Dear White America: This Is Why It’s About Race…

Danez Smith: Dear White America,

I’ve left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system that revolves too near a black hole. I’ve left a patch of dirt in my place and many of you won’t know the difference, giving my name, if it makes you feel better while you run your hands through its soiled scalp.

I’ve left in search of a new God. I do not trust the God you have given us. My grandmother’s hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses each time the blood fat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir. Take your God back. Though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent.

I want the fate of Lazarus for Renisha, I want Chucky, Bo, Mo, Trah, Shah, and Islah and Trayvon risen 3 days after their entombing, their ghosts re-gifted flesh and blood, their flesh and blood re-gifted their children.

I have left Earth. I am equal parts sick of your “go back to Africa”s as I am your “I just don’t see races.” Neither did the poplar tree.

We did not build your boats, though we did leave a trail of kin to guide us home. We did not build your prisons, though we did, and we filled them too. We did not ask to be part of your America, though are we not America, her bones brittle and dragging a ripped gown through Oakland?

I will not stand your ground. I am sick of calling this recklessness the law.

Each night I count my brothers and, in the morning, when some did not survive to be counted, I count the holes they leave your master. Magic trick, America. Now he’s breathing, now he don’t. Abracadaver, white bread voodoo. Your rope-burned hands, tired of the noose, and hand my cousin a pistol to do your work.

I tried, white people. I tried to love you all, but you spent my brother’s funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. You took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after boy after sweet boy and asked, “Why does it always have to be about race?” Because you made it that way.

Put an asterisk next to my sister’s gorgeous face, called her pretty for a black girl, because black girls go missing without a whisper of where, because there are no Amber Alerts for the amber-skinned girls, because Jordan boomed, because Emmett whistled, because Huey P spoke it, because Martin preached it, because black boys have always been too loud to live, because it’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my aunts’ and my uncles’ time, my sisters’ and my brothers’ time, how much time do you want for your progress?

I have left Earth and I won’t stop ’til I find a place where my kin can be safe, until black people ain’t but people the same color as the good wet earth, until that means something.

Until then, I bid you well, I bid you war, I bid you our lives to gamble with no more. I have left Earth, and I am touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you, giving the stars their right names in this new testament, this new story you cannot see or ruin this, if only this one is ours.