Tenesha The Wordsmith – Why White Folks Can't Call Me Nigga lyrics

Why White Folks Can’t Call Me Nigga
Because you ain't my comrade
You have not felt the rage of seeing your people beaten
Raped
Hung
Your outrage shouted down by oppressors claiming
Victimhood
And having no recourse except silence
Feel your skin grow tight around your body
Trying to contain anger that has become a family heirloom
Generation to generation
Watching from the belly button window
Born understanding that they will not be understood they will be
Underestimated
Underprivileged
Underserved
The anger turns itself inward
Pushing from within
Fight or flight
I’d rather you called me nigga say what you mean
I live as an accoutrement to your life entertainment
Anthropological study
A paragraph in a history book
You are Atlas contemplating shrugging
My shoulders are heavy but you claim the burden don’t call me nigga
You ain't from where I’m from
I was raised at the intersection of Frederick Douglas
And Marcus Garvey
The village warned the children to be careful of what they said in front of white folks so we became
Bi-colloquial
Ambrosia and kool aid
High rises
Low rents
Drinking champagne out of plastic cups whispering the ideals of black nationalist while mouthing the national anthem
Oh say can you see
You can’t see me
Been living beside you for hundreds of years building communities brick by brick but
You can’t hear me
Been here before Isabella commissioned it we kings
We queens
Among cave dwellers
You don’t know me
You can’t call me nigga because
You don’t believe in black angels
Haven’t accepted the fact that a
Blue eyed, blond haired Jesus
Would have died in the desert
You haven’t accepted the fact that
Black represents the presence of all things black is everything
The spirit of god is black
You can’t call me nigga because
The word is code for brotha
And we ain't kin like that
Your appropriation of my culture has not been by my permission
Don’t call me nigga because
My humanity is more important than your swag because Dylan Roof was not a lone gunman he walked into that church on a foundation of laid by white supremacist
He will be tried by a system that perpetuates white supremacy
His actions were motivated by propaganda promoted by pop culture
You can’t call me nigga because
5 year olds should never have to play dead on church floors
My niggas understand a part of me that rose up from the ashes of the Antebellum South but still feel the rawness of
Chains
My niggas understand that racism is a white man’s madness
Because the south lost the war because of the Jena 6
Nia Wilson
Mike Brown
Trayvon Martin
Gentrification
The achievement gap
Mass incarceration
Police brutality
Because the branches of our government bear strange fruit because fuck you
White people can’t call me nigga because they don’t know who they are
To be a nigga
Or
To not be a nigga
That is the question
A conversation white folks simply are not invited to