Plight (The Machine)
[Intro]:
Uh, see it all around
There's a lot of talk about racial discrimination, disenfranchisement, structure that holds a certain people from success and power
I like to look at it like a machine, a very efficient machine
I hope you see it today
Yeah
[Verse 1]:
I'm at a loss for words, but I'm sure I'll find some
Rummage through these thoughts
Digging up salt, and I can smell the wounds
Man, I can tell it's dark, cuz I can see the apathy of a people torn apart
I listen to the meadowlark, but the song kinda sad, the kids need a better park
Cuz them shots rang, now it's blood-stained, it's another tombstone
In a place where fairy tales are two-parent homes
And the street lights make all the little kids roam
Till they've grown to a social worker's problem
Fathers been gone ever since they been a toddler
They up in group home till momma kicks the habit
Doesn't really help the schools are so ravaged
A neighborhood is rib shacks and check cashers
Grocery store with bruised grapes and browned-over cabbage
Don't understand wealth cuz they don't have it
Medicate the kids until they turn addicts
And keep a Planned Parenthood posted
Like a symbol for why the families is broken
The legacy of Margaret Sanger
Is murder black babies, where's all the anger?
Ain't tryna hear Jesse, or the black caucus
Don't wanna hear Sharpton, we need to be sharpened
And we be tryna deify Obama
He's got a huge part to play in this whole saga
Abortion is genocide of Biblical proportions
And hip-hop music's like a napalm bomb
Yeah, I'm just stating the obvious
106 and park's got kids in the audience
Teaching the young girls on how to be a diva
Twerkin like their favorite R&B singer
Now fellas tryna die for that cash
Break hearts first, and keep commitments last
A kid with a hoodie got popped
By a cat on neighborhood watch
And it's on, we on that racial profiling
Hard pill to swallow watching Bill O' Reilly
And someone took away our dream
When the streets in the hood is named for Dr. King
It's the machine (x4)
Yeah, man, if I don't care, is this the coldest I can get?
The sun's out, what's the polar opposite
It's on display like its own art gallery
The sad thing is it's reality, and I'm like
Where the truth on the inward?
And have I been too lax with the "n" word?
It's a waste like a Plaxico gun
So I'm gon' give the saxophone some
[Outro:]
And I think it's to our shame that, when we look at the best of our systematic theologies, for example, and we read the doctrine, the chapter on anthropology, almost no systematic theologian addresses the question of racism, and yet I think it is the deepest stain on this country and this country's church