We pledge allegiance . .
its deeply engrained policies, procedures,
and social positioning? Were we all of a
sudden no longer last in this caste?
Africans for Africa . .
What if all of those gold, silver, and bronze
medals African-Americans won were
acknowledgement of the athletic prowess
borne genetically of our beautiful
continent? Africans work hard, train,
prepare, and compete at world class levels
to win awards for a country that doesn’t
give a damn about their existence, a
country trying to continuously wipe them
out of existence. I don’t need to describe
the myriad of ways in which genocide is
being enacted. I don’t need to run down
the list of demonic racist occurrences
recently in which we’ve emotionally
reacted. Black people dying, Black
mothers crying . . American media, police,
and politicians lying, and the collective
ensuing sighing of complacent Whites
tired of Blacks complaining about dying.
And all these years, Black people have
been trying. .trying to become part of the
American fabric, trying to live out the
American dream, and trying to get a piece
of that American pie, no semblance of
peace, just periods of quiet.
7
We go hard for America. We abandoned
our own culture for America, to have it
replaced with one they felt would make us
better slaves, I mean, better Americans,
who just happened to be slaves. We fought
in numerous unwarranted, unjustified,
elitism, and capitalism-fueled wars to
solidify our identities as blue-blooded
Americans. We adopted and adapted to
their education systems, allowing America
to reprogram us into humans much unlike
our true essence. We participate in their
politics, and their policies proved a bit
more than problematic for us, election
after election, hope kept alive, in God we
trust. We’ve tried. We dribble, toss, and
catch pigskins that garner billions for
owners and sponsors, but those Black
bodies who enable these sports leagues to
make riches, are treated like apolitical,
asocial bitches, muted. We abide by
uneven laws of justice to be unjustifiably
locked up in prisons where there are just
us. We gain employment per that
integration package, just to become
corporate stiffs forever chasing crumbs as
compensation, calendar watching for next
vacations. We’re in rat races we’re not set
up to win, autonomous communities of us
blown up and in the wind, no longer
focused on our own independence again.
Nope, we’re content to simply be
American. Becoming embraced as fellow
Americans seems to be our forever goal, as
our athletes travel to exploited nations of
our own, chasing gold.
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