By ONYEMA NKWOCHA
Manteca High freshman
It was said on the news the other day (April 24, 2010) by CNN that a citizen was lying senseless on the ground in the streets of Ney York City dying and I thought to myself; well nobody was probably around at the time. The man’s name was revealed to be Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax, a Guatemalan homeless immigrant who came to the rescue of a woman being attacked on the 144th street at the 88th Road in Jamaica, Queens, N.Y. The story went on later to explain that a minimum of 10 people passed by the dying man not lending a hand, but taking pictures as if the man’s death was some kind of expedition. Though their phones had been brought out nobody cared to call 9-1-1 for the man, nobody cared to ask if he was ok, they literally walked all over him and passed him by as if his life was posted on one of those billboards that you pass by too quickly to read or even take note of. Though he was a citizen of the United States, and though he was human, and though we all walk on this shared land that looked a lot like America, we failed to find the love, leaving us to ask “What’s wrong with America?” and “What’s wrong with the world?” as said in the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Where is the Love.”
The land where we stand looks like a place that once was America; where people cherished what man hadn’t made. Where there was no abhorrence and time was spent on family. But because we are blinded by the brightness of evolution, we fall short from family and are forced to only feel the vibrations tickle our senses as we pave through life. And instead of holding up chaste white flags to surrender we tap battered white sticks to showboat our adaptation, and we complain at the result of mans creation but forget the relation we have to it. We say sorry at hopes to compensate for our foolish mistakes though thank you’s never follow. Therefore, we retaliate thinking that revenge will conjure up defeat. And before we knew it we were nothing like what America use to be, as if we’ve forgotten our roots or cut down the tree of humanity all together.
Though there will always be reoccurrences of past actions we try to ignite an inflammatory substance, or in simpler terms; do what can’t be done, at hopes to change what we’ve become. But all we do is point the finger at someone else, putting the load on their shoulders, killing the little unitization we have left, as if we are taking humanity off life support. Then, the sense becomes uncommon and we stand united at our unplanned division because of the lack of understanding that led us away from unity.
We hide behind greed, money, lust, temporary love, envy, hate, jealously, curiosity, and demonstrate madness and think these are our true colors but that’s exactly how anger works and operates. And despite the drastic fall we’ve taken, we still claim to call ourselves Americas. But its home of the free, not home of the free only if you have something to offer, or land of the brave at heart but cowardly in action. We can’t continue to suck the fairness from equality. Which only brings me to the question, if we’ve fallen so far from what America use to be, what are we now? If we can’t even live up to our own morals, what makes us think we can find this divine peace we are desperately looking for. And until we find a reason for this ongoing war, there might as well be a million dying citizens laying on the ground because though I am also at fault, the words everyone, including mine, speaks are pointless unless the people who thrive to put America back on top, take the words to heart. And from what I’ve seen, these negative images that bombard our media pollute the young minds. And if these young minds are our future, you can only help to predict what America will soon become.
