You Want Reality? Here’s Reality.

They say its a “celebration.” A reality show where immigrants compete for citizenship. Twelve people. Twelve stories. One prize: a nation that never wanted them in the first place.

You want reality? Here’s reality: Reality is a mother in a detention center, not knowing if her child was deported without her. Reality is the silence of an empty room after ICE knocks at your door. Reality is being told you’re illegal on stolen land. Reality is watching your humanity get edited into “good T.V.” Reality is a nation built on stolen bodies and stolen land still trying to act like it gets to decide who gets to stay. Reality is communities surviving systems that were designed to break them. Reality is rage. Reality is resilience. Reality is not a prize to be worn in front of a green screen.

This isn’t celebration. This is mockery wrapped in production value.

They keep saying “it’s just a show.” But the camps are real. The deportations are real. The deaths are real. So is the profiling. The paperwork traps. The trauma. The constant proving you’re worthy of basic human dignity. And now they want to televise the performance? what’s next citizenship by audience vote?

This is the logical next step in a country where pain is monetized. Where outrage is fuel. Where marginalized people are asked to smile for the camera while climbing system designed to erase them.

You want a “competition”? Try surviving colonization, capitalism, generational poverty, war, and bureaucratic cruelty- then being told to make it entertaining.

I’m not an immigrant but I see what is being done. I won’t pretend it’s normal. I won’t call exploitation a celebration.

Because It’s all connected. This isn’t just about immigration. It’s about race. Class. Power. Narrative. It’s the same script they hand out when people bring up racial justice: “But black-on-black crime?” As if statistics are more important than history. As if deflection is a substitute for accountability. It’s all distraction. ALL redirection. All smokescreen.

I watched a story- one that probably won’t trend, won’t get a show, won’t be turned into a docuseries. A black father arrested after the death of his 8-month-old daughter. The doctor claimed assualt. Claimed murder. But the autopsy showed she died of accidental suffogation. They were co-sleeping and he held her too tightly in his sleep. The charges were dropped.

But you don’t get to drop what that did to him. You don’t get to erase the weight of being seen as guilty before a single fact is examined. And I can’t help but ask- How many innocent people are sitting in jail cells right now because of racism dressed up as “professional opinion”? How many families torn apart because someone made a snap judgement based on skin, not truth?

That’s reality. Not the version with lighting crews and choreographed challenges. The one that never airs.