MLKs Legacy by Edwin BCK Magloire Lyrics
MLK's Legacy
Martin Luther King said he was afraid of people not doing anything in the face of oppression.
I'm afraid he didn't realize that people doing something are ordained to go down like him.
In history yes, but I am sure he wouldn't have been satisfied by such honors.
Just imagine how much more he would've accomplished.
We wouldn't have only gotten our rights but also we would have learned our duties towards our brothers and sisters, black and white alike.
He would've surely lead us, not to fight to be treated as equals, but to be recognized as such.
Many great men have fallen to this pitfall:
shedding and sharing their light and never getting the chance to show us how to light our own.
So we are condemned to repeatedly refer to these immortal minds, celebrate and mourn them.
Their accomplishments becoming stones by which we swear and tear.
We pride ourselves in commemorating their lives, focusing on their actions but seldom on their vision.
We have grown attached to their forms, faces and speeches, yet so cleaved from their ideas,
that, were they to reincarnate in our neighborhood, their minds would go unnoticed.
The oppressors are gone and our downfalls as a nation can only be put on our own account.
How many times do we choose to be black or afro-american in the stead of being simply human?
To be gutter, ghetto, gangsters, gorillas, generals or merely Gs?
These dark archetypes share one common aspiration:
To stop as many crabs as possible from getting out of the barrel they put us in, so that we can get out ourselves.
The problem is we don’t want to get out. We live and swear by that barrel, we respect it and kill our own in its name.
It’s our reason for being good at what we do, but also our excuse for doing bad.
We suffer from a variant of the Stockholm syndrome because we fought alongside Martin Luther King Jr. for the right to be;
yet, constantly we choose the exact same path our oppressor wanted to lead us into.
If there is no harmony within the family, can we be ready for harmony with the stranger?
We shoot, stab, kill and terminate our brothers on sight.
We resent education and we demean ourselves by demeaning the pillar of our society under its various forms whether it's that of the mother, the sister or the daughter.
What’s the meaning and value of freedom if we make the wrong choice? He had a dream… What’s yours?
Martin Luther King said he was afraid of people not doing anything in the face of oppression.
I'm afraid he didn't realize that people doing something are ordained to go down like him.
In history yes, but I am sure he wouldn't have been satisfied by such honors.
Just imagine how much more he would've accomplished.
We wouldn't have only gotten our rights but also we would have learned our duties towards our brothers and sisters, black and white alike.
He would've surely lead us, not to fight to be treated as equals, but to be recognized as such.
Many great men have fallen to this pitfall:
shedding and sharing their light and never getting the chance to show us how to light our own.
So we are condemned to repeatedly refer to these immortal minds, celebrate and mourn them.
Their accomplishments becoming stones by which we swear and tear.
We pride ourselves in commemorating their lives, focusing on their actions but seldom on their vision.
We have grown attached to their forms, faces and speeches, yet so cleaved from their ideas,
that, were they to reincarnate in our neighborhood, their minds would go unnoticed.
The oppressors are gone and our downfalls as a nation can only be put on our own account.
How many times do we choose to be black or afro-american in the stead of being simply human?
To be gutter, ghetto, gangsters, gorillas, generals or merely Gs?
These dark archetypes share one common aspiration:
To stop as many crabs as possible from getting out of the barrel they put us in, so that we can get out ourselves.
The problem is we don’t want to get out. We live and swear by that barrel, we respect it and kill our own in its name.
It’s our reason for being good at what we do, but also our excuse for doing bad.
We suffer from a variant of the Stockholm syndrome because we fought alongside Martin Luther King Jr. for the right to be;
yet, constantly we choose the exact same path our oppressor wanted to lead us into.
If there is no harmony within the family, can we be ready for harmony with the stranger?
We shoot, stab, kill and terminate our brothers on sight.
We resent education and we demean ourselves by demeaning the pillar of our society under its various forms whether it's that of the mother, the sister or the daughter.
What’s the meaning and value of freedom if we make the wrong choice? He had a dream… What’s yours?