Photo : Alex Wong ( Getty Images )

Dearest Bahamians,

First, as the official spokesperson representing the Greater Association of Ne’er-do-wells, Goons, Shitbags and Thieves of America (GANGSTA), a consortium of America’s worst crooks, I would like to offer my condolences and best wishes on your recovery from Hurricane Dorian. We pray that the people of the Bahamas make a swift recovery from the storm’s devastating effects.


Today I received word that a non-voting member of our board, President Donald Trump, explained his administration’s decision to deny temporary protected status to hundreds of your citizens fleeing the destruction of a natural disaster because, as he said, he didn’t want to allow “some bad people, some very bad drug dealers and some very, very bad gang members” to come into the United States.

I can assure you that his comments do not reflect the position of the vast majority of our membership. For years, we have welcomed very bad people and very very bad gang members from around the world. Ever since our European predecessors slaughtered the indigenous people of this country under the pretense of “propagating of Christian religion to suche people as yet live in darkenesse and miserable ignorance of the true knoweledge and worshippe of God,” we have consistently embraced those who espouse the principles of thuggery, no matter their race, creed or color. Honestly, we had no idea their strategy to “bring the infidels and salvages living in those parts to humane civilitie and to a setled and quiet govermente,” meant sending them directly to the hereafter.


But that’s our fault. We should’ve known. Since then, we’ve welcomed a lot of “very bad people” such as Nazis, mafioso and people who listen to polka music. In fact, in 1885 we expanded our membership to include “bitchasses,” when Bavarian authorities notified us they had banned Friederich Trump from re-entering their country after he skipped out on his military service and emigrated to the United States to search for gold.

To be fair, our members were divided over whether Bahamian criminals could meet the same levels of thuggery as American dope boys, gangstas, street niggas, crime bosses, Klansmen, cartels, pharmaceutical companies, Congressmen, Senators, major corporations, NFL owners and the not-yet-fired employees of the Trump administration. We have very high standards here at the American Academy of Gangsta Shit and we are concerned that you might not quite measure up.

According to Reuters, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s most recent assessment of worldwide drug traffickers only mentions your country once. And Nationmaster notes that U.S. Citizens use cannabis at twice the rate as the people of the Bahamas and use opiates at three times the rate of your countrymen. Americans use more cocaine than anyone else in the world and the only problem the DEA noted about the Bahamas was that our criminals keep shipping drugs from the U.S. to your country.

Even though the Bahamas seems to be slacking on the drug dealer front, we were still willing to open our arms and welcome you into the fold, perhaps as interns or on a work-study basis. But our president has spoken and it is above us now. You might think Trump is racist but he just wants to protect his country’s reputation. People don’t come to America to escape devastation and make a better life. They come here to steal land. They come here to get gold. They come here to rob, steal and kill. That is the American Dream.


Maybe I could make three suggestions that might make him reconsider:

First, you’re gonna need some guns. GunPolicy.org reports that only 18 out of every 100 citizens in your country own a gun. Now I know you can’t get that up to our level of 120 guns for every 100 citizens (That’s not a typo. We’re gangsta as fuck over here) but at least you could get your drug overdose rate up a little bit and make yourself competitive with us or at minimum get your literacy rate down. That’s your problem right there! You’re 10 points ahead of us! Everyone knows that thugs don’t read. And what’s with this free health care shit? That’s not gangsta at all.


I know this seems counterintuitive, but if you truly want to be an American, I suggest you don’t emulate our president. Because you’re black, you’ll have to let them call you lazy while they build empires off of your labor. You’ll have to watch mediocre white men with half your IQ and twice your privilege assume you are less qualified than they are. You’ll have to be honest, smart and vigilant while they cheat their way through relationships, education and elections.

And if you are twice as intelligent, hardworking and trustworthy as they are, your dumber, lazier, crooked-ass counterparts will stand in judgment of you and arbitrarily decide whether or not you are even worthy of humanity. They will shoot you in the face for wallet-reaching. They will lock your children in cages. They will deny your children an equal education. They will criminalize you for trying to escape the death trap they built.


And sometimes, when you are at your lowest point, the people who believe their country is the greatest on earth, won’t just blithely watch a man as he drowns. They will hide the life preserver. They will put their hands on your head and hold you underwater. And as they listen to the sound of the gurgling as if it were a lullaby, if someone is brave enough to ask them why they didn’t save you, they will explain using the same logic Trump used to describe the “very bad” people of the Bahamas...

Because we are better than them.

Now that’s some GANGSTA shit.