"You Don't See Me"

You don't see me, only the color of my skin
You see the product of your hatred multplied by ten but you don't see me being equal and free
Only that I was once consider property
In the darkest days of my history.

Yet I am the same man, whom you didn't consider a man
Though I planted your crops and farmed your land
You chose to hang me from the nearest tree
Whenever, I chose to make a stand.

So ironic how things come to be, how you still look through your eyes
But really don't see me; you see ghettos and drugs,
Black men with pistols, you call thugs and you act so afraid
Because you realize the picture you see is of yourself
After all the negative groundwork that you have laid

Sometimes I think you have forgotten just who raised your children
And picked your cotton
But remember one thing while you were in the big house entertaining
And your babies cried to eat
It was the milk from the breast of my mother
That your children found so tasty and sweet

But you don't see me, though you're staring me straight in the face
Because your mentality says I'm beneath you
And I should stay in my place
Oh what a painful burden it must really be
To always look...but never really see!

©2000 Thomas L. White III