Jose, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, police stopping you, asking questions, driving while Brown, walking while Black, living while any color other than white. Where you from? No, where you really from?
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming, Graciela, can you see when they stopped you in the store, harassed questioned you. Papers, please! We did say please. Your children screaming, you barely whispering, But, I was born here!
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, Manuel, can you see you movin’ too slow. Sirens screaming through the perilous fight. How many cops does a beat down need? Next time, don’t drive or walk, or take the bus. Hell, just don’t breathe.
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming? Juanita, can you see a knee shoved into your back, down on the ground, on your way home from the ten dollar an hour job wearing that little black dress. Miss, don’tcha you know prostitution is illegal, as your arrest is streamed live on WorldStar. Next time, don’t walk home.
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Jesus, helicopter spotlights will make you famous, sprawled on the ground, Face up hands out hands up, a gun, cold and draped in the flag, at your head. Eyes wide shut as the rocket’s red glare the bombs bursting on your head and all you did was ask a question Why was I pulled over?
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there, María Elena, proud of that AA, BA, MBA, from Taco Stand to Taco Empire but you a little too brown for a CEO, your English a little too accented, speaking Spanish to your mother at Tiffany’s while Karen and Ken scream at you This is America and in America we speak English. Proof that their flag is still there.
Image by SEDAT TAŞ from Pixabay
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, Luis, they’re still screaming at you stop or we’ll shoot. INS, DEA, FBI, DHS six abreast six deep, it’s an overtime circus racing to make sure that their star spangled banner is yet waving.
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Dylcia, can you see the march protesting your son’s death, the gas canisters, bullets in the air, what goes up must come down. Iphones Google Phones, recording for tonight’s TikTok moment (No one checks Facebook anymore). You just wanted answers but now you just one more brown person getting the shit kicked out of. Dylcia, can’t you see…you are not in the home of the brave or the free.
The red white and blue flag waved on high as it celebrated freedom and loyalty even as the founding enslavers who promised everyone freedom but was really meant for land owning white Europeans a life safe from the horrors of living next to people who did not look like then and we believed them as we saw their neighbors lynch fathers and mothers while their own children stood witness as blood ran from the back of their heads in the cold rain with the red white and blue American flag waving as truth behind them on the same courthouse steps where they were ripped from a courtroom and carried high above the cheering crowd as if they were heroes to be honored but were instead just another number of so many numbers their clothes stripped and burned at their feet as they wailed one last song of hope for their children and their children’s children and the generations in an unknown future before the final layers of skin were torn from their faces and hands and feet and there was the blessing by the man with the white collar and black suit and black hat and bible in his hands with the pages turned to the curse of Ham held high as he gave the crowd the consent they wanted but was not necessary because they knew their flag was all they needed to prove that their nation was indeed theirs in the name of their enslaving fathers their privileged sons and their arrogant spirits. Amen.
This is the first in a series of works exploring what it means to be American.
I pledge allegiance to the flag but whose flag is it as I am standing there in the catholic school classroom with the white faces and red hair and blond hair and white shirts and white blouses and blue pants and black pants and the nuns are covered head to toe in their own hijabs but without their faces covered and they’re leading us in a solemn tribute to a country that tells me that I am an American but really they were just joking because I’m not really like them because my father is from Puerto Rico and my mother is from the Dominican Republic wherever the hell that is and even though I was born in Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx that doesn’t give me the right to think that I’m an American citizen when in fact it was just an accident of time and place when the truth is that I could have been born somewhere else like Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic although I keep telling them that Puerto Ricans are American citizens since 1917 they keep telling me they don’t care because it’s nothing more than an island where they take the whole family on vacation to San Juan beaches and that rainforest whose name they can’t quite pronounce and anyway they say Puerto Rico don’t send their best and brightest except rapists and murderers and bank robbers and juvenile delinquents so really I’m not a real American blue blood but probably a descendent of criminals so they tell me to look at me they ask do I have freckles and red hair and black hair like those nice Eyetalian kids whose parents hang out at that social club across the street from Saint Rita’s Parochial school sipping expresso and playing cards and kissing the ring of the old man who occasionally shows up in a Cadillac with a fat driver and his pinkie ring and shiny suits and silk overcoats and shoes that definitely weren’t bought at Buster Brown and all I can think as I stand at full attention with my right hand above my heart screaming louder than all the other kids in the class I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America trying to prove that yes I am an American and they’re laughing because I’m screaming I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America louder and louder and sister Mary Joseph Jesus is now looking at me sternly and warning that she will not tolerate anyone making fun of the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America even people who claim to be Americans just because they were born here by accident in the greatest country in the world instead of somewhere else like on a boat called SS Marine Tiger or one of those propeller planes that come from some foreign country like Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic destined for LaGuardia or Idlewild Airport in New York where those black or brown or yellow looking people arrive to infect their great nation with foreign blood (Did I tell you that Puerto Ricans are American citizens since 1917?) and strange customs and strange music and strange language (Is that Spanish?) that is definitely not American or English and I scream louder as I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one Nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all because I was told by my father from Puerto Rico and my mother from the Dominican Republic that they came to the United States of America because they were told by their uncles and aunts and cousins and radio shows and newspapers and movies before there was television that this here United States of America was the home of the free and home of the brave and that there was an America the beautiful and that because people have been coming from countries like Ireland and England and France and Italy and Germany and Spain they thought that well that means they could also be welcomed because they were looking for the same damn things those people from Ireland and England and France and Italy and Germany and Spain were looking for and everyone is looking at me as I’m thinking these things and they can hear me under the screaming of the pledge of allegiance to the flag that I am also an American because I was born at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and that made me an American citizen and anyway my father was already an American citizen since he was Puerto Rican so I am an American because I was born in the United States of America as the voices stop and I drop my hand from my chest and smile broadly on my brown face under my black hair and through my brown eyes and nod that this is who I am, an American.
Jose, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, police stopping you, asking questions, driving while Brown, walking while Black, living while any color other than white. Where you from? No, where you really from?
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming, Graciela, can you see when they stopped you in the store, harassed questioned you. Papers, please! We did say please. Your children screaming, you barely whispering, But, I was born here!
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, Manuel, can you see you movin’ too slow. Sirens screaming through the perilous fight. How many cops does a beat down need? Next time, don’t drive or walk, or take the bus. Hell, just don’t breathe.
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming? Juanita, can you see a knee shoved into your back, down on the ground, on your way home from the ten dollar an hour job wearing that little black dress. Miss, don’tcha you know prostitution is illegal, as your arrest is streamed live on WorldStar. Next time, don’t walk home.
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Jesus, helicopter spotlights will make you famous, sprawled on the ground, Face up hands out hands up, a gun, cold and draped in the flag, at your head. Eyes wide shut as the rocket’s red glare the bombs bursting on your head and all you did was ask a question Why was I pulled over?
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there, María Elena, proud of that AA, BA, MBA, from Taco Stand to Taco Empire but you a little too brown for a CEO, your English a little too accented, speaking Spanish to your mother at Tiffany’s while Karen and Ken scream at you This is America and in America we speak English. Proof that their flag is still there.
Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, Luis, they’re still screaming at you to stop or we’ll shoot. INS, DEA, FBI, DHS six abreast six deep, it’s an overtime circus racing to make sure that their star-spangled banner is yet waving.
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Dylcia, can you see the march protesting your son’s death, the gas canisters, bullets in the air, what goes up must come down. Iphones Google Phones, recording for tonight’s TikTok moment (No one checks Facebook anymore). You just wanted answers but now you just one more brown person getting the shit kicked out of. Dylcia, can’t you see…you are not in the home of the brave or the free.
The assignment in English 404: Write a piece about the last two years of COVID-19 and its impact on my life.
My world was turned upside down.
You have got to be kidding me. Just when I thought I’d seen and lived it all. During my seventy-three years, I have survived the South Bronx, Washington, D.C., Watergate, Mayor Marion Barry, and the D.E.A., Los Angeles during the ’92 insurrection/riot, two divorces, too many drugs, and alcoholism. And then I’m thrown into the middle of a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic! What the hell!!!
I’m not going to lie. When I first began reading about it in early 2020, I figured, “Okay, maybe this isn’t going to be that bad. I mean, it’s only a couple of cases. The public health people will have this under control.” Then, I began seeing that former President (I refuse to write his name) on television talking about it and my heart sank, and my fear quotient rose minute by minute until I began to panic. Fear gripped me as I realized that no one wanted to accept that this was real. Denial. I get it. How many of us have lived through a pandemic before? How do you behave with something you have no clue about, and worse (as if anything could be worse), you begin to hear talk about people my age being at high risk? The increased risk from what? Something in the air, by direct contact? Do I need to worry about touching people?
Image by Helena Jankovičová Kováčová from Pixabay
I was glued to CNN and MSNBC, my mouse scouring every website I could find to reassure me that this monster wasn’t coming after my family and me and my friends, and…okay, I didn’t panic like that. And maybe panic is too strong a word, anyway. But I was concerned enough to know that I had to begin thinking about making significant changes in my life. Masks, plastic gloves, gallons of hand cleaner, wipe down everything I buy, join Instacart, download every food delivery app I can find, hide in my house, don’t answer the phone, don’t answer the door, close all the windows.
Now, here we are, ready to throw our masks, gloves, and all the other safeguards out the window. Who has time to remember the still sick, still dying, and the dead? Six million dead worldwide, 957 thousand in the United States, and we’re battling over mandates and masks and vaccines while screaming about freedom. Yeah, the freedom to kill yourself and anyone who comes in contact with you. Assholes.
In the beginning, I was taking no chances.
However, I wish I could say that the pandemic was my only concern. How soon we forget that back then, we were in the fourth year of the fiasco presidency of that guy whose name I refuse to write. The daily bombardment (I’m a news junkie) of crazy, the far-rightward shift in America, the arming of the White Supremacists, the enabling of the Karens and Kens in everywhere USA boiled my blood to the point that I considered buying a gun. A big gun. Okay, a couple of Big Guns. I didn’t because I kept saying, Don’t Panic, don’t sink to their level, focus on the reality before you and not the one on television or the internet. Yeah, that didn’t last long.
Image by UnratedStudio from Pixabay
The murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. When you’ve lived through the tumult of the last half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, you would think the death of another Black man at the hands of the police would be just one more horrible chapter in American history. For a moment, it wasn’t just another murder. It struck a nerve because of the crazy America that had sprung up under our feet. Combine that with a pandemic that millions of us were convinced had been mishandled by you know who and his cult. We were fed up, and we weren’t going to take it anymore.
But we did. As with everything that happens in this country, we shut down when we are forced to face the terrible truth about its dirty secrets. We ignore it or stamp out the painful memory before moving on. Everyone wants to get back to their everyday life before the pandemic. The one that allowed us to live in our heads, shut out the horrible reality and only let in the good reality.
Well, let this reality sink in. 1,017 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year. According to the Washington Post, which has been tracking the shootings, “Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate.” The Post writes that although Black people make up less than thirteen percent of the U.S. population, they’re “killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans.” The numbers are no better for the Latinx population. The Washington Post reports that they’re also disproportionately killed by police. I’ll give you a moment.
There are storms ahead.
So here we are, March 2022. We are so anxious to act like the last two years were just full of extraordinary everyday happiness. All the bad stuff never happened. No one got sick. No one died. It was all fake news. We’re an exceptional country. Give the police more money and more power. Stop reading those bad books that remind us of nasty things. In fact, burn them.
What is important is that we go back in time to when America was great. And you know what they mean by that. They’re serious.
They told me that I would want to be like Them.
An American. Like Them.
(I was born here)
They told me to learn English.
That would make me an American.
(American was speaking English like Them)
They told me to salute/worship/put my hand over my heart/stand tall before the American Flag.
(But I thought only their god deserved that tribute)
They told me their heroes would be my heroes. Like Them.
The Declaration of Independence
All Men are Created Equal
(41 of 56 of the signers enslaved humans)
The Constitution of the United States of America
excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other
Persons
(25 of 55 signers enslaved humans)
All the Founding Fathers
(12 White Presidents enslaved humans)
(Washington enslaved humans for 56 years)
(Jefferson enslaved over 600 humans)
Image by Erik Eris from Pixabay
Home of the Free. Home of the Brave. For White Men only
(Not Black, Brown, Indigenous, Women
of any color)
They told me to believe them. They wouldn’t lie.
But They forgot to tell me about
(The broken treaties and genocide
against indigenous humans)
(The enslavement of humans in
forced labor camps called Plantations)
(The racist and brutal Manifest Destiny)
(The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882)
(The internment of Japanese Americans
for their own good)
(The other American History
They didn’t want to hurt my feelings)
Image by SEDAT TAŞ from Pixabay
They told me to believe Them. Why would they lie?
All the good things came from Europe
(Everywhere else was a shit-hole)
They told me to believe Them.
Speak like Them. Act like Them. Dress like Them. Eat like Them. And then They will call you an American. Like Them.
They told me to believe Them. They wouldn’t lie.
On Second Thought 