I’m Grateful To Be American, Because I Could Have Not Been

My parents risked it all so I could enjoy Possibility.

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Warning: contains a graphic description.

I was born in the Bronx, New York, on October 16, 1990.

My parents moved to America in the 80s from Ghana.

In 2021, my family and I visited Ghana. It was my third time, and my first time as an adult.

The first two times were when I was a kid — too young to process what I saw.

This time was different. I wanted to understand where my parents came from, and the life I could have had.

What I Saw in Ghana

While there, I had an idea.

I wanted to see a slave castle — where the transatlantic slave trade started.

Not exactly part of a relaxing getaway, but, I sensed, an important one.

We took a taxi there. I sat shotgun, with my mom and sister in the back.

As our driver took us down a long dirt path, I saw a pile of clothes and a mass of something I couldn’t identify.

Ten seconds and a few dozen feet closer, I saw it clearly.

It was the body of a dead woman, on the right side of the road.

A few feet to the left of that, there was another mass.

By then, I could see it clearly, but didn’t comprehend what it was.

A few minutes later, I comprehended.

It was the body of a dead baby.

No one in the car said anything. I wasn’t even sure if anyone noticed.

The driver must have, but perhaps my sister and mother didn’t.

I think I kept quiet because I didn’t want them to notice.

It was only years later that I brought it up. My mom told me that she did see it, but didn’t say anything to me for the same reason I didn’t say anything to her.

She confirmed what I saw — a dead pregnant woman and the remains of her unborn child.

She elaborated: Some people in the region believe that sacrificing a pregnant woman and her unborn child in a ritual, using their remains as a source of life force, can bring the person who performs it wealth or power.

I didn’t know this when I first witnessed that atrocity. But I did know one thing.

I was so grateful to my parents for the sacrifices they made so I could be born in America.

All cultures and countries have profound beauty and ugliness in them.

I remember that atrocity.

But I also remember a conversation with a cab driver where I asked him what he was proudest of as a Ghanaian, and he said, “hospitality.”

I remember walking by a Ghanaian wedding and seeing a rainbow of bright, beautiful dresses on a gorgeous estate.

I remember going to my grandma’s 90th birthday, and seeing the vast array of people who came to honor her, and a lifetime of her love.

There is beauty to every culture.

Possibility

But there’s a particular beauty to American culture for which I am singularly grateful, and which I cherish above all others.

It’s the beauty of two African immigrants being able to come to America near the bottom of the economic ladder, instill in their son a sense of possibility, responsibility, and agency, and watch him graduate from Harvard decades later.

The beauty of watching my mom and dad work hard every single day to earn money, save it, and move us out of the Bronx and into a nice home in the suburbs ten years later.

Of seeing my parents totally commit to raising us as Americans — learning American customs, embodying American values.

Do your best, you can do it, we believe in you.

They never complained — not about discrimination, lack of opportunity, or difficulty.

They focused on what they could do.

If they struggled, they never let me see it.

My dad would regularly remind me with total certainty: “No one is better than you.”

“Freedom” is the word that people associate with America.

But as I write this, a related word rings richer: Possibility.

I am so grateful that my parents risked it all so that I can enjoy Possibility.

I Can’t Give Up on America

From October 2024, when I went to a Trump and a Kamala rally on the same day

America is going through a difficult moment right now.

We used to fight problems, now we fight each other.

My home of the last 12 years, Los Angeles, is in decline.

Our discourse is in disarray.

But as I sit here at my desk, looking at the breathtaking vistas of Medellín, Colombia, I just can’t give up on America.

I’ve been in Colombia for two months and plan on being here for several more.

I needed the change of scenery to heal my dysregulated nervous system, and a mental reset from the life of compulsive achievement I’ve been living. I’d also like to find love.

But when people ask me if I’ll ever go back to America, I can’t imagine saying anything except “yes.”

Not because America is home. It’s more than just home. Home is intimate, domestic, personal.

America is bigger than that.

It’s the scion of an ingenious insight — that all men are created equal — that has blossomed into an enduring beacon of inspiration for the world.

The strife of this moment in our evolution may cloud that beacon’s light, but it is still there.

The idea of America is for more than Americans.

It is for humanity.

It is a blazing standard of the audacity of the human spirit laid out as an example for all of humanity to see.

We landed on the moon from here.

We will land on Mars from here.

We will populate the solar system from here.

And though that flag may be tattered from being whipped by winds of change, its stripes and stars are still there, clear for all to see.

The angry fire of division that we are embroiled in is born from the bright embers of passion that founded this country and have never dimmed.

We fight each other because we care.

Because we think America is something worth fighting over, though our ideas of what it should be differ.

And that is the horizon, replete with 50 stars, behind the cloud of confusion that besets this great nation.

But clouds are temporary.

These too shall pass.

We will make it through this moment.

We will rise above the clouds.

And we will see that the sky is still there.

Happy birthday, America.