This is America - Donald Glover

This is America.By Donald GloverWritten by Shante Schuler Speaks in a visual montage of no expectation. I have often wondered how the life of a black man differs from that of a black woman, at the essence of the video the images led me back to just being black. This video presented the ebb and flow of life. In the background, you have this noise that exasperates the violence. Only to be drowned out by the meaning of your own life. Some days you want to live and fully accept that your heart is still beating. You want to take in every moment of happiness and sunshine that you can, however, in the background, you remember that you have a son, in the background I remember that he is black. I remember those men that did not survive in the streets of my own neighborhood and how I wanted to be different and move away from the situation. I remember how so many people try to tell me where to live because of the economic or noneconomic value as if I were wrong to make any decision of my own. Yet, I too am still in America with a beating heart. I want to enjoy these days in the sun and the life that can be with my son, however in the background is the violence. I worked hard to move away from it all, and some people prefer I go back. This is my America. The place where I am often misunderstood but never fully audible. Why take my voice and move it to your beat when I am perfectly fine with being my own drummer? This is my America where I strain to relate to with unknown knowledge that I find in my core of all to be thought of as real. In my America, I cry before I go to work for the soldiers that have come before me. For those dreams that were lost and unreachable. When I arrive to see my children’s faces I want and need them to know that they are the beauty and the sunshine of this life that is presented before me. They make mistakes and I care. They create, laughter, tears, and problems and solutions. They too are America. They will build memories that are unable to be imagined. More images of a visual montage that shows us what America has been. So we now have to change it.