Royalty Letter To Your Flag 2018 Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam

We pledge allegiance to your flag of the United States of America and to your republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for who? For you? For some? Not for us. Not for our people. So, please stop saying we equal with your flag of red, white, and blue in one hand. You beat us into black and blue with the other. Beat us into we're numb. Beat us into we can't walk straight. Then you put us in chains if we lucky. But for the ones of us who aren't so lucky, you tell us to put our hands up as some type of sick tribute to your privilege and then you pull the trigger. Pull the trigger until our bodies lay down on your ground. Pull the trigger until your clip is empty. Pull the trigger until we make your evening news. And then when our children cry, we have to look our children in the eyes and tell them that they have to be cautious. That when they walk your streets, they have to do so in fear. That they have to spend an entirety of their life looking over their shoulder because you will hunt them down. And you will bury them. Either in prison system that aims to disenfranchise them or the dirt beneath their feet. And this is all because of that same racism that you love to say no longer exists. But we all know that that same racism is the reason that when we want to put hood on, we resist. The reason that when we go to get these jobs, we're dismissed at the door. The reason that when we go to shop, we're watched in your stores. That racism is the reason that us saying your pledge of allegiance feels lot like root canal or whip's impact against our flesh or baton to our head or BULLET IN OUR BACK OR TEAR GAS AT Black Lives Matter protest. That racism is the reason that three women clenched their purses as walk through the entrance of this very building. It hurts. That have to remember that the system was born into was built to work against me. Hurts that have to remember. Hurts that have to remember. Hurts that have to Hurts that actually have to remember that you will happily invest more money into the preservation of wildlife than you ever will into the preservation of black life. Let me ask y'all question. When y'all turn on y'all TVs and witness another black body laid on your concrete, what do y'all see? Another murder? Another sad story? Another funeral? Do you see the aftermath? see another child that lost their father. Another single woman trying to raise man. Another broken home which leads to another child that grows up and suffers the same fate as their father. Which means another black woman that outlives her adolescent son. This country practices culture that lacks equal rights for blacks. And we love to say that black don't crack. Meanwhile, y'all shatter our melanin like glass. My back breaks for everybody you laid at our feet. For every memory try to erase within your war zones. Late nights revealed that my PTSD has found its way to the surface. And my hate for this country reminds me that I'm far from patriotic. So, it's little ironic that pledge allegiance to your flag of the United States of America and to your republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for who?