On the backs of others you built your country,
On the blood of many your empire grew,
So how do you go around praising your accomplishments?
My father, America, shame on you.
The red people welcomed you, as your boats landed,
They looked as your Miss Liberty arms opened wide,
They helped you feed your hungry children, sure they did,
Then you shot them with your fire sticks and watched their babies die.
It was you who first mixed the blood ‘cause you raped his women,
It was you who would kill him for touching her fair skin,
Wasn’t it you; please won’t you tell the truth?
For almost everybody in this mongering America is somebody’s kin!
We never took your fair-skinned women; they came to us,
But our women were beaten to sex with you,
You raped them by the millions, sure you did,
Yes, the stories my grandparents tell of you I now know are true.
For I am a child whose father left his home full of sons,
Many of my black sisters are without their father, too
Why do you claim your fair-skinned children while denying you fathered me?
Father, White America, shame on you.
My grandparents’ grandparents who live in the Motherland,
Sob when they think about the broken chain,
They wonder about missing children like after your Vietnam,
And they tell us through their struggles you are to blame.
A child will love both its parents without ever being taught,
And a child must be taught to hate one from the other,
So why not admit your shame, for you are to blame,
‘Cause you raped and tried to kill my black African Mother.
I am sure, not by chance, I hit a nerve,
I am further sure my Motherland wouldn’t lie,
So I’ll keep asking you for the truth, but I know it ain’t in you,
For only JAH in time will tell me why.
The Traveler Weekly 