Black History (audio)

By Gil Scott-Heron

I was wondering about our yesterdays,
and digging through the rubble
and to say, the least somebody went
through a hell of a lot of trouble
to make sure that when we looked things up
we wouldn't fair too well
and we would come up with totally unreliable
pictures of ourselves.
But I compiled what few facts I could,
I mean, such as they are,
to see if we could find out a little bit of something
and this is what I got so far:

First, white folks discovered Africa
they claimed it fair and square.
Cecil Rhodes couldn't have been robbing nobody

'cause, hell, there was nobody there.
White folks brought all the civilization,
’cause there wasn't none around.
'how could the folks be civilized
when nobody was writing nothing down?'
And just to prove all their suspicions,
well, it didn't take too long.
They found out there were whole tribes of people

— in plain sight —

running around with no clothes on. That's right!
The men, the women, the young and old,
righteous folks covered their eyes.
And no time was spent considering the environment.
Hell no! this just wasn't civilized!
And another piece of information they had
or at least this is what we were taught
is that “unlike the civilized people of Europe”
these tribal units actually fought!
And yes, there were some “crude implements”
and yes, there was “primitive art”
and yes they were masters of hunting and fishing
and courtesy came from the heart.
And yes there was love, and medicine, religion,
inter-tribal communication by drum.
But no paper no pencils no other utensils
and hell, these folks never even heard of a gun.
And this is why the colonies came
to stabilize the land.
Because the Dark Continent had copper and gold
and the discoverers had themselves a plan.
They would “discover” all the places with promise.
And didn't need no titles or deeds.
Then they would appoint people to make everything legal,
to sanction the trickery and greed.
And back in the jungle when the natives got restless
they would call it  “guerilla attack”!
and they would never describe that folks finally got wise
and decided they would fight back.
But still we are victims of word games,
semantics is always a bitch:
places once referred to as under-developed”
are now called “mineral rich.”
And the game goes on eternally
unity kept just beyond reach
Egypt and Libya used to be in Africa,
but they've now been moved to the “Middle East.”
There are examples galore I assure you,
but if interpreting was left up to me
I'd be sure every time folks knew this version wasn't mine
which is why it is called “His-story.”

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Source: http://terryhowcott.com

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