I was graciously lied to as a child. I was told that I was fortunate to have been born in the greatest country on Earth. I was born in the shining city on a hill, the beacon of hope, the land of opportunity, equality. I was told I could reach the American Dream, and that that dream was a house. But they attached meters to that house, and they taxed the house and the taxed the meters, and they taxed the means with which I supported the house and the people within it. They taxed the measures I took to protect it and the way I took to leave it. And they told me I was free.
I had a baby, and I looked into his eyes, a proud father staring at opportunity with hope. For a moment, one person who really was free. Free not because he was without cost, and not because he was without a task master, or a duty owed to anyone, or any government or king or ruler or party. He was free in those ways, true, but he was free in another way too. He was without the webs of social deception! You see, I looked into his eyes and told myself about the opportunities he had, a safe childhood, a protective government, an education, the possibility of becoming whatever he should chose, such as a scientist, a teacher, a leader. He could even one day become the very President of the United States. But his eyes were blue, and down the hall was a baby whose eyes were brown, and so was his skin, and did his father look into his eyes and think of all the things he would become, or did he look into his eyes and hope so deeply for all the things he would not become? Because he’d never become President, he was unlikely to be a leader or a teacher, a scientist, or whatever he should chose. Instead, the opportunities would be closed to him because of the color of his skin, and the dream would be a nightmare and his life a fight just to get a little, never mind getting ahead. Two proud fathers, two different dreams, one country. There’s no way this can continue! Equality means being able to have the same hopes and the same dreams at the same costs. It means the same taxes, and the same education. It means the same pay for the same work. It means brown, black, yellow, or white. And it means that I can look at my daughters and have the same hopes for them too.
I was not born in the greatest country on Earth. The opportunity for America to be that has been sucked out of it by those who tell lies, and those who believe them. But it could be the greatest country when its people remember their roots, and the unclean hands that planted them in bloody soil, and the whips they carried to drive laborers before them, and the guns that tore through flesh in search of oil. Put down the guns and the whips and the tools of hate, America! Take up a hand with no thought of its color or its size or gender, and hold it because it is the one closest to you. That’s exactly where America’s chance for greatness lies, in the hands of each of us. It lies in a dream all can share alike, and give to our children freely, without reservation because of the color of their skin, the gender of their bodies, or even who they love. It lies in the eyes of every child, and the determination of every person, not to take those dreams away from any of them. No more lies.
Kelsey J Bacon