For Tea and Autonomy - 137

Where were you when we saw a black body

Dying upon the floor

Seems that you have more sympathy

For that TV lifted from the store

Put in chains for the sake of textiles

Living in a homegrown exile

What do you think existence

Of centuries of division

Has done to a culture’s intent

Conformity and no dissent

Waged war for the sake of tea and autonomy

Telling me this is different

Profiled from my own first birthday

Told me what to say and told me what to wear

Even when I went to the church to pray

Saw a white man on the cross, no truth there

Pulled over for the sake of a quota

'Cause they feel we won’t fight the order

Getting strikes on minor infractions

Then they’ll use that to justify actions

«See, he had a record

Man, all you blacks sound like a broken record»

You want for us to accept a system

Rejecting us for centuries

Man, it seems that even epistemologically

You want us all on our knees

Don’t you find it funny

Many telling us oppression isn’t real are profiting

Off grandpa’s bloody money

Imagine rejecting idea that you killed the colony

While hands are still sticky from siphoning the golden honey

Starting from the protests

To the hierarchies that we invest

Manifest in all the doll tests

Lots to contest

In this chum fest

Brace for the sharks in a nice vest

Culpability’s a heavy crown

Power never seeks to wear it

You’ll wear the frown if they have to bear it

I don’t think it’s easy to pick yourself up by bootstraps

When all of your enemies are bragging 'bout their new straps

Or the barneys in the paddy-wagons looking at you different 'cause your food

stamps

Dark alley because of broke' lamps

Not tryna be another Killmonger

Or fearmonger

Just tryna live longer

And find answer

For the bulk of race violence

And all violence

And I’m finding one thing

It’s not silence

Hard to believe that you’re fighting for my liberty

When you do put a knee to the neck of your citizenry

Having the mange and the fleas

So you redefined the pedigree

Live in anonymity

We’re dead with no lividity

Iceberg’s tip

Here’s a Q-Tip

To clear out ears

And how years of whips and tears

Won’t merely fade away like all your new frontiers

History’s the slaver

Complacency’s the chains

Teaching kids 'bout tyranny

Whilst tying their bits to conformity’s reins

Irony seeded so deep in their brains

But I’m insane