White Culture is not Human Culture

How can we call ourselves human when we watch a laboring woman be turned away from a hospital for the color of her skin, only to give birth to her child eight minutes later in the cold confines of a car?

How can we call ourselves human as families are snatched from the street and locked in cages for the minor misdemeanor of crossing an imaginary line?

How can we call ourselves human when Black men are shot in the street by officers sworn to protect our tears?

How can we call ourselves human when children are abused by the very hands we raised? The hands we raised are violent. The mouths we fed speak hatred. The minds we nourished think violence. The children we comforted and loved grow up to be just like their great-grandfathers.

How can we call ourselves human when we do nothing?

How can we call ourselves human as trans kids are ostracized, told they don't belong in their own schools?

How can we call ourselves human when we try to erase the stories of people whose lives and experiences are different from our own? When we demand every other person fit inside an ever-changing box that only we control?

How can we call ourselves human when disabled, people are left for dead?

How can we call ourselves human while leaving sisters with the rubbish?

Photo by TMS Sam: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-photo-of-man-with-backpack-standing-in-seashore-during-golden-hour-848573/

How can we call ourselves human when the mere image of someone on television who doesn't look like us sends us into a rage?

How can we call ourselves human when we are raising mass murderers, pedophiles, and rapists?

How can we call ourselves human while we allow children to starve? While we accept that people with no desire to be there must sleep on the street, in the dead of winter, with no shelter and no heat?

How can we call ourselves human as we pay for the bombs that fall on Gaza?

How can we call ourselves human when the gadgets we desire are built by enslaved children?

How can we call ourselves human when simply to be around us is a threat to the life and land around us?