"Who am I to Judge America the Land of the Free?"

"Who am I to Judge America the Land of the Free?"

Who am I to judge America and its Founding Fathers, 

its Star-Spangled Banner or National Anthem?

Who am I to judge America and its wonderful claim, 

of being the greatest country, the world has ever seen?

Who am I to judge America and its brutal enslavement 

of hundreds of thousands of African men?

Who am I to judge America, and its mass incarceration, 

school-to-prison pipeline or racial segregation?

Who am I to judge America and its racial profiling, 

or racist police and blue-code-of-silence?

Who am I to judge America and its police brutality, 

its history of lynching or KKK?

Who am I to judge American and its Tuskegee Experiment, 

or its Jim Crow laws that said "whites only" sit?

Who am I to judge American and its Presidential White House 

that was built by black men whose votes didn’t count?

Who am I to judge America and its confederate flag 

or its “All Live Matter” movement....until a brother is dead?

From Emmett Louis Till to Rodney Glen King, 

you think if they mattered the system would change.

From Laquan McDonald and all 16 shots, 

America the beautiful...a dream I think not.

From Sandra Annette Bland and Michael Brown Jr. 

their lives cut too short for no apparent reason.

From Trayvon Martin and Alton Sterling, 

the justice they got put us all back in chains.

From Tamir Elijah Rice, and of course Freddie Gray 

to the shouts that rang out when we marched in their names.

From Eric Garner, to his cry “I can’t breathe!”, 

they're killing us all or so it would seem.

Yet they criticize me, for not standing up, 

and acknowledging my love and patriotism.

But who am I, a black man, to judge all these things, 

for the love of my country... I’m taking a knee.