Stand or Take a Knee

Stand or Take a Knee 

By: Nahchon  10-11-2017

Am I mistaken or is Americas’ motto faking?

The expression… “the land of the free” …If this is “the land of the free”, then I have a right to stand or take a knee.

Why am I, as a person of color, viewed as unpatriotic,

if I don’t stand for an Anthem that doesn’t faithfully stand for me?

Shall I remind you of the black lives taken by Americas’ men in blue?

I know it wasn’t you who pulled the trigger.

I know it wasn’t you who grabbed the rope used to hang our ancestors. 

Nor the ones who watched them twitch until life left them empty

as their bodies swayed with the wind like strange fruit.

I know it wasn’t you that beat our leaders of color.

And I know it wasn’t you, that raped our women 

or you who stole our people from their Motherland.

No more than it was you who enslaved our native families when Columbus so-called discovered… “a new land”.

Of course, it wasn’t you who killed those not in agreement with the not so hidden system.

A system that allowed whites the right to prey upon people of color like me. 

But yes, it was and is you who benefit from our pain and suffering.

Pain and suffering gained via our stolen legacy; a legacy you claimed as your own.

Our family inventions trademarked as Americas’, 

While leaving us to hold nothing but a shovel and bag, in which you pushed our wealth and marked as Americas’ Federal Reserve. 

It was you that used laws like Jim Crow to keep us in our so-called place; 

A place of serving you… Americas’ majority; 

And yet not standing for your Anthem,

you call me a disgrace.

Don’t look at me as if I am a criminal or call me un-American.

The Anthem is not about me, it’s about slave masters who overthrew their British masters.

In the process of robbing, raping, and killing people with the same skin tone as me. 

So how am I to blame when I take America for which she claims...

“the land of the free and home of the brave”? 

But my apology, the expression… “the land of the free”, those words apparently do not apply to me. 

Stand or take a knee, should make no difference… if this is truly the land America claims to be.

So, forgive me if I do not stand. 

I am an American…and brave I will be…in this land of the free,

I choose to instead take a knee until Police Brutality is no longer an American Reality.