Dear America (Open Letter)

I am tired. I’m tired of having to defend myself every day, I’m tired of being ridiculed and insulted as I walk down the streets. Must I always prove myself to you? Why is it that New York is never a good enough answer when you ask me where I’m from? Why must there always be a deeper explanation? Am I not American enough for you? Is it too hard to accept that I can be Muslim and American at the same time? All I know is; I’ve spent all my years here going to your school, listening to your music, eating your food, yet it’s still not enough for you?

Does my hijab scare you that much? If it is too much for you, then what do you have to say about my father? Is he too black for you? Does the color of his skin make you feel uncomfortable? Does it make you feel threatened? Now why is that? If I’m not mistaken, it was you who enslaved his ancestors for hundreds of years, you who has beaten him in the streets, and you who has stripped him of his humanity, yet…you feel uncomfortable? You tell me that I cannot be American, yet my father, who has built your foundations from the ground up with his bare hands, cannot be treated with the same dignity and respect you offer our white neighbors?

I have seen the awful things you have done, I have seen the fear in the eyes of the Black bodies which you have so mercilessly violated. I’ve seen you drive bullets into the hearts of Black communities, guiltless as you rip families apart. You have no regard for those you have hurt, constantly putting the blame on the victim, saying they could have dressed differently, spoken differently, or even looked differently. At the end of the day, was that twenty dollars really worth a man’s life? Were all those bullets really necessary considering the police went to the wrong house? 

How am I supposed to explain this to my sister, who hears these conversations every day? How am I supposed to explain racism to a five-year-old? How do I tell her that these people have lost their lives because of the color of their skin? That people who look like her are born with a gun pointed point blank at them, waiting for the moment they slip up.

Will you explain it to her instead? Will you be able to tell her that she has to live in fear because you are too stubborn to admit that you are doing something wrong? If that’s not a conversation you’re willing to have, then I think it’s time for you to change. Change so that we can all live better lives, change so that people don’t have to live in fear, change so we can end the humiliating and painful cycle we have been living in.

Make change so that the generations after us don’t struggle.

Make change so that the generations before us are proud.

Make change so that our generation can live.

Sincerely,

An American

Farida Moustafa is currently a rising senior in high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was part of a select group of young designers in a program called Innovators for Purpose, hired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)