literature

I Am Next

Deviation Actions

Published: Aug 12, 2014

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Literature Text

_{I am next. This phrase to most people has little to no meaning. As a minority, these words ring loudly in my ears and deafen my ability to hear anything else. My attempts to reason and rationalize these inherent fear fall fruitless; for the very nature of origin in these words is all around me. Murmured comments, sideways glances, even the occasional, seemingly harmless fist bump; my day to day life is rampant with the faces of my oppressors. I keep my mouth shut when I get the cliché ‘You’re black? No way! You don’t talk black. I mean, no offense, but you don’t even dress black.’ Or, even more common, the ‘Oh, you’re mixed. So you aren’t really black, right?’ Micro-aggression and racist repression, the idolatry of ignorance is inherent and institutionalized, widely accepted, rampant and blatant, practiced each and every day.

I am next. I see a young man’s body lying in the street with a claret torrent staining the blacktop. I see a man slain in a department store for playing with one of the store’s products, a toy gun. I see a mangled corpse draped over cinema seats because a good guy with a gun decided to stand up to a threat; the threat of texting during a movie and the even more terrifying and dangerous presence of a tub of popcorn, hurled violently at this heroic vigilante. I see a child who clearly doesn’t belong in the neighborhood he is in, being pursued and stalked by a vigilant crusader of justice that, in a battle of life and death, defended himself with lethal force. No, what I see is the odium of bigots and their actions that are derivative of pure hatred. Hatred for the color of another human being’s skin. The opprobrium is absent or misplaced, and justice fails to prevail.

So what do the oppressed do when they have no other option? Violence, riot, loot, things all associated with senseless actions by good for nothing criminals. How easy it is to dismiss the actions of the disenfranchised when they choose to make a statement. We peacefully gather in protest, with words of acceptance and unity preached from a lectern upon a mighty podium. We are killed in cold blood for our words. We organize sit-ins, and are dragged out of our homes and lynched, if we’re lucky. Some don’t even make it out of their homes, as flames ignite all around them and they burn for their beliefs, for their pigment, for their ancestry. Those afforded the luxury of being able to tune out, and turn it off, should relish in the fruits of their labor; rather, the labor of those forced to build a nation atop the corpses and remains of systemic genocide.

We take up arms. We do this for protection. We do this for insurgency. We do this because we no longer turn a blind eye to the hand attempting to hold us below the level of equality. We do this to look into the face of our oppressors and know that when they look back, they are looking back in fear. To show them what it is like to fear for your life, the life of your children, and their children. We do this because the world does not pay attention when we ask for help, when we ask to be treated fairly. When we ask, we get no response. Even worse, we are punished. So we stop asking. We begin demanding. Where did we learn this approach?

We build our foundation on the rubble of destruction. Since our inception. We committed mass genocide when we came here, we brought HUMANS with us and turned them into property and forced them to labor for us, we treated Chinese-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc. as lower class people and forced them to build our infrastructure atop corpses and battlefields, destroying the homes of Native Americans, committing systemic genocide, rounding up who was left and forcing them onto reservations. We continued to only allow white protestant men to run the country until it was time for change again. We ransacked British soldiers homes, often burning them alive inside, looted businesses, burned whole towns to the ground. We became a Nation. We quickly divided, and once again built a new world atop the ruin of war and violence. We continued this tradition through women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, and expanded that tradition into our affairs in other countries. It is the only thing we know.

History is doomed to repeat itself. Why? Because we won't even acknowledge that there is still a problem. Because race is now referred to as a "card" that people use to detract from a situation. We ignore the very blatant existence of oppression and the racial motivation behind it. We choose to remain ignorant, and therefore will not learn from our past mistakes, and history will repeat itself. There will be more casualties and violence, businesses and lives destroyed, but that is what our country does best, right?

We ought to learn from our mistakes. Ought, however, is a word stemmed in morality, which as you know is extremely subjective and idealistic. Should violence be the answer? Absolutely not. But as a biracial individual, I am not going to say that I am not proud of what that violence was able to do for our country. I am ashamed of the greater populace for not recognizing the need for change when it was just peaceful protest. When it was a message delivered from a lectern or a podium by a man that was killed in cold blood for his words. I am proud of what we have accomplished, no matter the methods used. I wish the future to be better, but none of us have learned. The oppressed have not learned, and the oppressors have not learned.

I am next. These three words are more powerful than any others that come to mind. They are the reason for my fear, the reason for my militancy, the reason for urgency, the call to action, the need for change. I do not live in a world of possibilities, I live in a world of probabilities where what is probable and likely to occur outweighs the idealistic possibilities for something brighter to occur instead. The very foundation, the very core of what motivates me to speak out, to lash out, is but only a branch upon a tree of oppression that I did not create nor choose to be a part of, with deep roots that firmly hold the past in place; the past that is full of archaic, unwarranted hatred in the form of racism. Those who have the luxury of simply tuning out, relish in what has been afforded to you. Not all of us can leave the conversation.}