POLITICS

America, Let’s Get it Right This Time

It’s not for lack of opportunity to change this…

We, as America, as a collective unit, have got to admit that there is something very wrong with us. We, the greatest experiment, are a crumbling nation.

This is not another article beating you over the head with all our problems. The inequality. The hatred and division. The greed that controls it all.

It is a moment. It is a moment to consider where we have come from — and where we are going.

Take a moment to take a good hard look at the image at the top of this article. Beautiful. Pristine. Untouched. Look at how peaceful and breathtaking parts of our country can be — when we humans aren’t interfering with our wants, our needs, our greeds.

We humans tend to mess things up and complicate matters beyond all reason. This race thing — we have made a complete mess of it. This country started on a dream, a seeking of freedom, and it carried forth with the pillaging of everything in our path to get it. We showed up, white and hungry. We took what we deemed ours and forced the indigenous people to move over or be killed. We brought them gifts of disease and hardship.

We brought over black people from other nations to serve our needs. We forced them to do the impossible and beat them if they refused. We made sure they knew we outranked them with the lesser-melanin hierarchy of value.

I don’t know where white people ever got the idea they were more deserving or more important than the cultures of this land or of the cultures of Africa — but resources and wealth gave us the upper hand.

We showed up, white and hungry.

This still rings true today — resources and wealth, predominately in the hands of whites, set the standard of a hierarchy centuries old.

“You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate,” —President Trump

We are at a precipice here. We are standing at the crossroads of a country in crisis and we have a choice to make. Keep the pillaging spirit that keeps the power in the hands of those with resources and wealth, or realize that this place belongs to all of us. White. Black. Brown. Yellow. Red. ALL.

What we failed to do with Rodney King, we must do now.

What we failed to do in slavery times, we must do now.

What we failed to do in the land drive west, we must do now.

We must decide, as a whole people, that white people are no longer in charge of who is valuable and who gets to have what. (And we white people need to stop seeing everything in our path as ours.) We need to stop determining who gets to stay and who must move over so we can meet our own needs first.

We that hold bitterness and anger need to work toward healing — just as those who caused that hurt and anguish need to work toward righting the wrong and making changes.

We, as a nation of many, need to stand by “liberty and justice for all,” once and for all.

Let the policies be changed or constructed to ensure we all have a chance. Let the racism so ingrained in us be uprooted, examined, and transformed into a better understanding. Let us all be open to one another. Let us focus more on change than on blame — listen to each other, and work at this problem together.

How many decades have we wasted by arguing over the existence of a problem? The #BLM protests raise fists in confirmation — there is a serious problem here, and it began the day the first settlers placed their feet on our lands. It began with an idea — a wrong idea — that white men own whatever they can take.

But now that we are here. Now that we see the mess we’ve made. Can we not simply decide; let’s do better?

This country was built on a hierarchy that needs to be leveled. Can we do this work? Can we transform the heart of our nation into the heartbeat of equality and equal opportunity? I believe that we can, but getting there won’t be pretty.

It will unearth the wounds of this land, coast to coast. But I believe we, the People, can begin with one hard conversation at a time. We are called to a higher standard of internal examination and external action. We are called to change that within ourselves and that within our society that does not fit the new narrative.

We need to stand by “liberty and justice for all,” once and for all.

America, let’s get it right this time.

Thank you for reading.

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Christina M. Ward is a poet who writes on nature subjects and to the deep human story we all share. If you would like to follow her work you can do that here on Medium, follow her publications Politically Speaking and Fiddleheads & Floss Poetry or follow her on social media.