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America, What Did We Expect?
For so long, the America Dream has benefitted a select few. If you’re from the wrong family, if you’re the wrong color, if you practice the wrong religion, or if you don’t fit into the perfect, predetermined mold, move along. There’s nothing for you here.
America has never been the place it claimed to be. Not everyone gets a nice house, with a yard and picket fence. The white picket fences surrounding those big houses are here, but only for those maintaining a certain percentage of melanin in their skin.
When others have conquered their way in, through floods of crushing oppression and double standards — even when they feel they’ve achieved the American Dream, they don’t get the same dream others enjoy. They can’t walk around their hard-earned neighborhood without a reason, without the accompaniment of their family, without the constant reminder they don’t belong. In their own communities, but especially in others, they must remain visibly benign at all times.
Immigrants dream of star-spangled banners flying over amber waves of grain. They risk their lives for the smallest chance of achieving a small piece of the American pie, so they can share it with their less-fortunate families. But the land they find is a waste. It’s riddled with bullet holes, littered with the lives lost to systemic racism, and crumbling under the weight of civil unrest…