Top Songs By Nathan Dufour
Credits
PERFORMING ARTISTS
Nathan Dufour Oglesby
Performer
COMPOSITION & LYRICS
Nathan Dufour Oglesby
Composer
PRODUCTION & ENGINEERING
Nathan Dufour Oglesby
Producer
Lyrics
Well, there's a lot going on in the news
A lotta people are pretty concerned about a theory
I'm white, but I'm not blank slate
A lotta ideas delineate Nate
Middle-class, cis-white-male, kinda straight
A cracker on the platter of the appetizer plate of the United States
And in that space
What should I say as I raise my pale face
To gaze on the pains that my ancestors placed on the land that I come from?
Can I love my own race?
So let's talk race, right on this track
What is the construct of white race and black, and all in between?
Let us state clearly what this all means
It's Critical Race Theory, it's the CRT
Oh shit, why dude? You're gonna explain this to me?
You're a white dude
Aren't you the reason it's needed?
Why do it, why? So dudes like me just might get the vibe too
So this is for you with a view and a voice
Whatever race you're called, by convention or choice
But especially my melanin-delimitated boys
We need to read W.E.B. Du Bois
Drawing on Du Bois and Douglass and truth
Critical Race Theory endeavors to prove
That racism isn't just a hatred for a group
It's a complicated system that is woven in the roots of society itself
And it isn't ourselves that make us fear difference
And make us tear and tell one another apart
For that part's played well by our history books
Our American tales
And so these theorists like Kimberlé Crenshaw
And Derrick Bell and others study policy and law
And how in spite of these our latent ideologies
Have all kept racism stuck in our society's craw
But it's not all designed to attack you, my dude
Just because your skin's white, that's not accurate, dude
What they actually do is unshackle the truth from the patterns of the past
Don't get your facts from Ted Cruz
The origin of race, as we know it, is recent
It's traced to Andalusia along the Iberian Peninsula
The place of modern Portugal and Spain
At the end of the Islamic-Era, Umayyad reign
When the Christians reconquered, they aimed to rebrand it
This place is Christian now, it ain't Islamic
And banished the resident Muslims, and Jews in the year of our lord 1492
Now the few that remained when they tried to
Convert were denied on the basis their blood wasn't pure
And such as they were, some considered them other
And difference in blood became difference in color
So yes indeed brother, every race is a construction
Yeah, but just because it was one
Doesn't mean it doesn't function in the system
And it's made up and constructed alright
But every prison begins from a construction site
I don't bring this to light to annoy you, my dude
I'm just tryna make a point, I'm not pointing at you
The point is to use the knowledge as a tool
Why would you not want to teach that at school?
Now you might say, fine, but this is not for me
I'd prefer if everybody here was equal and free
But it may equally be that this is really preferred
Only when their liberation and your interests converge
Under layers of dirt in the subconscious brain
It's hard when all's well not to want it the same
When the system is yours, do you want it to change?
Is that a virtue signal, or are you trying to switch lanes?
But if nothing but critique is what everyone speaks
When they meet with a complexion that's white, beige or bleached
Then they would run the risk using critical speech
For estranging just those people that the theory must teach
Because just because a person may deserve a verbal lashing
Doesn't mean it doesn't lead them to an adverse reaction
If they get served it in the service of the truth
We may try to shut down liars, but that makes them double down on their lies
And so the lonely white guy in his corner or Reddit
Starts to feel himself cornered by some kind of vendetta
His identity vetted, and his whiteness as wedded to an idea
Of oppression as it fits in his essence
And he feels the left's left him, and he feels, right or wrong
That the right's the only place he'd be embraced or made strong
And he's faced with the illusion of a binary choice
Of being anti-anti-racist or deprived of his voice
Well, the good news is the binary's not real
You can criticize yourself and carry pride as you feel
And we can satirize ourselves, "I'm white, I suck, hardy hard"
But satire's an easy start, transformation is hard
And it's okay that it's hard when your part has been snubbed
To suck it up within your soul and serve the others with love
Because it wasn't you that stole, but you've been given the stuff
And there's times when stepping down is the way to step up
So let us be real and let us feel seen
As we collectively awake from the American Dream
Being critical of self and then cold and cool kind
But still loving both, both critical and kind
Writer(s): Nathan Dufour Oglesby
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