If you pay attention to what I wrote, I very clearly state that I do not believe in reparations, I am simply sympathizing with the desire and am advocating for equality, which is so severely lacking in the United States.
I cannot speak to the racial issues of other countries as well as I can to those of the United States, I’ve never been to or lived in them. But I can tell you this much for damn sure.
Don’t you dare tell me to pay up for what happened to my ancestors. You couldn’t tell it by looking at me, as my mother is white and I have inherited that trait. But one glance at my father and it becomes clear that his forefathers were undoubtedly slaves brought to Puerto Rico and Cuba. That the atrocities you tell me to pay for were committed against my own ancestors. Due to the demographics of the Caribbean Islands, the truth is that the Spanish slave owners also likely run in my blood, as well as the native Taino people who were slaughtered, raped, and who slowly and painfully succumbed to European disease.
I have felt the burden of my ancestors’ blood, sweat, and tears spilled in the ground of Puerto Rico and Cuba, and I have learned to live with and be grateful for them and the horrendous sacrifices they had to make in order to simply survive. I was maybe 10 or 11 when I first realized that when my grandmother told me we had eastern African and Egyptian in our blood, that meant that my ancestors were carted across the sea to a strange land where they couldn’t have been expected to live more than a few years, just long enough to produce more children to join the cycle of slavery.
I have never once felt guilt over my ancestors who held these men and women and children captive. I’ve never felt that to be necessary or productive. But I don’t have to lie awake in bed at night to own up to it. I recognize it. I try to take some semblance of responsibility for it and try to use their mistakes to better myself and my country. And that is what I mean when I say Americans do not know anything of atonement. We sit idle and say “we’ll that wasn’t me” without ever even guaranteeing the most basic of rights for our minority citizens. Not unless someone starts to burn shit or flip over a few cars, because only then do the idle bystanders see themselves as involved, because their own stuff is at risk, not out of compassion or empathy.
So yeah, until America has owned up to its sins, until we atone, the riots will continue, and we will not reach justice
