Are We Free?
We wear invisible chains alongside these bars
Holding within our ancestor’s abuse and still fresh scars
Trapped in a cycle of “pseudo-legal” denied rights
With a golden badge ready to end my life
One parent in and out of jail isn’t in the past
Prison reform is a myth and my proof is a criminal, deadbeat dad
Every year his jail will get a new master
Coming with a brand new whip of rotten food thrown on a plate made of rust and plaster
We still continue on
Paying our punishment until the ounce’s true cost is gone
Even though our hands no longer stink of cotton
Our people’s struggle is far from forgotten
Weed, Hennessy, Coke, and Crack
Labels of stereotype without fact
But in reality one part remains true
These poisons make it easy for an arrest by the boys in blue
We are those who they see as drug fiends
Even though whites are also burning trees
We used to always look to the burning cross
As the cause of black vote loss
But now we have a new enemy without a white sheet
That legally they don’t call a cheat
A method making the rules firmly tight
Two little words called three strikes
We live in the decade of “all about me”
But it should be seen as a time of ignoring tragedy
Inequality inflates every cell
With the U.S. “majority” having money to bail
A country where a white man gets 3 months for committing rape
And a black person gets more than triple for arriving to probation late
Even locked up they fight with stomachs empty
Because Aramak starves our felons but makes money of plenty
This could be me trying to survive in the pen
More likely in jail due to color of my skin
My hope is that every person will cringe
When I scream out “Black is the new Orange!!”
A new slave, underpaid, trapped in a metal cage
Working in prison a million times below minimum wage
Targeted for cruel racial slurs like “Crack whore” or “Crack baby”
A common result of our history with our 14th hurt with “vagrancy”
This was all a new scheme for the system to have control
Like their failed “project” of separate but equal or Jim Crow
Vagrancy and black codes treated blacks as a waste of space
Former masters using twisted politics to return their power in a haste
A continuous racial battle to stay the “majority”
Harsh treatment and the highest imprisoned men being the blacks out the “minority”
The Clintons dangling false promises and positive vibes
But this is useless with misstep of “Super Predator” and both known to speak lies
But they aren’t the original presidential slaves to white supremacy
Long before even Reagan lived a man with a dark legacy
Nixon is the cause for this war on drugs
Originally targeting hippies and minorities personified as thugs
But Ronald is not far off from receiving blame
In his terms we can see a spread of AIDS and crack cocaine
Crack was a known villain to affect the poor
Seen as a drug done by blacks when whites may smoke it more
A cheaper drug that was creating almost the same
As a pricey white chemical giving half the sentence but twice the fame
I didn’t vote for Obama cause I was too young then
But I remember how it was after Bush’s time found its end
Him being black was just the icing on top
But after him it seemed progress would stop
Trump followed his daddy’s ways
Becoming the new poster boy for the KKK
Trying to go back in time and “Make American great Again”
Code words for Neo Nazis he defends!
Laws were not made originally for me and the people of color
But we know that the system of white supremacy makes this a reminder
Race is still seen as a determinant of class
Bigotry is fueled by a broken caste