Sister Souljah to Shirley Sherrod

Intro:
On Monday, a woman, Shirley Sherrod, an African American employee of the United States department of agriculture, resigned under what she described as "pressure from the white house to do so", after the conservative blogger published an edited video, in which she seemed to observers to admit to anti-white discrimination. Except we now know that video was edited to take what she said and twist it completely

Alot of our viewers may not know about this: this woman's father was murdered by a white man, nobody was ever punished

[Verse 1: Jonny 5]
The arch of universe bends towards justice
But this demands us put our hands forward, touch it
Like abacuses, if we don’t we don’t budget
Lemme suggest we consult Frederick Douglass

"If there is no struggle, there is no Progress"
Words from a man once considered an object
By educated Christians
Who said that they had listened
To everything God said

Everyday citizens who every chance they got stood and blocked freedom’s marches
Made’em drop dead off the arches
Shot’em like a partridge
For anybody tendin to the carcass
Or watering their parched lips
They reloaded the cartridge

Bullets in the heart didn’t ever get removed
No they never had catharsis like yabba dabba doo
Just a gradual gradual improvement
Like that’ll have to do
Not even forty acres and a mule

But everybody knows this
It's just our nation’s history
There’s no need to expose it
But dealin with the shit can be explosive
But no fair hunkering in the bunkers and the barracks dammit
This is what it is to be American

It means that when somebody’s seventeen and
Her father gets shot for being black and inbetween
A white man and what a white man feels he needs
When the girl becomes a woman she might stand and disagree

With the system designed so efficiently to hold her down in misery
She’s older now
She might be sick of bein’ sick of these water fountains that she had to rinse in
And it’s possible she might harbor some resentment like Sister Souljah

(He doesn't know she was returned to her job at the agriculture department, but moments ago, she accepted the apology of the White House)

[Verse 2: Jonny 5]
Sister Souljah to Shirley Sherrod
Reagan Democrats to Republicans for Barrack
Johnson gave away the south to make civil rights law
For every two steps backwards we move 3 steps up, it's like

Sister Souljah to Shirley Sherrod
Reagan Democrats to Republicans for Barrack
Johnson gave away the south to make civil rights law
For every two steps backwards we move 3 steps up

What if Jeremiah was right
Would you clarify and fight
Or take flight like a parasite?
Do you know how to stand up and stare’m right
In the eyes make’m calm down when they’re terrified?

And hey did ya know what to say just
Then when the nice person said something racist?
If a noose hangs in the forest
But nobody’s lynched does that make it a toy we can play with?

And if not why do they get to play with it?
Why do white people so frequently say this shit?
And what’s underneath the obsession
With laying some claim to a piece of oppression

Outwardly mad cuz they censored the n-word
Ingram it’s time that some things were remembered
Maybe my people just need some direction
So 5’s on the mic try to teach’em a lesson, like, sister souljah

(My definition of good, is that you understand that this is a question of power, that you'd be willing to give up some power.)

Sister Souljah to Shirley Sherrod
Reagan Democrats to Republicans for Barrack
Johnson gave away the south to make civil rights law
For every 2 steps back we move 3 steps up

Sister Souljah to Shirley Sherrod
Reagan Democrats to Republicans for barrack
Johnson gave away the south to make civil rights law
For every 2 steps back we move 3 steps up

3 steps up
3 steps up
3 steps up, and then we've reached that spot

(Working with him made me see, that it's really about those who have versus those who don't. And it made me realize then, that I needed to work to help poor people. Those who don't have access the way others have.)