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To think about the origins of Hip-Hop |
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in this culture and also about Homeland Security is to see that there are, |
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at the very least, two worlds in America: |
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one of the well-to-do and another of the struggling. |
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For if ever there was the absence of Homeland Security, |
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it is one seen in the gritty roots of Hip-Hop. |
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For the music arises from a generation that feels, with some justice, |
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that they have been betrayed by those who came before them, |
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that they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets, |
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and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison. |
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They grew up hungry, hated, and unloved, |
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and this is the psychic fuel that generates the anger |
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that seems endemic in much of the music and poetry. |
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One senses very little hope above the personal goals of wealth |
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to climb above the pit of poverty. |
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In the broader society, the opposite is true, |
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for here, more than any other place on earth, |
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wealth is so wide spread and so bountiful |
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that what passes for the middle class in America |
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could pass for the upper class in most of the rest of the world. |
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They're very opulence and relative wealth makes them insecure and homeland security |
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is a governmental phrase that is as oxymoronic as crazy as saying military intelligence, |
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or the U.S Department of Justice. They're just words, |
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they have very little relationship to reality. |
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Now do you feel safer now? Do you think you will anytime soon? |
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Do you think duct tape and Kleenex and color codes |
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will make you safer? From Death Row this is Mumia Abu-Jamal |
