When Adam Levine Sings
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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