black president. A black president playing basketball, that was featured in talk shows, dancing, singing, rapping and keeping us all entertained and distracted.
We saw you, your charm, your charisma, and most notably your brown skin and we voted for you. People who had never been interested in politics saw you and could finally find themselves on the ballet. Finally! A black hand that will lead us into our promise land! We trusted you, we had no demands, you promised change and we trusted you.
But still nothing has changed for us.
You made change for homosexual partnerships with federal mandated marriage laws and you made change for immigrants seeking residency in the United States, but what did you do for us? What do we get to bring home from these TWO elections to our future generations?
Nothing…not yet
Throughout your final years as our president, all that changed was how rapidly viral videos spread as we were slain…
Michael Brown
Eric Gardner
Tamir Rice
Tanisha Anderson
Philando Castile
Sandra Bland
Freddie Gray
Alton Sterling…
With each loss we are reminded that this will never be our promised land.
Not a land on which innocent black bodies hung from the trees
Not a land on which impoverished black homes and churches are burned to the ground
Not a land that arrests and imprisons us at a rate astonishingly higher than any other group
Not a land whose officers are rewarded for murdering and separating our families
Not a land which profits off of our depression, poverty, sickness and imprisonment
Not a land whose ‘leader’ stands idly by as blood drowns over his people
This past June I graduated from college with the realization that America will never be our home because it is, “The home of the free” and we were brought here unfree. White American freedom is defined by black un-freedom and America will always be America no matter who is standing on that platform.
I don’t want a mandate that changes less than 10% of an industry that locks up 2.2 million of my brothers in cages.
I want ALL of my brothers and sisters to be free!
After 2 elections and 8 years I want to see an evident reversal of the effects that mass incarceration has had on black communities, I want to see billion dollar payments of black reparations, I want rebuilding of deteriorating schools in the ghetto, I want to see developments and investment of resources in black communities and most critically I want to see the formation of an organization outside of the criminal justice system that is representative of our community (which is so often mistreated by the criminal justice system) dedicated to reviewing with the power of prosecuting in cases of police misconduct and brutality.
I don’t want a re-proclamation of a month of music, every month is black music month! I don’t want a black history month, every month holds dates that celebrate historical black leaders and events.
I want a change for me! Give me a real change that I can take up the totem pole to my grandchildren and say,
“The first black president that we elected into office may not have cured nationwide racism, but he reversed the psychological and economical effects that white supremacist culture forced onto us for centuries by ending the era of mass incarceration and by bringing wealth back into black communities. He finally honored the spirits our ancestors who died with no capital to show for their lifetimes of back breaking work”.
I want to be able to say that, but what will I say?
If we don’t have anything else to take away from this election, know that your term as president has allowed me to clearly see the evil white supremacist system at its finest, perfected.
How else could a black commander in chief allow so many officers under his watch murder his brothers and sisters repeatedly without any prosecution?
How could a black president be so powerless in the face of police brutality, mass incarceration, and black poverty?
How else could things not have improved.
Obama, if you’ve done nothing else you have at least opened my eyes to your position as a pawn in this vicious system of black genocide happening in the United States. My eyes are now open to America’s truth and I hope you use your last weeks as president to help us…save us.
I am 21 now and November 8, 2016 I finally qualify to vote in my first presidential election, but I cannot let you leave office without knowing how severely disappointed I am in you as our leader and how disappointed I am in myself and my community for not holding you to a higher standard than simply being black. From this I hope we can learn that there is no individual leader coming to save us that we are waiting for, but that we must unite and work together politically, economically and spiritually as a family in order to get to our promised land.
Thanks Obama,
Sincerely,
