Another America

I fear the growth of two Americas, so removed from each other that we are losing our ability to communicate. Not Republicans and Democrats, but two countries in which words mean different things, no common mythology holds us together, and we listen only to our own. In this second installment of her response on terrorism, my friend describes her America. Our America – yet a country many of us has never seen. Perhaps we have not looked. “[French Prime Minister Manuel] Valls proposes that there is a fundamental difference between democracy and terrorism. From my life experiences and observations, living in this skin, there is no difference between “democracy” and “terrorism – not when “democracy” all but wiped out First Nations, promoted slavery, sustained Jim Crow and institutional racism (still alive and well); has maintained a prison-industrial complex with a majority of men of color and a post-incarceration system that does not facilitate re-entry into the society to be productive and contributory. This is terrorism to me. To only have access to inferior education, sub-standard housing, removal of boots and their laces so that there is nothing with which to pull one’s self up – that’s our democratic process, which Congress fights to maintain. That is terrorism to me. Living in fear that every time my nephews (young black men) go out or drive up from Florida or across from Indiana, we may never see them again. Democracy? That feels like terrorism to me. Barriers to voting, intimidation of voters. Democracy? That is terrorism to me.”