(A POV beat street piece to honor MLK)
They kept us enslaved
Deprived and depraved
Drowned us to death
In the blood we had paid
Now you cross the street cause the snowflakes afraid
Weighted with guilt from the whips they had made
Yet you market hip hop fashion in a pretty array
Selling our culture and stealing the pay
Cashing in dollars off of cultural poverty
Marketing the onus of black urban novelty
Selling our fates like you think we still property
Years of oppression as your corporate commodity
Give us headlines in black about murder and sodomy
When it came to reparations its seems you forgot me
Shackled and hassled and profiled in black
Handcuffed and choked or shot in the back
Throwing us pennies while you take the stack
Till the only way out is dealing in crack
Erupting underground in exploding seismology
Turning us into some urban mythology
While brothers and sisters unclaimed in pathology
Lie there dead awaiting an apology
This ain’t no rocket science psychology
Inequality in myopic dollar visionlogy
Just corporate America trading and selling hysteria

White hood on a head, bible in hand
Burning white crosses in our holy land
Running away as quick as you can
Back to your church to make a new plan
Ethnic ferocity is that all you got for me?
Bible revival a Christian held lottery
Killin’ our children just don’t seem like god to me
My people are undying you don’t think that bother me?
You languish in gold an economic prodigy
Skipping over the part of your inhuman atrocity
Slavery was our odyssey and you ain’t the boss of me
It all seems so odd to me
Like the world is on fire
Claiming racism has expired
But the hatred still burns like a funeral pyre
With the conniving prejudice living and thriving
Whites kids bopping and jiving while black Moms sit home a crying
Choking on the metaphoric noose where children keep dying
It really stung when condemned our young
Then watered the tree’s where our ancestors hung
Locked us behind bars made of lily pad fear
Brown and black wearing the new orange gear
You think we nuthin but dealers strung out on dope
Climbing your picket fence dream to rob you of hope
But we work we live and we breathe and walk the tightrope
Profile us to stand like a guilty sculpture
Pockets picked by a Wall Street vulture
Its so stressful it give me an unccer
Profiting from the blood and tears
Of African culture