Black People, Wake Up… Some of You Still Want to Be American, Even as America Kills Us
- Fred Chavis
- Oct 2
- 6 min read
A Manifesto of Clarity and Fire from The Liberation Movement
I. The Warning to the Conflicted
Some of you are still conflicted in your Blackness and it shows.
It shows in your silence when white men slaughter us and the headlines speak only of their “troubled minds.” It shows in your hesitation to name white supremacy for what it is.
It shows in the way you cling to the myth of belonging, in the way you wrap yourself in the stars and stripes of a nation that has always used that flag to choke the breath from our bodies.
We speak now not to shame you, but to awaken you. This is not the time for confusion.
This is not the hour for illusions.
Every second we remain conflicted is another second they consolidate power, another second they sharpen their tools of violence, another second they remind us that America does not love us and it never has.
And yet… some of you still want to be American, even as America kills us.
II. America Is a State of Violence. It Always Has Been
This nation was not built on democracy. It was built on blood, soaked into soil stolen from Indigenous nations.
Fertilized with the bodies of Africans chained in the hulls of slave ships, enforced by the rope and the rifle of white terror.
America is not broken. America is working exactly as designed.
They call it the land of the free, but the first thing they did with “freedom” was to write laws that made us property.
They call it a nation of laws, but those laws once demanded that human beings be returned to bondage.
They call it justice, but their justice has always been the same: Indigenous genocide. Black enslavement. Colonial plunder. Police execution. Mass incarceration.
This state has never stopped killing us; it has only changed the language it uses to justify the slaughter.
From “manifest destiny” to “law and order.” From “three-fifths” to “superpredator.” From “slave patrol” to “qualified immunity.” It is the same beast in different clothing.
And today, the mask slips again.
Fascism is no longer creeping. It is marching openly through the halls of power.
Presidents sign executive orders to criminalize dissent.
Governors ban Black history from classrooms.
Armed white militias train in the open while Black activists are labeled extremists.
George Jackson warned us that fascism would come wrapped in the American flag, and here it is.
III. The Lie of Belonging & Why It Destroys Us
They told us that if we just worked harder, we’d be accepted.
If we dressed right, spoke right, prayed right, they’d let us in.
But the house we are trying to enter was built on our bones. It was never meant to shelter us.
Too many of us cling to the illusion that we are “American” too, as if citizenship could erase centuries of chains. We wave their flag while they wave their rifles.
We fight for their wars while they wage war on us.
We send our children to their schools to be miseducated, to be taught to hate their own Blackness. Then we wonder why they grow up conflicted too.
Across this nation, they are not just miseducating our children; they are erasing them.
They rewrite slavery as “involuntary relocation.”
They ban the words of Malcolm X and Angela Davis.
They strip Black history from classrooms because a people without memory cannot resist.
That is why we must teach our children ourselves.
This is not belonging. This is submission. This is psychological warfare.
IV. The Humanization of White Terror, the Criminalization of Black Life
A white man can walk into a church, slaughter nine of our elders in prayer, and be taken to Burger King before his arrest.
Another can shoot up a grocery store in Buffalo and live to see trial.
A teenager can cross state lines with a rifle and be hailed as a “patriot” after murdering protestors.
But a 12-year-old Black boy with a toy gun is shot dead in less than two seconds.
A Black woman sleeping in her bed is executed without warning.
A Black man selling loose cigarettes is strangled while crying, “I can’t breathe.”
Do you see the pattern? Do you see the truth?
Their violence is always excused. Our very existence is always on trial.
This is the function of a white supremacist state: to normalize white terror and criminalize Black survival.
The media does not fail to humanize white killers; it chooses to.
If they are always “mentally ill” and we are always “dangerous,” then the empire’s violence is always justified.
V. Conflicted Blackness - The Last Chain We Must Break
We cannot fight what we refuse to name.
Too many of us still will not name the enemy.
We speak of “mental illness” when we should speak of white terror.
We speak of “bad apples” when we should speak of state violence.
We call ourselves “American” when America has never called us human.
Every time we soften the truth to make white people comfortable, we dull our blade.
Every time we confuse inclusion with liberation, we betray the blood of those who died for freedom.
Conflicted Blackness is not a minor flaw; it is a weapon used against us.
It keeps us docile.
It keeps us begging for seats at tables built to enslave us. It keeps us loving a nation that never loved us back.
And until we break that chain in our minds, in our language, in our collective spirit...we will remain captive.
VI. Choose Clarity or Choose Chains
We are not Americans.
We are African people stolen from our homeland, scattered across the diaspora by violence, and still living under occupation.
“We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us.” Malcolm X
We are not asking for permission to exist.
We are declaring that our liberation will not be negotiated.
We are not here to be accepted. We are here to be free.
America is showing us who it is every single day.
In the blood spilled on its streets, in the cages filled with our people, in the policies that starve our communities, in the silence of those who think their assimilation will save them.
And so we say to the conflicted: awaken.
The time for confusion is over. The time for illusions is over.
You must decide whether you will remain chained to a dying empire or rise with your people in the liberation struggle.
We cannot build freedom while clinging to the house of our captors. We cannot fight fascism while still hoping to be accepted by it.
We cannot demand liberation while still calling ourselves American.
VII. Fascism Is Here & So Must Be Our Response
Fascism is not coming. It is already here.
It is in the executive orders that criminalize dissent.
It is in book bans that our stories, history, and culture are erased.
It is in the prisons overflowing with Black bodies. It is the police who occupy our neighborhoods like foreign armies.
The same empire that cages us here destabilizes our homelands abroad.
It sanctions African nations that reject Western control. It funds coups against leaders like Ibrahim Traoré who dare to demand sovereignty. It calls resistance “terrorism” while arming colonial powers.
This is why our struggle must be global.
The oppression we face in just about all Black cities and communities is tied to the exploitation of Congo, the control of African nations, and the genocides of oppressed people worldwide.
Our liberation must be as borderless as our suffering.
And so our response must match the scale of the threat.
It is not enough to resist. We must build.
Build our own schools where our children learn the truth.
Build our own land trusts where we grow food and freedom.
Build our own media that cannot be censored.
Build our own defense to protect our people.
Liberation will not be granted. It must be taken.
VIII. The Final Hour
History is watching.
The ancestors are watching.
The children not yet born are watching.
And when they ask what we did in the final hour of this empire:
Whether we begged for inclusion or built our own destiny.
Let them know we chose clarity over confusion. Liberation over illusion. Revolution over belonging.
We are not Americans. We are not victims.
We are the descendants of survivors & we are here to finish the work they began.
The Liberation Movement: Timeless Manifesto for a People on the Edge of Freedom
