A gentle reminder for a country that turned its back on people of color and bleached itself white. As if our ancestors had not transformed this country with survival and strength. Dear America, I am writing this letter because you deserve to know where you came from. The truth. That you go way back before 1776. Know that your story did not begin with the Declaration of Independence, but with a pair of iron wrist shackles and ghastly whips in the back. That before they shaped you into who you are today You were stolen from your indigenous parents And left an orphan through coercion. That they slaughtered thousands of lives And justified genocide. Know that they made a cold blooded business out of your body Exploited your resources, your soil, forced a callous racist system down your throat And turned you into a living hell for your black inhabitants. Know that you were baptized in the murderous waters of the Atlantic And “purified” among the corpses of the slaves who chose death during the Middle Passage. That you were owned and ruled by Europeans, But it was black cotton picking hands that raised you. That the lullabies that lulled you to sleep were not white, but a chorus of slaves tucking you into bed and wishing you a goodnight. Know that you were bathed in their sweat and tears, But dressed in their strength. That you are held together by the embrace of all the black mothers Who could not hug their children “I love you” And that you were woven out of the same yarn And cut from the same cloth of their inescapable misery. Know that the scars on their backs are your landscapes And that those landscapes derived from plantations. Know that this is your original sin and origin And that before your so called founders cried “ all men are created equal” They stripped you off your blackness, dipped you in red, white and blue, Adorned you with fifty stars and renamed you America: The land of the free. Nicole Mendez (BHSEC Queens)
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