What It Means

He was running down the street when they shot him in his tracks

About the only thing agreed upon is he ain’t coming back

There won’t be any trial so the air it won’t be cleared

There’s just two sides calling names out of anger and of fear

If you say it wasn’t racial when they shot him in his tracks

well I guess that means that you ain’t black, it means that you ain’t black

I mean Barack Obama won and you can choose where to eat

but you don’t see too many white kids lying bleeding on the street

In some town in Missouri but it could be anywhere

it could be right here on Ruth Street, in fact it’s happened here

and it happened where you’re sitting, wherever that might be

It happened last weekend and it will happen again next week

And when they turned him over, they were surprised there was no gun

I mean, he must have done something, or else why would he have run

And they’ll spin it for the anchors on the television screen

so we can shrug and let it happen without asking what it means

What it means?

Then I guess there was protesting and some looting in some stores

and someone was reminded that they ain’t called colored folks no more

I mean we try to be politically correct when we call names

but what’s the point of post-racial when the old prejudice remains?

And that guy who killed that kid down in Florida standing ground

is free to beat up on his girlfriend and wave his brand new gun around

while some kid is dead and buried and laying in the ground

with a pocket full of Skittles

What it means?

Astrophysics at our fingertips and we’re standing at the summit

Some man with a joystick lands a rocket on a comet

We’re living in an age where limitations are forgotten

The outer edges move and dazzle us but the core is something rotten

Cause we’re standing at the precipice of prejudice and fear

We trust science just as long as it tells us what we want to hear

We want our truths all fair and balanced as long as our notions lie within it

There’s no sunlight in our asses and our heads are stuck up in it

And our heroes may be rapists who watch us while we dream

but don’t look to me for answers cuz I don’t know what it means

What it means?