Let's Have It Out

"Let's Have It Out"

I don't mean to come at y'all disrespectfully

Or demand somehow that you should open up to me

I'm expressing some awareness of what my country do to you

Take a strong black song and make it blue

The conversation seems forever stuck in the second grade

“We're all the same” - then what the fuck about your rage?

Y'all just supposed to keep it zipped at the lip?

Don't rock the boat, handle it cuz it's your shit?

“Oh we just can't take it when y'all get upset”

But what color dying in the hood and on the rez?

Even if our past wasn't what it was

Present injustices alone would be enough

Oh what to do with what we actually feel?

The racial division and skisms they instilled?

Something so entrenched, so complex, so ill

I wanna stare that shit right in the grill

If there's one thing I do know from my own experience

It's that wrongdoing needs acknowledgement

You can't magic wand that shit away

The one who suffered gonna have a lot to say

Black man, black man, black man!

Let's have it out

Don't wanna take the topic on another roundabout

I ain't scared of your anger: still, it hurts

Can I get over the fact that it ain't personally deserved?

Can I remember the central issue here's your pain?

Is my love strong enough to maintain

In the face of your truth?

And so many of my color gotta be convinced that your specific agony is even legit

“Everybody's suffered-” well of course that's true

And now I'm speaking bout white on black abuse

An oppression gnawing at my country's bones

No I cannot leave that shit alone

Collective memories of black bodies writhing in flames

And on our side, we just writhing in shame

Whether we know it or not, they got our hearts on lock

Clamoring at the cages of race that do not

Allow expression of our natural tendency

To know one another as family

Oh what to do in a nation based on so much denial

Years of terror raining down on black woman and child

Feeding us a fantasy it's all in the past

But the brutality of slavery is heard in gun blasts

Oh I know it: those ghosts are with us all the time

No matter your side of the color divide

A nation built on something SO foul cannot rest

The spirits simply must be addressed!

Black woman! Let's have it out!

Don't wanna take the topic on another roundabout

I ain't scared of your anger- still, it hurts

Can I get over the fact that it ain't personally deserved?

Can I remember the central issue here's your pain?

Is my love strong enough to maintain

In the face of your truth?

My right to speak in these tones is objectionable to some

They got a word for it: appropriation

So I should keep it lily-white....right?

It ain't fair I rock the style when I never had to fight

Through the same struggles

Oh the Man just hands me respect

Never had an ancestor noose around his neck

(Well that ain't exactly true the Inquisition further back)

But hell no I don't know how it feels to be black

It's understandably opening of deep-ass scars

To see these white kids like me spittin' bars

Shakin' ass

Plus I got the white girl pass?

Access to all the privileges of white middle class

To the riches of a nation built on y'all's broken heart

But it's the nature of this fertile goddess we call art

To cross-pollinate, it's the movement of air

But the least I can do is actually care

Black people! Let's have it out!

Don't wanna take the topic on another roundabout

I ain't scared of your anger- still, it hurts

Can I get over the fact that it ain't personally deserved?

Can I remember the central issue here's your pain?

Is my love strong enough to maintain

In the face of your truth?

In the face of your truth

Yo for real, for real

In a spirit of respect and humility

I want to say thank you to the black people of my country

For enduring what y'all have endured

To your ancestors for surviving and passing on life and allowing y'all to be here

as a part of this nation that has shown y'all SO little love

Thank you for your culture, for your love

That has been a blessing to my life in more ways than I could ever say

Than I could ever say

From “Let's Have It Out” by Asliani