My Government Did Not Care About Me...

The comedian Chris Rock puts it best when he talks about African America's relationship with America. "America is like the uncle that put you through college but molested you as a kid." With every incident that occurs affecting my community, my relatives, my neighborhood, I try to not come to the conclusion that America doesn't care for me. When my grandfather told me that after serving in World War II in the Japanese Theatre, he came home and had to ride on a segregated train to his home in Waco, Texas while German POWs were granted first class citizenship as whites, he still told me to believe in America. When my mother told me about traveling from Texas to California as a child and hoping that she didn't have to worry about mistaken going into the white bathroom (as she was wont to do), she told me to believe in America. When I was in the sixth grade and transferred schools, my new white teacher automatically put me in the remedial reading group despite the fact that I read three grades above grade level, my mother again told me to believe in America. But as I watch African Americans, MY PEOPLE, MY RELATIVES, MY FRIENDS, who I ate po boys with, played golf with, laughed with, all in the humidity of New Orleans, being treated worse than DOGS, then it makes it hard to believe that my government cares about me. Because in reality, it doesn't. Kanye West was absolutely right. George Bush doesn't care about black people. Condoleeza Rice, compromised by ambition and power, doesn't care about black people. And everyone else in this administration is as callous as it could be when it comes to my black life, my wife's black life, my son's black life, and my African American community's life. In less than three weeks, I start UCLA film school. This hurricane has changed everything in terms of what I'm going to write and how I'm going to write it.