Poem by Charlotte Maccarone

“Environmental Racism”

This world is unjust.
It’s all just bloodlust.
People saying their country is great.
That they are the best,
And they don’t even recognize the problems churning in other countries,
Or even their own.
Or maybe people do notice.
No, we all know people notice.
They simply turn a blind eye on those being mistreated.
Turn their backs on others so that the limelight can shine on them.
We will go down in history.
Everyone says we will.
Everyone believes we will.
And we have.
What they don’t realize is that not everyone recorded in those history books
Were hero’s,
Were good.
America will go down in history,
With the colored community being beaten,
Shot at,
Choked,
And having their rights stripped away from them for the simple reason of the color of their skin.
America will go down like a mockingbird shot down out of the sky.
We will go down with pain etched into bricks simply to be thrown at our captors.
We will go down like the British in American history books;
“The bad guys”
If we don’t enforce a change.
And we haven’t even started on those in Africa or India starving and dying,
some not even bothering with masks to try and escape covid,
knowing their fates have been sealed.
I am privileged enough to be able to walk outside and not fear a gun to my head,
But that does not mean I don’t feel others pain.
Just because I was born white does not automatically make me the bad guy,
Just like being born black shouldn’t put a target on their backs.
But the world isn’t fair,
at times it’s just too much to bear.
All we can do at the moment is take what we can get,
And try to pave a better future.
Even if it takes till we die.