Keep Looking

By Jada Asamoah, 2026 Erinda Sheno Memorial Prize Honorable Mention

Look at the news.

I’m serious. I know you looked yesterday. I know you looked this morning. Look again.

There’s something new. (Let me tell you a secret.)

History is the myth of forward progress. Our newly banned textbooks serve as snapshots of particularly prejudiced time periods. Revolution to Independence. Slavery to Emancipation. Manifesting Destiny to begrudging land compensation.

We are told that history is generally linear—yes, there are ups and downs, the occasional backslide into fascism. Yes, there are true, sudden and terrifying peaks of hatred that occur once or twice a decade, a century, but we are better than what we were. History books, like most great epics, have a tidy character arc: rising action, climax and fall. But always a resolution. For the global superpower, always a pretty, red, white, and blue resolution.

Then, an insurrection. A shooting, a war, an uncaring government. We are blinded by atrocity because our books fool us into thinking that we’re equal yet. The idea that we went from archaic to civilized is disingenuous to our past and present selves. Is it hard to believe that there’s no political karma beyond what you can bribe or sell? There is no invisible judge on the Senate floor awarding Democrats morality points because they conceded to another outrageous policy. We do not win a filibuster by letting the issue of ‘Basic Human Rights’ drop for fear of irreparably changing the current system. But When They Go Low We Go High! right?

Look at the news. There is no cosmic justice. Things don’t work that way.

And yet.

There’s a bit of a myth about human life expectancies in the past. More of a misunderstanding really: In the 18th century, the agreed upon range was 35-40. Horrendously low—and it was brought down by scores of dead infants who never made it out of the womb, by mothers who laid on the childbed and never got up. And dysentery.

It’s not like people in their thirties were on death's door—once a person got to 20, they would, in all likelihood, make it to 60. That is, a 20-year old was still a 20-year old 200 years ago—young, brilliant, and full of life. Why do we idolize them as revolutionaries? What is the difference between them and us?

There’s an emptiness in apathy that’s appealing. Believe me, I know. In 2016 I could delude myself into thinking that he won because of a centuries too old electoral college. But the popular vote? The popular vote. That man is popular in a 21st century democracy. What’s the point in fighting if over half of the voters in “the greatest nation on Earth” voted for a caricature? (When will they get what they voted for?)

Unfortunately, that omnipresent, oppositionary they CANNOT get what they voted for. Like it or not, ‘us’ and ‘them’ and ‘every voting age American’ are on the same team. We are the (keyword) United States of America, and I don’t remember secession working out too well. Are you familiar with our American dream? Pulling yourself up from your own bootstraps? It’s quite literally satire—Its origins come from a 19th century physics book: “How can a man pull himself up from his own bootstraps?” He doesn’t. You can’t. America’s motto is impossible, unless you’re incredibly lucky or have an incredibly wealthy benefactor to lend you flying boots. A lot of us have beaten the odds. A few are born with flying boots. They’ll tuck them away and show you how high they’ve climbed, how quick they’ve done it. They skew the average. Don’t let them fool you.

Despite everything, Americans think there’s some kind of safeguard against evil. We’re not all speaking German. But we might’ve been. The bomb didn’t go off. But it could’ve. We are in a timeline where some people have some liberty. There have been millions of Axes of Evils, and in millions of worlds they won. In this one, in so many places, they won. But not here, not quite, because we were blessed with a generation of fighters. They were the justice. We can be the justice. We are the antidote for apathy, because nothing will happen if we don’t do it.

You don’t gain ground you don’t fight for. It doesn’t look the same every time. You fight because you can’t afford to lose. You fight because you can’t keep losing. You fight because it’s 1775, and 1789 and 1791, 1939, 1957, it’s 2025 and democracies fall to apathy like dictators to revolutionaries. Detachment and progress do not mix. They can’t. And Fannie Lou is sick and tired of me quoting her.

So cash in your morality points and turn up the radio. Look at the news. Please, keep looking.