My Country?

America…what does it mean?  In the home I grew up in it meant putting a flag out every Memorial Day and of course every eighth of November.  America meant celebrating the vote and the right to decide on the life in your womb.  It meant knowing the greatest inventors shared the same genetic amount of melanin to form the absolute perfect skin tone and that ‘we’ were just genetically built better than ‘them’.

American? I know the rules of this country as I grew up with them, I learned testimonial to repeat to any teacher upon request, but I never felt, and I doubt that my family had ever felt or looked upon the words in action. 

Were we speaking strictly of the old ‘melting pot’ adage, then, of course I know.  My lineage is unsullied in so many different areas.  I am a direct descendant of John Adams, my grandfather was a highly respected Blackfoot Indian, my grandmother was a lovely Irish woman who bore my name, another grandfather headed a family well thought of and respected in both Barbados and The US that built and maintained Long Island well before it became the Mecca of the well to do, and I have a whole other grandfather who paved the way, so to speak, for many generations to come. 

Finally I had a sister who was one of the best pediatric nurses and evangelists in New York and I have a brother who is a Staff Sergeant in the Army as we speak. So, like I said, I come from pedigree…but do I have America? Do I have a voice in how things are and do I feel that I am properly an American?  Who knows?  Were any of my ancestors thought of as American?  America wouldn’t let any of my grandparents, my oldest sibling or my parents use the outhouses near white America for the majority of their lives, America killed, robbed, cheated and lied to another set of my grandparents for something as stupid as land and America would still hang me today or rape my children if they felt like it was the thing to do at the moment. 

So am I America? 

The problem with the question asked is that America isn’t really black friendly, it's finally becoming inter-racial friendly, it’s not poor friendly, and it’s not living friendly.  America, as it’s portrayed in the evening news, in politics, in the world I think, is all about spending money on other countries, spending money on toys, gas and being more than what they are.  America, as I’ve seen it from both poverty and around the well to do, is about spending more on the external and giving nothing to the internal and I don’t like it.  

I have no choice in this country really, I can’t cast a ballot and get the war I never wanted stopped, I can’t write the president and demand an explanation for all the money we’ve wasted making government officials fat and happy and I have never been able to cast a vote for things like school or welfare or anything else important and have it matter.  The race is fixed and all I can do is hope whoever they put in charge of this asylum doesn’t get me killed should I ever try to travel abroad.

Land of opportunity…maybe.  For some but what about for those of us that get left behind or that get ignored in the way of progress?  Do we have opportunity?  When our very school system is producing a generation of gas pumpers and drug dealers, do we have opportunity?  They used to say anybody could become president, I sincerely doubt it was meant for me or for people like me.

Charles Dickens said something in “Great Expectations” that stuck with me for many years.  Paraphrased it was that there was a point in everyone’s life where they can look and say, “Yeah, that where all this started”, but in America, as a country, as a non represented personage, we have no voice.  

I ask all this, I think all these questions with no answers in order to help figure out what to pass onto my generations.  But maybe the questions I should be asking are how to fix this crisis of the people, or how to create in my children the hope and opportunity the government would deny them.  Or even how to exist beyond our means without losing the shirts off their backs.

Or maybe, I should just teach them to pray.