America the Blue

Crack open a hard Coke and wash down all your worries.

Look out at the magenta skies of the sunset, stretching from the peak of the Appalachian Mountains to the skyline of the City of Angels.

Feel the beaming beauty of this nation.

Feel your honor of this vast landscape take over.

Where does the pride come from?

From our triumphs against adversity?

From our undeniable strength and perseverance?

From our unwavering faith in our people and president?

With all due respect, there are times where I can only see reasons for dissipating that pride.

This does not mean I have given up faith or love for my country.

All I ask is: how can many be so proud of a country that they barely even know?

Some people are blind-sided everyday that we’ve done nothing wrong in our past, but act as patriotic, freedom-drunken individuals whose only role in our legacy was the heroic underdog who saved everybody.

I beg to differ.

I grew up in the South, and I never left it.

The only North I’ve seen was North Carolina.

I’ve learned to buckle down in the maddening heat of the summers, and drink in all the folk and bluegrass banter that popped in my ears.

The shops of Knoxville were filled to the brim with the hymns of Rocky Top Tennessee and the works of Dolly Parton.

Below the surface of cold lemonades, chipper people and rich music, there is the blood and grit of my people in the soil.

Rusted metal binding them by their souls.

Tears soaking into their skin as they wept at night.

Thinking of home, thinking of life, thinking of themselves.

Each with the strength of a wolf, but thrown into work like oxen.

Girls as young as me, and women as old as my mother, exploited and ravaged.

Their virtue ailing, but not broken.

Boys and men torn apart from the flesh of their frames to the sundered feet they earned for their efforts of trying to find freedom.

Their bodies tattered, but their will of their spirits swelling with fortitude.

All asking, “When will it stop?”

Fast-forward to 1865, an anthem of sovereignty, challenging America’s antebellum dystopia, cut through the air such as a whip would cut through the backs of the innocent.

Legions of united men, tired of tyranny, demonstrated their worth to legions of men and a flag, which was woven by the bloodied hands of so-called Christians who sought to drag them back into the maw of bondage and brutality.

The same flag that many Southerners today, though I am humiliated to admit, still believe is a good symbol of their culture and pride, not a symbol of hatred, discrimination and unjust supremacy.

They are freed, those united men, but at what cost?

For another century of belittlement and terror?

For those who claim to be the true children in God’s image when they break the very oaths of their maker by slandering and slaughtering those He righteously created so they could serve every purpose of living as their alabaster brethren?

Such shameless hypocrisy, however, did not start there.

Rewind to 1831, the real Natives of this country marched through the barren winter with bayonets darted at their backs.

This isn’t the only injustice these people have faced.

Many of their own, regardless of their tribe or creed, were systematically erased during the rise of colonization and revolution.

The outcry of a destiny could be heard roaring from the throats of the young pioneers and frontiersmen of that period.

It was the destiny that brought about a change in America, a change that caused many of our own to search for their fortunes and test the tides of fate.

This same destiny nearly eradicated a whole nation of people.

This same destiny gave us the courage to travel forth upon the roadways of a new nation.

Newspaper editor John O’Sullivan titled it, “The Manifest Destiny”.

It was created from a festering fever of nationalism and expansionist ardor.

We believed that anything towards the West was rightfully ours.

Today, some people have similar beliefs, except replacing the spell of the Manifest Destiny with the modern concept of what one could call, a White Man’s Land.

A White Man’s Land applies to one specific statement in America.

When an American is to say, “Go Back Where You Can From!”, it is one of the most contradictory statements to ever escape the mouth of a benighted fool.

Did Europeans not escape to the Americas as immigrants?

Did the British Protestants, Puritans and Catholics not escape from the United Kingdom so they find a real place that would allow them to practice their beliefs?

Did the impoverish Irish not exile themselves from their homeland to avoid the crippling, dolor-ridden clutch of famine?

Were not the Jews brought here through refuge when the Nazi Regime was dehumanizing, torturing and murdering their people, along with the Romani, the handicapped and homosexuals across Europe?

Who are you to tell someone to go back to where they came?

Especially when the majority of us aren’t the true inhabitants of this land?

Especially when those who choose to come here, whether legally or not, sought for better opportunities at life, liberty and happiness, or perhaps a new haven, such as the Puritans, the Protestants, the Catholics, the Irish, and the Jews?

All those years ago, we had forced the Cherokee, Seminoles, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek from their homes to untapped territory.

Today, a numerable amount of Americans want to force people from their homes and back to the country of which they came.

Isn’t that something?

It must be for those who are quick to agree with blocking out would-be Mexican immigrants with a wall, but also teach their children about the Pilgrims, who were also immigrants, and why this country is so, so great.

As a small child, I was told America was a magnificent melting pot of people and culture.

That’s one of the few things they didn’t sugarcoat for us, but what is a melting pot when there will always be a ladle swooping down to scoop whatever diversity is left on the inside and toss into some stranger’s bowl?

Why do we gloss over the image of people when someone, coincidentally, from their race, religion or nationality does something wrong?

Why do people want to gloss over black people with images of gangbangers and hoodrats?

Why the assumption that we are classless reprobates coming straight from the hood, the ghetto or the projects?

It doesn’t matter what you call it. Same difference.

For the cause is behind this nation’s institutional vice which keeps my people in that mold.

Yet, it made me wonder: why?

What did America do to keep diversity but also take it away?

It seemed like every time a person of color did something wrong that it would imprint on the minds of others.

Since the monstrous minstrel Jim Crow, black people would be seen as some kind of a joke.

Since the roaring rebellion of Nat Turner and many other slave revolt leaders, black people were also seen as a threat.

From Osama bin Laden to ISIS, I’ve noticed fellow Americans painting Muslims and those of Middle-Eastern descent as trigger-happy terrorists that were hellbent on destroying the American people.

In no way should we forget the acts of terrorism.

However, depicting an entire group as their malicious prodigies is a mistake we’ve made once.

We’ve made this mistake after one of the most heinous acts of violence against the American people.

Doing it a second time would be not only foolish and disgraceful, but all too clear on how easily vicious our people could be.

It was the result of a day that would live on in infamy.

The year was 1942 when Japanese-Americans were beginning to be exiled to internment camps.

Once the tragedy of Pearl Harbor sunk in, they were forced to leave behind their homes, most of their prized possessions, businesses and their lives as American citizens.

Each of them placed in military confinement, so possible “spies” could be placed under observation.

Any Japanese spies would be punished if caught.

None of the Americans in the camps were outed as spies.

A few died trying to escape, but did that mean they were spies?

Perhaps.

Or perhaps, they wanted their lives back.

They were tired of being caged like animals.

They were tired of being watched every second as the years trudged by.

Not a single one was a spy.

Do you know how the government dealt with that?

They sent each Japanese person a letter that basically said,

“Whoops! My bad! Won’t happen again, I promise. Have a nice day!”

Eventually, they paid compensation to each surviving victim, yet keep in mind that it took all the way until 1988 for these reparmations to made.

These people were released in 1946.

Did we have too much pride to accept we made a mistake?

Could we not put that pride aside?

Nowadays, we apparently have enough pride to defend a flag, not defend the actions of a man who knows injustice when he sees it.

In references to such controversy, it makes more sense that troops would die for their people, not for a piece of cloth, wouldn’t it?

Then again, I am the child of an Army sergeant who served in Afghanistan, so I wouldn’t know about the sacrifices that the military makes, right?

Regardless of flags and people who have so many sticks shoved up their All-American, football-loving asses that they could shit out Yellowstone National Park, why couldn’t we own up to things in the past like we do now?

What about the lynchings?

Virtually nobody was convicted of these crimes in the late 1800’s when blacks were freed.

Hell, some southerners attended lynchings as if they were going to a concert!

What about the police brutality?

I was playing around on my family’s computer when I heard about the Trayvon Martin case on the local broadcast station in my parents’ room.

That was the first time I heard about brutality towards Blacks, because they never went into full detail about the inhumane mistreatment of African-Americans in the elementary school history books.

After him, there was Eric Gartner.

Then John Crawford III.

Then Michael Brown, Jr.

Then Tanisha Anderson.

Then Tamir Rice.

Then Freddie Gray.

Then Philando Castile.

Not too long ago, I learned of Stephon Clark.

He was a young Black man who was shot twenty times in his backyard.

He had no gun.

Even if he had a gun, what chance would he have?

It was two against one.

One shot alone is too much.

Twenty?

Claiming it to be “overkill” would only be a start.

How did this come to be for our nation of independence and unity?

We were revolutionaries in the past, and we still are today.

All for the worst of reasons.

I can count all the targets on my back, and I have a clean record.

I am black.

I am a female.

I am not straight.

I am a high school student.

The last one shouldn’t need an explanation.

I’ve seen some parents and people in power who say a school is a place of learning, not protest.

Yet, schools aren’t a place for guns or death either, now are they?

The shooting in Sandy Hook happened when I was in the fifth grade.

The shooting in Parkland happened in my sophomore year.

If you truly believe in the power of learning over protest, how about you learn from your children and others?

How about we all learn from others?

From our past and present?

As I conclude, do not embarrass yourself if I caused your blood to boil in this seemingly liberalist narrative.

It is as sad as it is worthless.

After all, an opinion is not a fact, but the truth is.

The moral of my endless venting is if we are so quick to acknowledge the good in our country, then we should be just as willing to accept the bad and stop sweeping it under the rug. Take responsibility and progress.

America the Blue.