God and Country

Photo taken by photographer Janet Delaney at a parade in the 1980’s in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Black people have been in this country for over 400 years. Generations upon generations of free labor, then low, underpaid labor. Generations of being denied government assistance ( jobs,housing loans, business loans, college scholarships) first in the post Great Depression and again in the post WW2 eras that helped raise white america into the middle class, while black America was systematically denied access. Literally, without black America’s contribution of  ‘blood and treasure’ there would be no America and we certainly would never have had the rapid rise to a world super power that this country had.

1845, was when America annexed large parts of Mexico, making them US citizens and large scale LEGAL migration from Mexico occurred in 1910. The benefits from labor, culture and science from Mexican Americans to this country is too innumerable for me to even attempt to list.

The first large wave of Chinese immigration began in the mid-1800’s. Due to racism they were initially excluded from becoming citizens, even though they were working in agriculture, mining, and railroad construction. You know, “Making America Great”.

How long do we as a people have to be here before we are looked upon as citizens that have a voice. A voice of dissent. A voice of power and agency to say what kind of country we live in. This too is our America and people of color love their country, to state otherwise is only an evil tactic to justify hate. We’ve been here, and we will not be silenced. And oh yeah, we vote.

At least I hope so. People of color after years of discrimination have a large percentage of voter apathy and feelings that their vote doesn’t matter or effect change. But, this thing WE are doing here, democracy, only works if you participate.