Downcast - The Response from White America Lyrics

The first reign came hard. The second reign came after just ten years. The third reign we're watching now. Laws and words and rules. Words from the books of men. Books from the hands of men. Men from the pits of time. Words from a black mother: I knew it would happen to him, I just didn't know he'd be so young. Words from a black father: How much can a young man bear? How much until you're not a man?
These lyrics draw from The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, who writes about three historical periods in this country: slavery, Jim Crow, and this present era of mass incarceration, when the American prison population has grown from less than 200,000 in 1972 to 2.2 million today. In her description, these periods all have similar features, including an equally deliberate set of rules that enforce racial inequality. Today, communities of color in the United States are subject to a broad array of purposeful forces - systems of oppression - that carry forward the racial injustices of the past and that jeopardize the health, safety, and creative potential of millions of African American citizens. The words from the Black mother and father in this song are real, and they are as compelling as the full canon of Black artistic and political thought. Still, to all our detriment, the response from white America is virtual silence. Or worse, the responses defend the laws and words and rules that to this day pull from this grim past.