Hey America,
Fuck you. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Please accuse me of being unpatriotic. Accuse me of treason. Threaten my life. You are a fucking hypocrite, so all of your insults and accusations are as hollow as celebrating the 4th of July but not giving a flying fuck about Juneteenth.
What the fuck exactly did Alton Sterling do to be shot and killed while already restrained? Tell me how selling music CDs is grounds for death without due process. Tell me how tasering a man who is already down and not resisting BECAUSE HE WAS TASERED is justifiable. Tell me how a man who is already restrained and discombobulated from getting tossed across the hood of a car and electrically shocked on the ground is so dangerous that you must kill him at point blank range. Tell me that, and then maybe I’ll give a flying fuck about your whitesplanation.
Does the Second Amendment only apply to white people? Do black and brown people still only get ⅗ of the rights allotted in the Constitution? Because that is what it feels like. You claimed that the people of the Pulse Orlando night club should have been holding to mitigate the death toll. As if it was their faults that they didn’t bring firearms to a place where there is loud music, dancing, and alcohol. And then you downplayed the fact that it is a gay nightclub, and you play up some farcical scenario where this was an ISIS-motivated attack, even though the murderer pledged allegiance to multiple Muslim organizations, all of whom are at war with each other. Get your shit together. He was a fucking homophobic murderer, and strapping guns to the regular patrons would have caused chaos. Alton Sterling had a gun on him. You pointed that out pretty quickly. You didn’t point out that he never brandished his gun, or that the police officer who shot him took the gun that he never went for out of his pocket and waved it near his head while Alton Sterling was slowly dying. It is as if you didn’t see the videos that showed exactly what happened. You didn’t point out that Louisiana is an open-carry state, and that he bought the gun for his own safety because a friend of his who also sold CDs was robbed. So he bought a gun for protection, but now you are claiming this as a reason to justify his death? Take your multi-layered cake of hypocrisy, roll it up into a cylinder and fuck yourself with it.
You pointed out Alton Sterling’s criminal record, all of which were crimes for which he’d paid his debt to society, or at least was in the process of paying. Double jeopardy is not a thing in this country; If you are convicted of a crime, you get whatever punishment you get, and that is the end of the transaction. Alton Sterling’s criminal record has nothing to do with what happened to him on July 4th. Tell me what the fuck past crimes have to do with the matter at hand? You don’t like it when I discuss crimes that you America, have done. When I talk about the deliberate omission of women and black people’s autonomy from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, you freak out. When I talk about slavery, or Jim Crow, or women’s suffrage, or redlining, or the Tuskegee Experiment, or Manifest Destination, or the Tulsa Riots, or the Trail of Tears, or the criminalization of gay people, or the kidnapping of indigenous children to be taught "proper English", or the Japanese internment camps, or legalized spousal rape, or the Rosewood massacre, or the assassination of Martin Luther King, or the deliberate ignoring of lead in water pipes in poor black and brown neighborhoods across the nation, or voting laws, or the racially disparate drug penal code, what do you say?
“It’s in the past! It’s from another time! Get over it! It wasn’t ME or MY family who did it! We’ve grown from our mistakes!”
I guess that doesn’t hold for black men and women of any shade in America. Their past indiscretions are always present. You will find something, no matter how infinitesimal in our past in order to justify what happened to us. You would slut shame a nun if you could while holding up her assailant as a saint. Why else would you be touting Brock Turner’s swimming record while admonishing his victim for getting too drunk to remember anything? I don’t know Alton Sterling’s athletic acumen, because you only brought up his rap sheet. So you think selling CDs is a death-worthy crime, but felony rape is good for only 3 months? Is that what you plan to tell his children and the witnesses at the crime scene who nicknamed him CD Man who have been hailing him as a friendly neighborhood staple? Fuck you, America.
Fuck you, because this is not the only country where I’ve been pulled over or stopped by police officers. i was stopped twice in Germany and twice in Canada, and once in Ukraine. This is, however, the only country where walking in my own neighborhood is probable cause. This is the only country where after realizing there was no need to stop me, the officer did not say, “Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a good day”. This is the only country where I get stopped and am legitimately fearful for my life. I was under the impression that as I get older, I do not have to live with this fear. Teenagers get stopped all the time, and teenagers sometimes exercise poor judgement. But Alton Sterling was my age. Eric Garner was older than me. When I was pulled over and accused of faking the VIN on my car, I got no apology; only a frustrated grimace. It doesn’t matter what age I am or where in the country I am. Things can go south if I speed, have a car that you don’t recognize, have a car that backfires, laugh too loudly, wear a hoodie, pull out my wallet, follow directions, call 911, walk away from you, walk toward you, try to enter my own house, try to exit my own house, speak, don’t speak, say I can’t breathe, attend a bachelor party. I am on pins and needles at all times, which is probably another thing for which I can be shot and posthumously demonized.
American police, I KNOW you don't think I left you out. If you think that me requesting, "Please don't shoot us", is an attack on you, then fuck your fragile ego. "Please don't shoot us", is no more an attack on you and your work than, "Please no mayonnaise" is an attack on sandwiches. I once said "Fuck tha police". I sang along with every 2Pac and NWA song that demonized you. But then I met cops. I knew cops. My friends became cops. I KNOW that not all cops are bad. I KNOW most police do their thankless jobs and keep certain areas safe. But I also KNOW that there is and initial adversarial attitude that a lot of cops display when they roll through my old hood. Are you not admonishing your comrades who are acting overzealously, who are making YOUR job harder by representing you as if they ARE you, then fuck that. DO better. Call them out. Your cries of "not all cops" are as hollow as mansplainers crying "#NotAllMen" when women say "#YesAllWomen". Stop that fuckery.
Take your “black on black” crime rates and fuck yourself with them. When you're done, please fuck yourself with the “white on white” crime rates that are nearly identical that you don’t acknowledge. Fuck yourself with your “minorities in prison” numbers and the skewed penal code that put them there that you ignore. Fuck yourself with your “college age women binge drinking” stats, and fuck your “boys will be boys” attitude regarding the “men” who may take advantage of, or simply drug, those drunk women. Fuck your LGBT/AIDS statistics, and fuck your deliberate efforts to block AIDS research in the 1980s, and fuck your heternormative faux-religious zealotry that you pushed that helped the illness spread.
Additionally, make a turfucken with your "outgoing hearts", your "thoughts", and your "prayers", ANd fuck yourself with them. If you're not doing anything more than posting "thoughts and prayers", and, "my heart goes out to the family...", then you are part of the problem. I see through your fuckery. You don't give a fuck about the mountains of black bodies. Your thoughts and prayers aren't even covering the funeral costs of the people who died. If you want to prove your thoughts and prayers are nothing more than vapid words, then help unfuck your issues, America. Correct your 240 year error.
Most of all, Fuck your “All lives Matter” rhetoric. You’ve been screaming “all lives matter” since 1776, but you’ve been showing that only straight white male lives matter. You wouldn’t be offended when we say Black Lives Matter and Yes All Women if all lives truly mattered to you. As of 2013, I count 4,055 lives that didn’t matter to you. If all lives mattered, then why is it that I’m typing this essay while watching a Facebook Live video of a Minnesota man shot and slowly dying in front of his daughter, all because he followed the directions of the police officer who shot him? I guess that makes the count 4,056.
America, you are an abusive parent. I was born from you, but you treat me like shit sometimes. You give me opportunities that I’d never have in other countries, but then you remind me that you can snatch all of that away at the drop of a dime.
I love you, America, but you seriously need to go fuck yourself.
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