Vic Mensa: Don't Ask Me to Love America When It Doesn't Love Me

In this op-ed, Vic Mensa explains why he isn't celebrating the Fourth of July — or a country that disenfranchises millions of people every day by design.

To be an American is bittersweet.

Like being born to a family who doesn’t accept you, who wants to change you and often hurts you.

You owe them your existence but not your respect.

To be an American is to be indoctrinated with racism, violence, capitalism and manifest destiny, the principles upon which the land of the free was founded. We are purposefully miseducated as children and told to put blind faith in our country — sold to us as “patriotism” — that we may not open our eyes to the ugly truths of this nation. The facts behind Thanksgiving, chattel slavery, the civil war, internment camps, mass incarceration, and even the national anthem are all sanitized for over-the-counter consumption, available in chewable vitamin form at a drugstore near you. Anything to keep the profit machine running, including murder and terrorism, America’s #1 export.

This 4th of July is particularly challenging for many, as we have been forced to face the country music (no diss to Willie Nelson) that is the soundtrack to the Confederate flag-waving America worlds away from our big city bubbles. The America I grew up in — multicultural, progressive, artistic and inclusive — is not accurately represented by the shrinking but powerful sector of the population that prefers complete control to democracy.

Gil Scott Heron once said, “home is where the hatred is.” I think that’s a razor-sharp statement about being black in America. Often when we speak about being slaughtered by police or enslaved for the profit of privatized prisons or refuse to kneel for a song about our destruction we are told, “If you don’t love America then leave! Go back to the jungles of Africa.”

Obviously, that arrogance is just another tentacle of the pervasive white supremacy that exists in all things American, but I think it is worth noting that however imperfect of a home this country may be, it’s the only one we’ve got. Our people put blood, sweat, and tears into this soil. Recognizing that it’s a burial ground of our hardships doesn’t make us any less worthy to do our rain dance here, in hopes that we may one day wash the stains of the star-strangled banner.

I don’t love America; I love people and places in America. How could I truly love an entity that views me as subhuman, that wrote in its constitution for me to be considered three-fifths of a person? I’m not Jesus; I won’t turn the other cheek to the racists that still burn crosses and bomb churches, nor the ones that preach diversity then throw away the key on a rigged third strike.

But I love Chicago summers on Lake Michigan, Philly cheesesteaks on South Street, falling in love in Brooklyn, street fairs in Asheville, North Carolina. I love putting in work for the city that raised me with my foundation SaveMoneySaveLife, and putting resources into the streets of Chicago.

I don’t celebrate the 4th of July — I celebrate the people I’m building with, so that we can finally have a seat at our table that we make together.

Vic Mensa is an artist and activist. His album, The Autobiography, is available on all music platforms. To get involved with his SaveMoneySaveLife organization, click here.

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