You speak of ‘landing’ as if it were a choice, as if our ancestors stepped off a ship with a dream in their hearts and a map in their hands. No. They were dragged from the soil of their own homes, shackled in the belly of a beast, and dropped into a nightmare. That rock didn’t welcome us; it crushed us. It was the foundation of a system built to keep us beneath it, to ensure that no matter how hard we pushed, the weight of that history would keep us pinned to the bottom.

Do not mistake the victim of a collision for a passenger on the ship. We were not the ones steering the vessel; we were the cargo, and the wreckage of that ‘landing’ is still felt in every generation that has had to claw its way out from under the debris"