[Un]Seen by Kyla Nano (17, California)*

I will keep inking the paper that has been presented before me until I have nothing to extract, until I have nothing. But there is everything to write, everything to know, and beyond that is what is yet to befall upon many of us in the midst of this pandemic. The deeply-rooted issue has regressed for the umpteenth time and its reactions have surpassed its limit, its patience, to the nth degree. History is repeating itself in the open, as a maddeningly viralized dimension of America has resurfaced. This year is a year we did not ask for. This year is a retelling of what should remain in the past, but has progressed and persevered to the point that society is actually moving backward. This year is an affirmation of how pronounced the problem is, and many have failed to acknowledge it actively. ​

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Let’s start with one gripping belief. 

"Racism does not exist any longer" — the belief that it does not linger, it dissipated long before the new age was born and the legislation has made this a possibility. Believing everyone, disregarding ethnicity or race or gender, in the United States has gained a chance to win the competition is a sort of naivety that should be skinned alive, burned at the stake, and thrown. To think that there is no such concept of inequality is to disqualify that oppression, albeit subtle, exists in the modern era. It is a dangerous mentality normalized and preached, thereby influencing a population to consider it true; this is the “common” sense the privileged will be obliged to believe in. There are carefully-crafted “strategies” interlaced into sentences and pieces that have suggested racial offenses, being conveyed in the most euphemizing fashion. The emotional frustration that is inevitably appended to those sugarly coated sentiments, is a consequence these “well-meaning” promoters fail to acknowledge, to empathize. It is a traumatizing matter that these people are making light of, by reason of their lack of experience or witnesses to these conflicts; while engaging in a debate regarding the level of a victim’s anger, how they should control their composure and wrath, they have addressed only one emphasized murder when they should have taken into account the millions beforehand, the resulting stories and cultures that required fostering and rekindling from the belittling remarks or hostilities or actions. The minorities being suppressed into silence has conjured a new definition of “peace” to the majority. While small corners of the nation are still struggling to hoist themselves up, the entire institution overlooks upon it, the way history textbooks do not detail the entire story or the way they centralize merely one perspective, one bias. Chapters of bloodshed of the downtrodden, of the disadvantaged, remain small, wedged into a small storage in their minds, which will eventually explode from its massive amounts. The immense, excessive aggression minorities and a few majority acted upon recently is the culmination of what has happened before, and shouldn’t be seen in isolation. This desensitizing belief has the ultimate power to guide an unavoidable execution of protest and heavy contempt. 
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The divide amplifies when one fails to realize what they did wrong. The stupendous disinclination to open their eyes coupled with the audacity to insist that “everyone has an equal opportunity to win the race” has emotionally wrung those who’ve lived the battle. Unrest is exacerbated with the oral expressions on several platforms — and this is another problem. This series of violence has to abate, but it cannot be quelled or lulled to rest with a menacingly offensive threat to assert control, to handcuff those who have been fighting for their rights, to police each action with a misconstrued judgement. To add salt to the freshly reopened wound perpetuates the divide, further constructing intransigence in each group. It is downright unfair and dehumanizing when you only look at one story, justify it, and disqualify the other as if it was an opinion. It adds to the anxiety, becoming the most prominent result received from the toll of the pandemic, plaguing everyone with fear and a loss of self-control. Leading to the abusive use of authority and “feminism,” the emotions can establish toxicity within the environment, where children will grow to learn and exhibit a colonial mentality corresponding to what they’ve heard, what they’ve witnessed, and what they’ll know later on. Where children will begin questioning their own identity, and forced to mold themselves into someone the majority will like. They will want to peel their skin off, cede their land to their superiors to erase the whipped lashes psychologically produced on their backside, cut their own tongue in exchange for a whiter sound. They will try to march away from their heritage that marks them indefinitely, with no tonic to enthuse them, as they remain victims of motivated blindness. Other children will remain flexible in times of adversity and — with their resilience — use it as a purpose to enhance themselves and increase their self-efficacy. Simultaneously, they will at times feel insecure, drawing eyes behind their heads that therefore reflects their paranoia. They will think that their color kills, when this mentality is not the foundation they should see cemented for their childhood to bear witness.

Along with motivated blindness comes forth a faulty reasoning, completely soundless. Those who do not understand will present a simple gist, rather than the convoluted perceptions of the story, of historical contexts, to justify their stances. To those people I will regale the worthy yarn of the Avatar, The Last Airbender — which appears as a mere cartoon and yet its collection of episodes captured the imbalance and prejudice locked here today. For these people, others have to explain with the usage of an easy analogy that it sickens me. Cartoons and multiple fictions, animated or not, will perhaps do the ignorant justice by somehow explaining to them the psychology of everyone going through oppression. In this case, the Fire nation is completely real; its combats are no joke, nor is it a fictional work that fabricates merely to an audience of kids, for even the simplest shows animated such as this teach the narrow-minded more than anything. It is one of the most accurate documentaries that portrays what America is like to others, how nations are divided, never constructed on balance, never peaceful, always ongoing with turmoil that pushes back and forth, back and forth. 

No one knows how to end this, yet, writers already have swords at their ready, and have the full capacity to write essays, poems, books, and various forms of writings that will unconditionally expound the national sentiment and the downright happenings that surround everyone at this moment. In hours between the end of short days and the beginning of longer nights, which stretches, there is a musing that beckons them to answer, compels them to reveal the narrative rather than hide it. While they cannot protest upon concrete, they are certainly the ones with the biggest projects, later unveiled and published, later to be seen by many, enough that they will see. That they will hear. The entire initiative to push for utter equity will amass, coupled with the physical revolts — all of which will provoke the majority to think, for this year is the year they did not ask for; the year they were afraid that their suppressed counterparts stopped marooning in the past and shouted that there will be no retelling; the year that affirms how pronounced the problem is, as they will regret the moment they have not actively recognized it.