In re: Ferguson, MO & the murder of Michael Brown: Open Letter to White Folks Who Don’t “Get It.” Imagine, for a moment, that your history in this country is one of blood and captivity. Imagine that you are on this side of the world not because your ancestors chose to be, but because they were abducted and forced into bondage. Imagine being torn away from your family, your home, your life. Imagine that legacy. Imagine that the truths we held to be self-evident at the birth of your country didn’t include you—all men were created equal, but you? You were only 3/5ths of a man. Now imagine that the state you live in fought and died to preserve their “right” to keep your family, your people, as their chattel. Imagine that your people’s “freedom” had to be won at the end of a musket. Imagine that when you got it at last, it was largely in name only. Imagine that all that happened less than a century and a half ago. Imagine that when your people’s chains were finally broken, you were left destitute, likely homeless, with limited prospects. Imagine that the promised money and resources to help you get settled never materialized—or were yanked away almost immediately. Imagine a century of laws, of policies, of norms that treated you as subhuman. Imagine the blood of your people splashed across the pages of history books which have since been scrubbed clean to sanitize them of the true horrors you have faced. Imagine teenagers, tortured and murdered for the crime of looking at or speaking to a woman with pale skin. Imagine juries refusing to convict the confessed murderers of your child. Imagine a battle that raged for decades to earn the right to be seen under the law as fully human. Imagine the martyrs murdered in the battle for equal rights. Imagine a country that insisted that racism was dead, just because it was no longer legally sanctioned. Imagine your families, your children, forced into ghettos—not by law, perhaps, but in practice. Imagine unending, crushing poverty that you can never climb out of. Imagine a deck, stacked against you for generations, and imagine constantly having to listen to derisive claims that you are to blame for your own misfortune, for you own oppression. Imagine being told that what’s wrong is your genetics—and then, later, your culture, without any light shining on the larger culture that traps you. Imagine red lines, slashed across maps, drawn around your neighborhood, denying you access, charging you more, hemming you in. Imagine that after every battle that is fought and won, there is no time to breathe, because 10,000 more injustices remain. Imagine that you are followed around convenience stores, accused of stealing things that belong to you, eyed suspiciously for owning anything “too nice.” Imagine that every single day your sons are stopped, are frisked, are locked up. Imagine that every single day, your sons are killed. Imagine that it just keeps happening. Imagine that the Emmett Tills, the Trayvon Martins, the Michael Browns number in the thousands. Your sons are being murdered. Openly. Proudly. Unabashedly. By upstanding citizens and representatives of the law, of justice, of peace. Imagine that your unarmed, defenseless sons are being murdered, and that their murderers, again and again and again, not only go without punishment, but are lauded as heroes. Imagine that your dead children are decried as thugs, as criminals, as animals. Imagine that one of your murdered sons is left to lie in the middle of the street for hours, without so much as a sheet to cover him. Imagine that when at last, you rise up in protest against decades, against centuries of injustice, your people are again labeled animals and criminals and thugs. Imagine that they are shot at, and tear-gassed, and corralled, and confined. Imagine that those who would record the injustices are kept far away. Imagine that the same establishment that blocks you at every turn now points to your fury as evidence of your inferiority. Just for a minute—imagine. Imagine, and start to understand.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:48:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015