A Letter to America

In high school, I wanted to take an African American literature and history course, but my counselor told me it was mandatory to take British literature and American history in order to graduate. At sixteen, I was thinking "Isn't African American literature and history a part of American history? Why is one mandatory and the other is not? Why are there so few paragraphs and such a brief overview of Black History in textbooks? Why are Black people forever being snubbed in education?" As I get older, I understand why it was necessary for me to take American history.

You see, American history teaches me that it's okay for police officers to beat up a speeding taxi driver named Rodney King, falsely accuse him of using PCP, repeatedly taser, tackle, and strike him with a baton, be videotaped doing it, and then get off with no prison time. American history has taught me that young, Ghanaian young men like Amadou Diallo can't pull out their wallet to show their ID, and police who shot him 41 times can be dismissed of all charges because they felt threatened by his movement regardless of Diallo's language barrier and lack of a weapon. America has taught me that it's okay to have a Black woman named Megan Williams be tortured by a 49-year-old White woman named Frankie Brewster, 24-year-old Bobbie Brewster, 20-year-old Danny J. Combs, 46-year-old Karen Burton, 23-year-old Alisha Burton, and 27-year-old George A. Messer who beat, rape, choke with a cable chord, stab repeatedly in her leg, scorch with hot water, force to drink from a toilet and eat dog and rat feces, and lick their private parts. American history has not finalized the verdict on this case, but there's no doubt in my mind that they'll all be acquitted-after all, since 1991, police have filed 108 criminal charges against these six people, and Frankie Brewster alone was charged in 1994 with first-degree murder, and was released from prison in 2000 after serving five years in the death of an 84-year-old woman. Only 108 crimes? America is so quick on the draw by putting these six away now!

American history has taught me that it's okay to elect a president who says his "type of people" are the "haves and the have mores," he starts a war on gas, and who uses money that could be improving education, helping homeless people, providing jobs, and so forth to test mass weapons of destruction. In America, FEMA turns their back on Hurricane Katrina victims, Condoleeza Rice goes shoe-shopping and lies to Essence magazine about knowing how much money went to the victims, never mind the fact that she is the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor. In America, our president sits in a classroom for five minutes after hearing that the World Trade Center has been crashed into, and our patient American president waits almost a week before he decides to send any form of help to Hurricane Katrina victims other than flying over them and tsk tsk tsking about how they should have left. In America, it takes a rapper, Kanye West, who is not usually politically charged in his lyrics to speak out in order for the president to remember the pesky little job he has to do such as taking care of American citizens. In addition, America feels it's justifiable to rape, disrespect, torture, beat, embarrass, and imprison Middle Eastern people who have done nothing to them but then wonder why it is that other countries could possibly hate us. And if too many immigrants come to America, America kicks them right back out, never mind the fact that Christopher Columbus who found respect in sticking a sign on someone else's land and helping to kill native people with diseases gets a holiday. Never mind that, minus natives, most people who came to America were immigrants. But America thinks that since it's such a rich and sought after country due to 400 years of free slavery and immigrants migrating here, it should now close the door on taking anymore people outside of America in.

In America, we have police officers who feel great joy in sticking a broomstick up a Haitian man named Abner Louima's rectum to "break him down." Americans learn that our history shows a young, Black boy named Emmitt Till can have his tongue choked out and pulled to his chin, his eye popped out to his cheek, have a meat chopper hack at his nose, have all of his teeth knocked out but two, and his ear removed, for whistling at a White woman, and even though the killers admitted to doing it, no one has been imprisoned.

In America, there is the history of the Civil Rights Movement due to Jim Crow laws that forced Black people to drink from Coloreds Only fountains, use Coloreds Only bathrooms, not be able to enter buildings through the front door, not be able to be hired for corporate positions or seen on television and music broadcasting programs, and when marching, it was okay to hold a Black person down while a dog bit the protestor. And if not for the dog biting, Civil Rights protestors were sprayed with hoses and beaten up profusely for daring to be equal.

In the 1990s, Black men were three times as likely to go to prison as they were to college, and in 2004, half of Black men in their 20s were jobless. However, prisons do not require someone to hire these inmates who have served their due time. Instead, they are released on probation to find their own jobs with companies that do not want to hire anyone with a record. Usually, prisoners return back to prison for trying to find other means to support themselves when America has turned its back on them by disregarding the time they've spent improving themselves, finding them no employment, and usually with no more than a high school education.

But America has taught me an even greater lesson today. A young man named Mychal Bell of the Jena 6 will be sent to a juvenile facility for 18 months and the same judge who was responsible for putting him in an adult jail sentenced him again for supposedly violating his probation for two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property. In addition, his parents will have to pay all witness and court costs and will pay for him to be in this facility.

In America, we hear from so many people who say that Black people pull the race card, and our legal system is just. We hear about how everyone is treated fairly and we should not harp on the past; we should improve the future. However, what American history keeps proving is that the racism in this country today proves just what so many Black people have been saying for centuries. Slavery is still in effect. The only difference is that instead of chains, there are bars. Instead of dog biting, there is baton slamming. In order for Black Americans like me to forget about slavery, we need America to do so first. Until then, my red, white, and blue flag will permanently be in lost and don't-want-to-be found.