The Original Sin

The dream, the promise that is America, the singular thought that guides our founding documents, freedom, the idea that one is and should be able to express their will and act in their own interest without fear is a lie.

But it is a sweet and beautiful lie. A lie that I wish with all of my being were the truth. For far too long that freedom was only granted to the few the ability to craft your own destiny was denied to whomever the state deemed unworthy of that dream.

The state decided who's freedom it would respect and guarantee, whose interests it would protect and whose it would ignore.  and in the wake of all those decisions lies the country as we now have it. We can not change the past nor can we ignore it but we must reckon with the fact that it is a sin to simply ignore people only asking to defend their interests especially when those interests have been consistently ignored for the vast history of this country.

That is what slavery is to me.

The theft of the ability to act in one's own interest and express one's will without fear. That is the crime behind all the other crimes.  It goes further. Freedom is the ability to craft the future.  Slavery robbed my ancestors of the ability to craft the future for their posterity. It was and continues to be a crime not just against those who lived through it but those who came and will come after.

I don't blame the living for slavery. But I still acknowledge that it was a crime committed not just against my ancestors against me and my descendants.

I can not undo that crime. I can not remake history to my will. Moreover, I am not sure I would even want to. My mind has been twisted to this modern world of wires and wheels.

I am not African.

I do not know that land neither as it existed nor as it exists presently. I would like to pretend I would understand those who were sold and taken from their homes but I don't and can't. How they saw the new world is lost to me.

Slavery was a crime committed against me.

And yet the man I am is built on top of it. The wealth and prosperity of my country was built on top of the forced labor, rape, mutilation and bondage of my ancestors.

I am American.

I sing the songs of the new world. Trade in its currency and live by its laws.

I am American.

Yet.

The lie. The lie. The damned lie.