To whom it will concern, 

I am not going to wait for you to catch up with reality so don’t expect me to sugar coat anything. Your feelings are not mine to protect.  

This place fucking sucks. I am going to do everything in my power to tear down your delusional world of activism. You claim to be an ally, but guess what, I don’t claim you. If all you want to do is to “help make the world a better place,” why the fuck do you get offensive when I point out that your approach is problematic.

Your fucking way of life is built on the backs of my ancestors. Till date their descendants have no option, but to do the same. If you really believed I was innocent, why did you not stand up during my fucking interrogation? 

No matter what happens, my people always end up experiencing the worst of it. No matter how hard I work to be a model citizen, I am still defined by the stereotypes surrounding my race. Do not tell me that deconstructing the idea of race will fix the problem because it will not.  

You report me for not doing my job and breaking regulations. I do my fucking job and it bothers you that I do it well.  

If the roles were reversed, I will do unto you what your ancestors did unto mine and I do not want to hear you weep about the unfairness of my hope for revenge. Yes, you weren’t the ones who enslaved my ancestors, but you are the one who keep benefitting from that process of dehumanizing my ancestors. I see no fault in seeking that same outcome for my people.  

I have only been in this country for four years and I cannot begin to imagine the trauma that African Americans born into this country have experienced all because of the color of their skin. I guess I should have been prepared when I realized that my identity changed from being a Ghanaian to being black. The moment I set foot in this country, I was reduced to just the color of my skin.

I am very well aware that I have not given any context to everything I have said so far and no, I will not explain what happened. You have two options.

The first is that you take in what was said, think about it, learn from it, and make the conscious effort to actually help make this country a mentally healthy place to live. If you are not doing that, then you are probably reading this and creating stories that would most likely belittle the traumatic experiences that many African Americans experience just because of skin color. 

You know what’s funny? Even though my frustration is valid, I always end up feeling as if I was wrong for speaking up, for standing out, and for fucking existing.  

With no regrets,  

Widad Ibrahim