Throughout my life, I've been no stranger to those who bear false witness. To date, I have been accused of: thievery, trespassing, fraud, incest, homosexuality, harassment, and rape, to name a few of them. I consider it only a matter of time before I'm accused of murder as well. And yet, no one has ever bothered to ask the obvious questions surrounding these and other allegations: if I'm guilty of them, then why am I not in prison? Why have I never been formally arrested, charged, or prosecuted for any of these alleged crimes? There are countless people of color who have been locked up for the rest of their lives for so much as stealing a loaf of bread. How is it that I could escape justice when there are so many rumors surrounding my culpability?
In my case, the simplest answer is the correct one: that I'm innocent of all of the allegations that have been thrown at me over the years. The truth has a tendency to come out in a court of law, which my detractors are intelligent enough to understand, and so they can only clandestinely snipe at my reputation from afar.
Thankfully, none of it has ever stuck. But there are many like me who have not been nearly as fortunate. For the mere crime of speaking their minds, and sharing their thoughts with the world, they have been locked away in prisons and mental institutions indefinitely on trumped up charges, with little to no hope of freedom.
The question still lingers though: if we are truly innocent, then why are people like me hated so much? I can only really speak for myself when I say that, in my case, my mere existence is controversial. There are many people who have convinced themselves in their hearts that members of my ethnicity cannot be intelligent, nor beautiful, nor of pleasant character. And rather than admit to being wrong when faced with overwhelming facts to the contrary, they instead seek to destroy all such evidence. That means destroying the lives of people like me, as a prelude to eliminating us entirely from this world. And they will seek to do so by any means, using subterfuge when necessary, and overt hostility whenever possible.
I have little doubt that they will eventually succeed. One can only make so many enemies in this world before it leads to one's untimely demise, even if one has done next to nothing to evoke such enmity.
But at least for now, I feel at peace with that fact. No one lives forever in this world, and if given the choice, I would rather die with little to no blood on my hands, than to barter away my moral standing in exchange for a few extra years scrounging about for those last gasps of life.
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