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Now that the media is done pummeling our brains with the patriotic, and saturating our psyches with stars and stripes, we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming,

deprogramming. I managed to miss every single Olympic event, on purpose. I had no interest in the pageantry or the blind allegiance involved, and its kind of tough for me to ignore the fact that America hates Black people in order to embrace the false notion of a unified nation where I should care about the U. S. dominating the Olympics. I’ m still not certain why any African would care., but that’ s just me.

I did care about the success of our brothers and sisters in Brazil competing. From a distance, I cheered them on, and via social media, I saluted their athletic accomplishments. From what I could gather, Africans from America put in major work at the 2016 games; they did the damn thing! I found myself imagining what it would be like if Africans participated as Africans from Africa. I imagined what it would look like if all the Africans in America decided to play for home, our actual home. What would these games look like then? Would America still be the pride and glory of these games? I listened from afar as America’ s media tried its best to contrive stories to

discredit and defame it’ s representatives of a darker hue; it wasn’ t enough that they were winning gold medals. They were still Black. I listened as a good ol’ American White male swimmer reportedly carried on in Brazil like a spoiled, entitled child, only to have his actions pardoned and justified by the American media. White is still right. I sat at a bar full of Africans who chanted gleefully,“ U. S. A, U. S. A., U. S. A.!!!” as the American athletes entered the coliseum at the beginning of the games. Did we all of a sudden gain equal footing with our oppressors here? Were the litany of lynchings here, past and present, of Africans, just a recurring nightmare of my own? Was racism eradicated along with

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