Before They Called You White

At what point did poor European people that used to rebel

Against the ones that forced them to work land they didn't own and die with nothing of their own

What was it that turned their hearts so that they start to Identify with power even though they're powerless

Identify with wealth even though they're broke?

It's the invention of whiteness

They call you white by white standards

Damn what they're talking 'bout human first

Stand and curse the dirty hand that first crafted the plan

Spread it through the land and shattered the damn earth

This is sickest system that ever existed

Since this earth beginning, commenced, it's twisting

How you convince men with red blood to bleed?

Completely devalue what a human being means

Nobody called themselves white several centuries ago

They were living off the land with the trees

They were Dutch, they were Irish, they were German

They were Greek with culture, families, tradition and beliefs

Rich blood suckers saw new soil to seize

And they ain't 'bout to get their hands dirty, cracker please

Swindled you to trade in your identity

Showed you pie in the sky and promised you a piece

With symbolic image in the scripture that you're reading

White holy angels and black evil demons

You were so starving that you started to believe it

Now you'll die colonizing for somebody else's greed

Don't you see the overseers are still in the field?

Every breath a warden breathe he still in the jail

You will never own that farm or the prison for real

Terrified of the time when your victims rebel

Listen you don't fear them, you fear the blood on your hands

All the ugly you done to that man

That woman, that child, that land

That sea, that sky, that they'd look you in the eye

And demand that you tell them why

All them years whipping and lying and killing

Generations of poison and bombing and drilling

All designed to turn the hearts of your children to stone

Got post traumatic slave master syndrome

How the hell are y'all going to heal, be made whole?

You identifying with the people in control

You can't throw a human in the bottom of a boat

Unless somebody got a damn chain around your soul

In that middle passage asking who got stole?

A hot auction block where your blood ran cold

Every day a cop let them shots explode

You're gon' have to find a way to regain your soul

I said the eye can't see itself

It can't sit back, critique itself, and peep itself

It needs help

Take the sword for example

No matter how hard, it can't carve its own handle

I said the eye can't see itself

It can't sit back, critique itself, and peep itself

It needs help

Take the sword for example

No matter how hard, it can't carve its own handle

The inner city of our cities is like another country. The rules are different. It's almost like you need a passport there. The police treat people differently. When I lived out in the suburbs, if my car broke down on the highway and a state trooper pulled up behind me, I wouldn't have been scared. I'd have been glad. But young man after young man after young man had been beaten by the police and the only way you know, you've got to be with the people and we live separated. We go in air conditioned cars and we stick on your interstates and hang out with people just like us. Well, by God's grace, I was brought into this, and seeing how race plays a part and how poverty plays a part, and my job is to go out to the American people