This is America Cristal Gonzalez

THIS IS AMERICA

Poem by Cristal Gonzalez

This is America. Land of the Free; Home of the Brave. My mother speaks another language but If it ain’t English it ain’t right. My brother is more American than all of us but we the people want to send him to a place he never called home. You want to be someone, “Show me your Green Card, please.” I’m tired of having to explain who I am, Who my parents are, And why they are here. I am Latina, But as Selena’s dad said, “I have to be more American than the Americans and more Mexican than the Mexicans.” But when am I going to stop proving to the rest of the world, When can I stop saying, That children don’t belong in cages And families aren’t meant to be separated. “They’re illegal,” they scream, but if it were them, They would be screaming, “This is illegal!” The world is a race, but if you’re white, you are 10 steps ahead. This isn’t meant to be racist; it’s just to open your eyes. Would you survive one day as a person of color in a line full of whites? Because even the way I walk is judged when I go shopping for tights. I am followed like a criminal on death row Because the color of my skin has more pigment than yours. I wanna know When we the people will live up to “Land of the Free; Home of the Brave.”