A Letter to my Ancestors
A Letter to my Ancestors
To the men that I descended from who raped, pillaged, and enslaved my mothers, brothers, fathers, and sisters; are you done yet? Your business model is trash and your community building skills are sub par. You can say that you brought us here and that we owe you forgiveness, but I don't think I can. Not only is that forgiveness not mine to give, but I'm not sure I agree with you. You're confused at best and human garbage at worst.
I feel that your spirit of greed and destruction is dying, though I could be wrong. Greed, corruption, and slavery are still the norm, but It is my hope that exploitation dies by the hands of equity. I will die happy if equity prevails.
With that, I am throwing off blackness and whiteness. I will no longer claim the judgements of others as my truth. It is time to break the binary because it never existed in the first place. I am killing the version of who I thought I was and who others wanted me to be.
To my friends and family, you can of course still call me black. That will always be one of my hashtags, and I will gladly claim the wide range of humanity that the word encompasses. I just ask that you do not call me African American. America is my home, my family has been here for generations, and in doing that you ignore my full ancestry.
To my ancestors that willed me into being. I will live for you. I will love myself and practice radical self acceptance when no one else will accept the totality of who I am. I will accept every one of you so that you can all find peace within me, and so that I can find peace within myself knowing the irreparable pain you caused each other.
I will never again apologize for who I am. I will never again apologize for the abuse I've endured at the hands of others.
I am a child of colonialism, collaboration, capitalism, exploitation, love, peace, hate and war. If that isn't American, I don't know what is.