Real Talk With Raze - This is MY Country

At Green Bay Packers Family Night last weekend, I sat for the national anthem. Behind my Ray Ban shades, I noticed a LOT of looks. They ranged from puzzled to disgusted..but I remained seated and happy, as my son and 2 of his best friends enjoyed their day, and my beautiful, future-wife supported me in my decision to remain seated.

I'm an American. I've never known anything else in my life, than being, American. This is MY country. It doesn't always feel like it, considering the way I've been treated by many of the people who've been sworn to protect & represent it, but it is still MY country. No matter what ANY white supremacist thinks...the conscious and the subconscious varieties all the same.

I have not heard first hand accounts from my own family members, of being discriminated against physically and legally, just to be defeated by tyrannic immigrants.

I have not educated myself by forcing my eyes to read and my mind to visualize inhumane monstrosities having been committed against my ancestors unjustly, just to be defeated by terrorists.

I have not spent every hour of most days, woken and 'resting', worrying about the welfare of my children, family and friends, just to be defeated by the very same system that was NEVER intended to consider us as even the most basic level of 'human'.

I AM an American.

I pay my taxes. I deal with the sometime absurd repercussions of the same democracy and legal system that has convicted innocent Black men of crimes they didn't commit, while concurrently exonerating guilty white men of crimes they have. I have a f*cking birth certificate. I have fought, tooth and nail, to EARN every single thing I've ever owned.

So, when I see/hear/read some muthaf*cka who's presumably been afforded the benefit of having to NEVER face any of the systemic oppression that my entire life has intrinsically been bound to...I laugh.

Yes, I f*cking LAUGH.

I laugh at these fragile, rabid, clueless and pathetic excuses for 'men'...having the audacity and spinelessness to chant phrases like "We will not be replaced", in defiance of the very same systems they have supported and been privileged by for pretty damn close to the duration of recorded history. In all honesty, I know children who whine and b*tch less than these Dollar General Tiki Torch toting p*ssies.

This is MY country. This is where MY ancestors died, for no justifiable or logical reasoning at all. This is MY country, where I am forced to question every single second of every day, whether or not I am safe from some insecure white dude with a gun losing his sh*t and ending either mine or one of my loved one's lives. This is MY country, where I watched the only POTUS my youngest son ever knew, look like him and stand for everything a decent human being would stand for...be replaced by one of the most deplorably ignorant and consciously omnipotent devils I've ever known to exist.

Before I am anything, I am A Black Man. No matter how color blind anyone claims to be. That IS the fundamental basis of my identity, whether anyone likes it or not. Ironically, this likely wouldn't be the case, were it NOT for my being, American. I will not be offended or intimidated by anyone attempting to rob me of what is rightfully mine...my citizenship, my life or my legacy...I am American.

This is MY country............too.