Uneased Tensions
“We can finally see through the same glasses and not dream of the future, but instead make it possible.”
We’re so fond of valuing the perspective of the privileged, of those with lavish lifestyles other than the common people and establishing it as the perspective of all. A fractured reality we live in, filled with the same unnoticeable discriminatory elements. Wine glass sounds in celebration of a new year. The ball touches the bottom during the amarantine-lit sky. The new year is now closer and more tender than ever. Ticks from grandfather time, frantic heartbeats drumming in unison. Thump, Thump, Thump. The hand finally touches 12, and voices howl. Expecting their burdens to cowl into nonexistence. They now have a tight grasp on the lens for the future. Freely gaze through it, hoping. But, for the rest of us, it’s just another part of the agony. Is it harmony or hell? It is now my part to tell.
In the moment of it all, we cherish the birth of a new year and look forward to the future. However, I devote my time to looking through the past, searching for the difference between now and then, ways in which our nation can disassociate itself from its gruesome past and events in the present that demonstrate progression. Instead of being flush with euphoria, I’m suffocated with sadness and drained of hope for the future.
My country’s symbolism of freedom is the same symbol responsible for the oppression of others. I look at the flag and still see the same blood that still drips down from its stripes. Stars that were earned with the genocide of others. I could still hear the faint screams of innocent people killed for their differences. A facade that lies before the eyes of millions. A facade formed under the guise of "liberty.”
We live in a nation filled with the repercussions of manifest destiny, one that still pledges to a flag that has taken all from people who weren’t white. We sing songs to demonstrate our people's unity and strength as the United States. In reality, we’ve been separated all along. Is this what liberty means? Our national anthem includes the terms one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We create lies to create the American dream. A dream that requires us to dream. A dream that has biases and different views towards those they deem as different.
We surreptitiously recite this to define our unification, but we deceive ourselves through our hatred and true intentions. Everyone on the surface looks innocent, but with one scalpel, there seeps out true sinisterness. There is, in this country, a reality hidden in plain view. Consider the case of the CDC’s involvement in the Tuskegee Syphilis study.
The intention was apparently to understand the effects of untreated syphilis, but in reality, “the intent of the study was to record the natural history of syphilis in black people” at Tuskegee University, where researchers told men who were participating in the experiment that its intention was to treat “bad blood." This was a term used by locals to describe diagnosable diseases, including but not limited to anemia, fatigue, and syphilis. This meant that those who participated weren't formally informed of the diseases they were being experimented with. To encourage motivation, researchers said they would incentivize those who participated in free health care, something that every black person wished for due to their harsh living conditions and the heavy segregation laws in hospitals that prevented them from receiving fair treatment. In addition, the men were also promised that the experiment would only last six months. But in reality, the experiment lasted a whole 40 years, and the men weren’t compensated for their promised health care. The research continued even after funding was lost, and researchers kept informing the men that they would never be treated. According to one source, “None of the infected men were treated with penicillin despite the fact that, by 1947, the antibiotic was widely available and had become the standard treatment for syphilis.”
This experiment used people of color as if they were guinea pigs, disregarding their humanity, violating their liberty and human rights, and scaring their population for generations. In addition to this sinister deception, this research led to the injection of syphilis into black men who had no symptoms or signs of the disease. One source names: “Of these men, 399 had latent syphilis, with a control group of 201 men who were not infected.”
We devote ourselves to honoring a flag whose history was built on the foundation of racism and developed from the sufferings of other unprivileged races. A flag covered with the blood, tears, and agony of those treated so unfairly—those who’ve been stripped of their dignity and left over to rot in the eyes of “justice” and manifest destiny. Though some can argue that times have changed and the country isn’t as gruesome and inhumane as it has been in the past or as racist as it has been in the past, I can assure you that it hasn’t changed a bit. I can assure you that our country still has racism, but in another form. Consider the event of the deadliest diseases in the modern era, SAR-CoV-2, commonly known as COVID-19, It's been reported that “as of November 2021, American Indian and Alaska Native, Black, and Latino people all suffered from higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19 compared with white people."
Now, after reading this, you may ask yourself, “How does this represent racism of any sort?” I want to look closely at this report. Isn't it odd how only the privileged come out of this pandemic mostly unscathed and the racial minorities receive the full impact of the pandemic? A discrepancy hidden in plain sight is another form of racism. Structured racism, aka systemic racism –this form of racism is called “invisible evil” by some; it’s basically segregation used legally. An oppressive tool meant to separate the racial minority from white people, an oppressive tool that stems all the way back to the Jim Crow era and is used heavily throughout the medical industry to provide white people with premium treatment.
Gazing through the lens of the past, we view the hell of our reality and the terror that lies in front of our eyes. Mortified, we frantically search for the future lens to outshine the darkness that consumed us, like an anodyne would. A cure to shame, numbing our deepest pain. With all the darkness in the roots of our nation, who wouldn’t look for the light in the blindness? Wrongful diagnosis of black people and discrimination from a supposedly humanitarian field. Through this truth, we have become uniquely primed to diagnose this country, with its history of wickedness, while prescribing it through the lens of the past. We can finally see through the same glasses and not dream of the future, but instead make it possible.