Freedom - an American value?

What does it mean to be an American? What values do our flag/National Anthem and other symbols represent/stand for?

I would say that America has built it's foundation on the value of freedom for all.

The ugly ugly historic truth, however, is that FROM THE BEGINNING, freedom for all has really meant - freedom for all white immigrants (such as the very people writing our documents and founding our country). The Native Americans were never intended to be part of this - they were the enemy.

Black people were never intended to be part of this - they were IMPORTED, like material items, to be bought, sold, and owned by white people.

The history books we grew up with might have sugar coated things when they said all of this was in the past, because since the beginning we have enslaved an entire group of people - never accepting them as equal.

Slavery was "abolished" in 1865.

Jim Crow Laws began to be enforced in 1877 and ran until the Civil Rights Movement in the1950s. (That's a long ass time, friends!)

America went from LEGALLY owning black slaves to LEGALLY enforcing segregation.

It is truly truly hard for me to even imagine the mindset that these white folk lived in to do such a thing to another human being. BUT I was raised in white society so I am certain that this mindset comes from being TAUGHT. Racism has been handed down from generation to generation in this country - from our nation's birth to the present year 2017. I'm repulsed.

My great-grandmother, my closet relative and the sweetest lady you'll ever meet, tells me what it was like growing up in small town Illinois in the 1920s-30s. N*ger was such a common word to use she sometimes still says it as if that is just "their name." She tells me how she never saw a black person until she was in her twenties, because they "were only allowed to come out at night." She was TAUGHT to be afraid, be verrry afraid. As if these PEOPLE were animals or serial killers! She may not have lived in the segregated south, but there were unwritten laws where she lived. Laws that black people were not to be seen or heard, lest they be run out of town or murdered. Fear. Fear rules the world. To this day, in 95 years of life, I can almost guarantee she's only met 2-3 black people. She tells me of the first time she met "one"... "He really wasn't that bad at all. Very nice really."

Without being too straight forward with names - even I, growing up in the 90s and only in my 20s today, have been hearing my whole life from family that "this town is going to shit because of all the black and mexican people here" and "these colored people are bringing gangs, guns, and drugs into our neighborhood!" I could have easily grown up agreeing with this because adults around me were saying it was true! But I got educated. Instead of getting angry and defensive out of the guilt that someone else's demise might be inspired by me or by my family, I wept. I wept for the lives of these people and I wept because it never had to happen.

...So.. post-Civil Rights Movement.. slavery is now illegal and Jim Crow laws have come to an end. All is well now, right?! Wrong. The New Jim Crow laws emerge with different names. The War on Drugs. Mass Incarceration.

Here is a short and sweet description from Hip Hop Icon Jay Z (Do you already have racist comments in mind? Is that because I said Hip Hop? Or because I named Jay Z?) :

There are so many things I could say about this, but because I know this is getting long and I probably can't hold your interest for much longer, I just want to make one last thing clear - You can do virtually nothing in this country with a criminal record. Scratch that - you can do virtually nothing in this country if you are black and have a criminal record. In a world where being black is a REASON to be arrested and once you're arrested you have no future, life looks pretty gloomy.

As Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, an associates professor at Columbia University says, "Once you start talking about it, and you realize the inequalities that are embedded in race, you would want to take some action. That action is going to automatically mean the uprooting and the dismantling of systems - Educational systems as they now exist for most black and brown children in the country.. You basically have to dismantle America."

It starts with education, but changing the education system in this country is a huge feat.

Can we do it? Are you up for it?

We shall overcome.