They Don't Care About Us

Several years ago, Michael Jackson released a song entitled They Don't Really Care About Us and that song really resonated with me for several reasons. As a black man with epilepsy, growing up was hard. I was subjected to various police searches at a young age during the terrorist scare brought on by nine eleven. The Democrats and Republicans rushed through a bill known as the Patriot Act in order to calm the fears of a nation stricken with grief and unsure of what was to come next. Despite how people feel about it today, the bill was overwhelming popular at the time and anyone who complained about its possible abuses was seen as a traitor or an enemy. I was never really bothered much by police before the passing of that bill, but once it was signed into law I was getting stopped while walking home from school or the store on a very frequent basis. It got so bad that I eventually refrained from walking outside altogether. I was never arrested because, well, I was not doing anything illegal, but the humiliation of constantly having your integrity called into question, even though you have broken no laws, begins to take its toll on a man after a time. You start to look at your neighbors differently. Maybe they were the ones who called the cops on you. Maybe they have some sort of grudge against you and are out to sabotage you and send you to jail. To this day, I still live in the same neighborhood, a suburb in the bay area, and I still wonder which of my neighbors called the police on me for the heinous crime of walking outside. I still do not really feel as if I am a part of this world. We have a society, but not one that I am welcome in, and I recognize that every time I turn on the news or go on social media and see someone complaining about people like me, usually a well-dressed white person who has had everything in life handed to them on a silver platter, stating that black folks need to get off welfare and get a job, as if we don't have jobs already, as if we want to be on welfare, as if we did not have hopes and dreams that simply were not fulfilled, regardless of our efforts to make those dreams a reality, as if sometimes life just does not work out the way you want it to, no matter how hard you try to make it so. I did not grow up dreaming of being on welfare for the rest of my life, but I was taught that it is okay to want to live even if things do not work out for you. Things did not work out for me. I have seizures, not because I am on drugs, which is what many think, but just because that is the card I was dealt in life. The doctors cannot even explain it. There are days I feel perfectly normal, like I can conquer the world and be the next Orson Welles and then there are days when I am so sick that I am terrified of leaving the house because I am afraid I will crack my head open and almost die at work again, which has happened on several occasions now. But you know what, I do get out of bed and I do leave the house and I do go to work most days. I am not a lazy person. I am not a freeloader and even though my finances do not show it, I have achieved a great deal in my lifetime, more than a lot of folks ever will. I have worked for world famous theatre companies, written books, published poetry, cooked exquisite cuisine, and I have raised an amazing family, and all of those things have extraordinary value, way more so than a mansion or new TV. But the truth is that most do not care about those things, and they do not care about you unless you are wealthy. That is even so for most poor folks, who you would think would empathize with your condition because they too are struggling, but no. They too have bought into this myth that you are worthless unless you are worth a fortune and vote for candidates who hate those living in poverty. They are just as careless as those with wealth, sometimes even more so. The world is a careless, heartless, uncompassionate place. Michael was right. They don't care about us Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.