From The Journal of An American Black Woman

A Poem by VLStroude

The title is self explanatory.

Be the change keeps resounding in my head.
Becoming louder and louder as I see the level of ignorance rise within my nation.
History seems to be getting lost within the fear and anger incited by hatred.
I claim no affiliations other than the fact that I am a proud American.

The blessing of freedom of thought and the expression thereof.
Crispus Attucks was the first to die, for a nation that then felt it was ok to keep people, many who looked like him in chains.

A budding America that felt its illiterate populace wasn't ready to choose its own President and told Jefferson not to include that no man could be owned by another, that no one could be enslaved within the Declaration of Independence, which made us a country apart from the mother of colonialism that established our land as a place to send its shame. Hundreds of years and even a civil war later America chooses to honor an insurgency of traitors and the electoral college still reigns.
Even with all of this said I STILL am a proud American.

Many would disagree.
Call me unpatriotic for not swallowing the pill of complacency.
Say I'm basing how I feel off of my feelings on slavery and that to tear down monuments is a dismantling of history.
Which makes no sense to me considering they're asking me to forget an institution that crippled an entire race of people for centuries, but allow tributes to stand of men who stood in arms against my country.
Saying it's ok for the Jewish community to remember the Holocaust because it's more recent, but those of us of color should forget Slavery, and the Trail of Tears because of the years that have gone by, but an atrocity is an atrocity.
Native Americans are less than 1% of the our nation and the south side of Chicago is a war zone.
You can't decimate a group of people and teach another to hate itself and not expect something to go wrong.
It hurts to know the truth of the matter. But STILL I am a proud American.

White or Black Nationalism
I approve of neither.
There's no such thing as the first.
There's no such thing as being "White" especially when you have distinct cultures with which you can identify and of the second I prefer Black Pride.
Overall nationalism requires a nation and we are ALL American. Right? So Humanism should be the only "ism" to which we subscribe. Pan-Humanism being my favorite. The love of ALL that are HUMAN... What more should you expect.
I did say I am a Proud American.

Land of the brave and home of the free. That is what this country is to me. Nothing more and nothing less I refuse to let the media marginalize and dissect the greatness of my country which when on approach seeing its liberty within their sight many have wept.

I refuse for the brotherly love of my nation to be tarnished by racism nor blinded by it either. Its ugly mask being placed over the faces of the ignorant, obscuring their vision. Sometimes even blinding them from injustices such as the mass misappropriation of funds within our educational system.
The fact that the local executive branch of our government is out of control, not just in black and brown communities, but in ALL the communities of the poor.
No accountability for their actions, often just paid administrative leave. Meanwhile, young men and women are dying even in front of their children, being cavity searched on the street.
Judiciary system doesn't give justice it just pacifies. Filling prisons for its own pockets and keeping chaos at bay until the right group decides to riot.
It's NOT supposed to be this way we need change!

Not by tit for tat,
not by yelling back with a voice of more sense,
or impeaching our crooked president...
But by organizing and bombarding our CONGRESS where the REAL power is kept.
By NOT showing up to counter protest.
Showing that their voices mean nothing, because we have no time for racists, sycophants, and natinonalists... We're too busy kicking their counterparts out of our congress.
Because WE ARE REAL AMERICANS.