Why Should I Have to Forgive You?

By Anthony Habib Watkins | December 21, 2021

Why should I have to forgive you

when you took me from a land 

where I mattered?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you bound me in shackles

and dispersed me around this world?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you held me in servitude

that created wealth for you and your

descendants?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you kept me in this bondage

for two and one half centuries?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you created an amendment 

that placed me back into an act of

indentured servitude for any

infringement of a (policy) law?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you put a noose around

my neck, and I became a strange

fruit hanging from a tree?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you deny my children a 

school system equal to a school

system for your children? 

Why should I have to forgive you

when I wanted to vote I was beaten,

threatened, and killed for the right to vote?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you red lined me in where

I should live?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you amended an Amendment

that bars me from bearing arms?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you introduced heroin into 

my communities?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you bussed me to all white 

schools instead of busing your 

children to all black schools?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you began your campaign of 

the war on drugs?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you have always marginalized

or disenfranchised me?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you encourage me to get

out of poverty via entertainment

for your amusement?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you have made me out to be

the bogeyman (villainized)?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you have flooded my communities 

with cocaine?

Why should I have to forgive you

when you keep enacting policies

on top of policies that has one in 

four Black men incarcerated or on

some type of supervision release?

Why should I have to forgive you?

My caregivers told me to remember

that we all come from one man and 

one woman, who created many tribes

and nations. We are not to despise one

another, but we ought to get to know one

another.

If there is one thing the -isms of 

philosophy has shown me is the “ought”

in a person’s life is more subjective

rather than objective.

So, did my caregivers have it all wrong?

Tell me why should I have to forgive you.