"We shine because they hate us,
floss cuz they degrade us,
We tryna buy back our forty acres...
"I say f*** the police, that's how I treat em.
We buy our way out of jail, but we can't buy freedom
We'll buy a lot of clothes but we don't really need em
Things we buy to cover up what's inside,
Cuz they made us hate ourself and love they wealth
that's why shorties holla where the ballers at?
Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack
and a white man get paid off of all of that."
-Kanye West, All Falls Down (2004)
I have noticed that many of us seek riches simply because we seem to be expected to do so. We seem to have been convinced that money is the proof of our worth, the evidence of our accomplishments. So we seek status symbols. We respond to our social and societal reality by becoming alarmingly ambitious--hustlers.
I challenge my people (the disenfranchised poor all over the world) not to have REACTIONARY AMBITION, not to get convinced that we must prove our worth by attaining possessions, to understand that success is measured by the good one does, to reject the status symbols.
Thoughts, anyone??
