Racial Identification
By Krista Tarantino // Art by Fernando Amaro Jr.

I am strugglin' to survive
In a culture that wants my family to die
I have children to raise 
To protect from the lies
I was always taught that Lincoln freed the slaves
Until I took my ass
To class
And realized fast
That racial and class identification
Was created from misinformation
To keep poor and colored people down
And rich white folks up

What the fuck
Was what I thought
When I understood
That I had bought into a commercial
About the American Dream
That would never extend
To my mixed seeds
And I struggle in the streets
Selling anything
Including my p*&&y
To make a dollar
To make the paper stacks taller
And I duck
And I dodge bullets
Meant to kill my man
As his stress is unleashed
Through his hand
Up against my face

Let me lace
Your boots
It's all about the loot
That's what they force us to think
Snortin on crank
Smoking on crack
They tell us to say no
But steadily flow
The snow
Into our ghettoes
Reduce the welfare cash aid
Spreadin aids
Killin us off at an early age
I don't want my sons' father to be M.I.A.
In this racial warfare
That has him incarcerated
But it's not even that complicated
Its just conspiratorial player hatin
That keeps him masturbatin
Instead of fuckin me

The Bush Administration is fuckin me
So I have to push weed up my pussy hole
So that my man can smoke his worries away
In a governmental cage
And forget the system
Our whole fuckin life is a post-traumatic stress syndrome
I have to teach my son about death and destruction
So that he doesn't succumb to the white social construction
Of a blackness
That says it's cool to be careless
And without regard for life
But still he sees his daddy lose his life
To the new age slavery called prison
And we want to die being without him

Prison is politics
So all behind bars are political prisoners
No matter the crime
The time
I have to reduce the larger problem to fit my rhyme
Because the bigger picture
Is a hell of a mixture
Of hate and greed
They send us to jail for smoking weed
Because they will do whatever it takes
To break
The unification
That has been created within the Hip Hop nation
Even if our unity is complicated by contradiction
And learned capitalist values
We still see past the shallow
Images created to depict us as one-dimensional
And without regard for others
This rhyme goes out to my sisters and brothers
Who make it happen
Who know that Hip Hop is not fashion or fad
It is a radical notion
Of devotion
To revolution
And finding a solution
To counter
The deadly aftermath
Of a fatal past

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