To start this off, you may be wondering what the title even means. Yes, it was very vague. Yes, it even sounds super generic. However, think about it. What is an "American"? Is it someone who was born here? Is it someone who's parents were born here? Is it someone who is British, German, Spanish, Filipino, Nigerian, South African, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Peruvian, etc.? Is it someone who is heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, etc.? What does being "American" even mean?
To me, it means pledging allegiance to the United States of America - making your home, where you work, where you pay taxes, where you raise a family (if you decide to do that), and where you grow old until you are called to the afterlife. It doesn't mean you have to be born here. The beautiful thing about America is its open borders - the land of opportunity and the land of the free. It is said that America is open-minded, offering a variety of freedoms to anyone who decides to have a life here, freedoms like freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
What outsiders may or may not see is what America can truly be like. It is dark, cold, and brutal some days. Innocent people of all colors, occupations, sexual orientations, and identities are being killed out of ignorance, revenge, and cold-blood. Recently, a man in Minnesota was shot while a child and a woman were in the backseat and another man in Louisiana was also shot. This shooting follows the attack on Orlando, the two rape cases that hit social media and caused huge uproar, and cases like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.
My first question is - what the hell is going on? Is this what being in America - being American - is all about? To have injustice, racism, sexism, classism, and everything else in between? What happened to the promise of opportunity, freedom, and a good life? I will approach the subjects I mentioned one by one.
The Recent Rape Cases
Unfortunately, pity was placed upon the two most social-media covered rapists out of pure ignorance and injustice. John Enochs and Brock Turner were given the most pathetic convictions. Is this okay for us? Is this what our society has "ok'd"? Now, what if these two men were Hispanic? Or what if they were black? Would the convictions been just as sad - or would they have been put in jail for life or even given the death penalty? What if these men were women?
The fact that rape culture and victim blaming has become so prevalent in our society is scary and this needs to change.
The Orlando Shooting
There are two sides of this. The side where people say, "Gun laws are too relaxed - we need to make them stricter and then our country will be safer!" and then there is the side where people say, "If someone in that crowd had a gun, the casualty numbers would have been much lower!" The argument had gotten so bad, people were even arguing on whether or not it was a terrorist attack or if it was simply a hate crime. Yet, it could have been both.
So.. it's a risk for your life to be homosexual, pansexual, bisexual, etc.? Seriously? Now, to be a non-heterosexual, indifferent gender identity in America, it means that you can't even hang around at a public spot with your friends without worrying about whether or not you'll be alive by tomorrow.
The Recent Shootings
To be a police officer these days honestly doesn't seem the best idea. To be a minority being pulled over or approached by police doesn't seem so popular either. However, black men and women are in an uproar to the point to where some are so anti-police, they have retaliated and killed police officers. Is this really what we've come to? We're so quick to be anti-police that people are killing them? When you feel like you're being followed late at night or you hear gunshots down the street, who are you going to call? Police officers!! Yes, there are bad police officers unfortunately. But there are bad everything. I don't understand why people don't get that.
Do you know what's in common about all of these topics? They were covered in the media. The media is changing and exaggerating every story. None of us were there when those two men raped those women, or at the Orlando shooting, or at the crime scenes. We can never really know exactly what happened. But what I can tell you is you can not believe everything the news is telling you. I can also tell you that the victims in the rapes were not at fault, that those guys were pigs and they deserve to rot. I can also tell you that the Orlando shooting was a horrible hate crime and that everyone in that club probably had the most beautiful soul you have ever encountered. Finally, I can tell you that those police officers know whether or not shooting those men was the right thing to do or not and if it was an action out of racism, they will get what's coming for them.
In America, none of us are safe anymore. It seems you can literally be anything in our country and someone hates you for who you are, who you love, and how you live. I wish it wasn't this way, but we can not let the media influence our view of the truth.
