They tell us they have our best interests at heart
as if They could ever have any idea towards
what Our best interests might be
the songs coming from my car stereo
asks me
“they’re out for presidents to represent them.
You really think a president could represent you?”
I say cease the gentrification
of neighborhoods which hold more history
than you hold fake smiles
and if we have an issue of poverty
maybe you shouldn’t focus as much
on roping clean cut white students
into your neighborhood
to raise property values
and instead focus on repairing
an entire portion of the population
which we enslaved with chains and drugs and crimes
a whole segment of our reality
which we told were no good
and lazy
and hopeless
but act surprised when they turn to crime, drugs, and violence
***, Drugs, and Rock’nRoll
but that’s only if you’re affluently white
for the rest of the world it goes
STD’s
whole generations brought to their knees beneath the heaving weight of substance abuse
and a small fragment of an idea, a belief, that the only thing that can save them
is their ability to create something from nothing
a rap entrenched in justified outrage
or a man who came from less than nothing
sailing through the air
to slam the basket through the hoop of everything we told him was out of reach
My white guilt is fighting with my white privilege
and it’s leaving me left asking
What makes them any worse than me?
from the jobs I’ve worked the only thing I learned
was that all that divides us
is those who know how to hustle
and those who know how to take
We spent hundreds of years trying to break
their spirit down like the roads in the ghetto parts of town
but as a kid
some of my greatest heroes were the poor and disenfranchised
who came from nothing and carried with them only their voice
and their story
and It’s easy for me to sit here in my apartment
demonizing the things I didn’t choose to benefit from
The first hip hop show I went to
I carried a bag full of insecurities
they read of a list that went like this:
I am an over-privileged white boy
who never had to work for a single thing in his entire **** life
so what right do I have here with these people?
this is the closest these people come to God
and that makes me and outsider
a blasphemous heathen
a representative of the cult which cuts down their leaders
and herds their youth like sheep
but I can say I never paid money for a pair of Jordans
not facilitating the death of brain washed lost children
sacrificed so some CEO’s can give his escort a fatter tip
before going back to his family
whom he assures he loves
and the men behind their podiums
clad in suits which cost more money than some make in a year
cry wolf time and time again
and time and time again
we lock ourselves away in isolation and panic
because that’s all they want from us
they want us silent and docile
so they smother our protests
with scare tactics
keep them afraid
keep them wary and nervous
keep their fingers inches from triggers
keep them buying
keep them divided
I was watching the news
a White kid took his parents’ car out on a joy ride
“Oh he’s just a kid. Kid’s make mistakes. It’s actually kinda funny.”
a few months earlier
the same story about a black kid
“He’s already a criminal. What a shame he was raised so poorly. This is what’s wrong with the country.”
and I don’t have the right answers to respond to that
all I know
is I think we’d fare far better
if we spent less time listening to the fear
and more time being human beings