America is cracking. And no matter how conditioned we’ve become to pretend otherwise, the fractures are now impossible to ignore. Political chaos, violent rhetoric, mass deportations, book bans, the rising normalization of white nationalism… everything we were warned about is already here.
But this is not new.
Empires follow a pattern.
And my ancestors have survived more of them than history books dare to name.
What we are witnessing today is not the “end of democracy” or a “moment of polarization.” What we are witnessing is a nation choking on its own unfinished history, a country that refuses to face the truth of how it was built, who it was built for, and who it has always tried to disappear.
History is not repeating itself.
History is revealing itself.
The Erasure Is Not Accidental. It Is Intentional.
From banned Black history in Southern schools, to legislation criminalizing protest, to politicians openly calling for the removal of “undesirable populations,” we are living through the most aggressive rewriting of American identity in decades.
And let’s be clear:
Most of the people being deported today are Haitians, Jamaicans, Latinx communities, Black Indigenous families; these are descendants of the original nations of this land.
Before borders.
Before colonial maps.
Before the U.S. became a name.
There were Black and Brown Native nations stretching from present-day Florida through the Caribbean, through Mexico, through what is now the American South. The forced forgetting of these lineages was deliberate, a strategy of colonization.
And that same strategy is unfolding right now, dressed up in modern policy.
A Country Built on Stolen Land Is Now Expelling Its Own Children
Look around:
- Black migrants being deported at record numbers
- Indigenous sovereignty undermined
- Black farmers losing land
- Mass surveillance of immigrant communities
- States rolling back voting rights
- Textbooks rewriting slavery as “migration for work”
- Politicians calling Indigenous people “illegals” on the land of their own ancestors
A nation built on displacement is once again displacing the very people whose blood and bones built this land.
But here is what America forgets:
We have survived the Middle Passage.
We have survived plantations and pogroms.
We have survived forced removal, broken treaties, and stolen children.
We have survived 500 years of empire.
What we are facing now is not greater than what our ancestors overcame.
But Survival Is Not the Goal Anymore
Our generation was not sent here just to endure.
We were sent here to remember.
And remembering is rebellion.
Remembering who we come from.
Remembering the original nations.
Remembering the truth beneath the lies.
Remembering the spiritual contracts our grandmothers whispered over our bones.
America fears our remembering — because a remembered people is an unstoppable people.
So What Now? What Do We Do When a Nation Is Unraveling?
We tell the truth.
We protect one another.
We stay rooted.
We listen deeply — not to the news cycle, but to the ancestors.
Because they are speaking. And they are not whispering anymore.
They are telling us:
“Do not fear the shaking. Empires fall. People rise.”
The future we’re walking toward is not idealistic. It is not naive. It is not built on optimism — but on memory, justice, and spirit.
Hope is not a feeling.
Hope is a strategy.
Hope is a weapon.
Hope is a roadmap drawn long before we arrived.
We Are the Generation Standing in the Break
America is breaking. But breaking is not always destruction — sometimes breaking is release.
We are the generation meant to build what comes after:
- A country that tells the truth
- A country that honors the people it tried to erase
- A country that remembers the original custodians of this land
- A country led by those whose ancestors survived multiple empires
We are not fighting for the restoration of an old America — that nation never existed.
We are fighting for the birth of one our ancestors dreamed but never saw.
And that is why we cannot give up.
Why we cannot be silent.
Why we cannot pretend that “everything will work out if we just vote harder.”
This is deeper than law or policy.
This is spiritual work.
Ancestral work.
Truth work.
And we were chosen for it.
Final Word
What we’re living through is not the end.
It is the unveiling.
The uncovering.
The remembering.
My ancestors survived empires.
This one is no different.
And neither are we.
Because the land remembers.
The blood remembers.
The ancestors remember.
And we — finally — are remembering too.
If this resonated with you, like, comment, and share your thoughts. I always check and reply. Also, check out my podcast, as we dive deeper into the conversations surrounding ancestry, and what we, the Afro-diaspora can do now. I’m on all streaming platforms, but you may catch the video of The Empress Addi Podcast on YouTube.
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