When Adam Levine sings

Take us to the promised land

Don't just make us promises

It's too late to let go of our hands

The rest of the world makes the realization that America has always held on a little too tightly to their white children’s hands

The rest of the world makes the realization that the “us” Adam sings about

Is the “us” borne from the mother of White Supremacy

The rest of the world realizes that the “promised land” Adam speaks of

Are the mother lands of children with melanin far more deep - rooted

Than Adam’s white skin

And we realize this sooner than you think we do

Because we have been through this before

When America first wanted to take its children to the “promised lands”

So they could see all the monkeys that ran about

And all the other wild animals in need of being tamed

And after America promised all of his white sons and daughters

A wild animal of their own to tame

We became the “animals”

Became the uncivilized

And so they ripped us from our homes

Gave us less than a shack to sleep in and made us call that a house

They beat the word human out of us

Until we were seen as nothing less than monster

And I wonder America

Did you realize after you stole our strength

How fragile we are

Without the bones from our bodies to help us stay in place

And when we asked you for one thing

You couldn't provide it for us

But we gave you everything

Sorry, I meant

You stripped us from  everything

The first thing you stole from us were our voices

You sewed our lips shut

Took the songs out of our songs

And so you thought we'd be silent

But we found rhythm in our heart beats

And made a move towards our freedom

Now we are

Headed to the promised land

The land we made our promises

To never let go of each other’s hands

Because all we ever had were each other

And I can’t say all of us survived America

Can’t say we all lived through it to tell our stories

Can’t say we didn’t lose people on the way of going back to where we came from

Like America wanted us to do

As if we weren’t dragged from our motherlands and forced to live in America

To be considered “wild animals”  

Instead of lost children

As if we remembered where our ancestors’ homes were located

After America’s children burned the only map we had to lead us home

As if going home wasn’t a struggle within itself

Considering we had no help from anyone but ourselves

And we are no GPS

We just followed the trails of our sadness

Followed the trail of broken shackles

From the family members of our lineage we never got to meet

Never knew about from our history

Because American history never told us anything about us

After all American history is about America

It is his story even though he skips a lot of the scenes

He only considers himself to be the good guy, the hero

Never anything less than

But treated us less than

And laughed at our struggles to make it home

Laughed at the way we had to rebuild home from the rubble of his destruction

And I guess the joke’s on him

The way he thought we’d never make it

But here we are

At last, here we are

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