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This Country is Due for a Reckoning
I am deeply sorry I ever believed the myth of America.
I went through a brief but memorable patriotic phase. I was 10 or 11. We were singing songs at school like America the Beautiful, and I believed in the ideals behind it. I remember feeling a surge of pride in the country that was mine.
But it was, of course, a lie. Because I grew up in a mostly-White community, it was easy for the school system and for society to package the lie and feed it to me over waving flags and apple pie. I wanted to believe it, and so I did. For a long time.
America has long been due for a reckoning.
At least, White America has been due for one. Every person of color in this country has known what many of us are only just now waking up to realize: America was never beautiful or free. It was founded on genocide and built on enslavement. Our history is one of the rich, the powerful, and the White oppressing everyone else. Every small bit of progress was lauded as a huge achievement. And some of us believed it.
I haven’t believed it in a long time, but I feel like I’m coming to terms with it more now than I ever have before. I’m finally accepting that the country I’m seeing splashed all over the news is my country. It’s not an aberration. It’s…
