What does it mean to be American? Is it freedom? Equality? Being American means not being criticized or put down because of your skin color. Being American means having a word in anything and everything. It means to have our own point of view without judgment! Our promised rights should not be taken away from us. No slavery. No discrimination. We are promised by the First Amendment, Freedom of religion, Freedom of speech. We have the right to remain silent. You have the right to refuse! You have the right to calmly leave. We have the right to live, the right to pursue happiness! Why should we let the freedom that we are promised as an American to be taken away from us? Stand up and stand out! That’s the point of being an American. You have that right as an American.
My 17 years of living I learned a lot. I have seen a lot. Read a lot. I take classes to be educated about my rights. I honestly see no point of it. Don’t let this nation trick you. They say as an American we have freedom and much more. Do we really though? Our nation values freedom, equality, etc so much but we don’t have freedom of speech. Our voices are not heard. Well they are heard but not acted on. We are not equal. Racism exits still in our nation. I see racism in my own city, in my own grocery stores. I seen racism all over the internet. Colored people are being killed. I see discrimination everywhere too, Just cause we are black, that means we are bad. I seen slavery around me also. Being a slave just doesn’t mean being treated inhumanely, it also means not having the privilege to have the knowledge that we should.
Being black is stamped on my forehead. Being Muslim is also stamped on my forehead. As a young teen I walk around being mean mugged. Or treated unfairly. Just because I have that scarf around my hair and im black, i’m a bad person. I was at the grocery store just over the weekend. This white man decided to look at me awkwardly. Then he decided to push my cart on purpose. He seen that cart right in front of his eyes, he decided to push it, then start laughing after he seen me get angry. I witnessed myself and my family experience racism.
If this is a nation where we care about each other´s rights, we should start fixing a few things. Like the way we treat each other. We should not discriminate someone because of their skin color. We need to open our eyes and realize our nation is really messed up. And it’s been messed up for a while now. It’s sickening seeing the way we treat each other. We need to be build that nation we been dying to have.
