Should I have to tell you my life matters?

Should I have to tell you my life matters?
by Camal Ali

Freedom is not having to say that my Black Life matters. 

Yea, no shit my Life matters. 

Why is it necessary to say and spread an awareness that says my Homosapien life matters?

That is fucking insane 

And I feel like I am the only person who’s acknowledging this  

It is insane that I’ve been reduced to a fucking color.

It is insane that I don’t know how to speak my own language.

It is insane that I don't carry my own name.

It is insane that I don’t know where I come from 

It is insane that I don’t know my pre-colonial history 

It is insane that in 1619 I wasn’t allowed any cultural expression of myself and forgot who I was.

It is insane that in 1619 I was stripped of my spirituality and given a savior who looks like the man who enslaved me.

It is insane that they were given a 3-400 year head start and I wasn’t

It is Fucking insane that in second grade I learned I came from chattel-slavery.. “I was a slave?”

It is insane that everything I was taught about my past begans with slavery.. As if I evolved into a slave.

And you want to know what’s really fucked up..

I was taught to reject where I come from.

I was taught to hate my origins

I was taught that I wasn’t African but African-American.

I remember being young and being thankful that slavery happened because in my then feeble mind, “ at least I wasn’t African.”

It is insane that this great trick was pulled off and still maintains its illusion today.

Freedom is the opposite of bondage and where there is bondage, there's a cry for mercy.

And if there is a cry for mercy, there’s also a pocket sized hole filled with reliance.

And as long as my people rely on the hand that has pushed us into a corner, we will never be free.

And as long as my people continue to wait to be treated better, we will never ever truly be free.

Because waiting will never have any direction and only maintains frustration.

(Where is the leadership in the Black community?)

But you know what does have a direction,

Self-sufficiency via Economic Unity.

We did it in the early nineteenth century as children and grandchildren of former slaves and were generating serious wealth.

If this was possible in 1920, 

Then what the hell are we doing in 2020?

Racism isn’t Black people getting shot by police, nooooo. 

It’s far worse than that, that's just mainstream racism. Just the edge of the tip of the iceberg

What’s under is far worse and it’s idiosyncrasies have persisted far beyond everyone alive today.  

It’s name,

White Supremacy.