Why Don’t You Go Back To Your Own Country? An Honest Answer

Dear Racist Roy*,

Thank you for suggesting that I go back to my own country of Africa. I would sincerely love to but I have a couple of issues with that. First of all, Africa is not a country; Africa is a continent. Also, I wouldn’t know where to go in Africa because your ancestors kidnapped my ancestors and broke apart my family to the point that I have no idea what region in Africa I’m from. But thanks for the suggestion.

On top of that, I was born here. Granted my parents were not born here but they also came here at a very young age and built a life here. Do you think that it’s fair to ask them to leave to go back to a country that they have not associated with for 50 years? Do you think it’s fair for me to go to Haiti and try to learn a language I haven’t spoken with any sort of fluency since I was 4 years old? How would you feel if I went to Ancestry.com and found out what non-English speaking country your great-great-grandparents were from and I asked you to leave your house and all your belongings behind and go back there? I hope you’re not from a country with a Finno-Ugric language because considering English is Indo-European, it’ll be a tough linguistic transition for you. But you probably don’t even know the difference between those two language groups, do you?

Also, I know you think I shouldn’t be here in your country taking your money but your ancestors raped and pillaged my homeland, stole all of our valuable resources and brought it back to your country. So I kind of have to be here now to make any sort of money, or rather to make the money that is ancestrally mine BACK from you. This is a product of colonialism. Do you know what colonialism is? This happened because your ancestors decided that you had a right to own the entire world and not care about anyone else’s humanity. All this despite claiming to be God-fearing all-loving Christians. And they when your ancestors realized their hypocrisy, they arbitrarily drew up boundaries and created untold high amounts of animosity between ethnic groups before washing their hands of the problem after lining their profits with our ancestors’ wealth. Oh, and on top of all of that, your ancestors then drew up lopsided and unequal trade policies to benefit themselves that still unwittingly benefit you today.

So in sum, I can’t leave until I get what I’m owed. But I really appreciate your poorly thought question and I ask you this: Why don’t you go back to living under a bridge?

XOXO

Calvin S. Cato

*Name is not real, but seriously does it matter?