“You know it’s up to the world, America eats its baby’s, No matter what you think about me I’m still your child, Know what I’m saying, just can’t turn me off like that”
“Perhaps I was addicted to the dark side, Somewhere inside my childhood witnessed my heart die… Please, Lord, forgive me for my life of sin, My hard stare seems to scare all my sister’s kids”
-2Pac
A four-year-old child watches his mother cry as her childhood friend tells her that, after two days, they’ve outstayed their welcome. They sleep in their car at a rest stop that night
America hates you
A security guard escorts a ten-year-old out of a classroom because he hasn’t been tested for that level of rigor
America hates you
A twelve-year-old man accompanies his aunt to the federal penitentiary where he is searched two times before entering. He’s there to translate for her so that she can visit her son
America hates you
A woman screams at the mother of a thirteen-year-old at a gas station saying that she’s a dirty Indian and should go back to her country
America hates you
A campground ranger holding a rifle tells his partner that he can’t stand those n*****s and would love to put one between their eyes. A fourteen-year-old runs back and tells his best friend that it’s better to play cards in their tent
America hates you
A high school AP teacher asks to see a fifteen-year-old’s schedule because he’s probably in the wrong place
America hates you
A thirty-six-year-old mother tells her seventeen-year-old son to cut his hair, tuck his shirt in and tone it down before he leaves for college
America hates you
A twenty-one-year-old woman holds back from introducing her boyfriend to her parents because it will just make their relationship “harder”
America hates you
A twenty-two-year-old boy is refused entry into a bar in Athens, Georgia by a security guard who says, “You can’t come in looking like that?”, “Like what?”, “With those studs in your ear”
America hates you
An eighty-nine-year-old grandma grabs the father of her granddaughter’s partner and shrieks “how could you let him look like that?!” He responds rather incredulously “he’s my son, I love him no matter what”
America hates you
A Dean tells a twenty-seven-year-old graduate student that they’ve seen him around campus and can see why people would find him intimidating
America hates you
A president declares that he wants to revoke the right to citizenship of a twenty-eight-year-old and people like him because they haven’t earned it
America hates you
A twenty-nine-year-old reflects on their brief and wonderous life begging to know
Why does America hate me?