An Education of Discrimination — Spoken Word by JJ ‘Compass’

Lon­don based — spoken word artist  JJ ‘Com­pass’ expresses a needed truth !

An Edu­ca­tion of Dis­crim­in­a­tion 

So what’s the grounds for dis­crim­in­a­tion?
Female, poor, brown, from a dif­fer­ent nation?
Faith, face shape, sexu­al ori­ent­a­tion?
Abil­ity, polit­ics, lost gen­er­a­tions?

I’ve felt the force,
Of ignor­ance with no remorse,
Telling me my melan­in,
Must dic­tate my course.

Like the skin, not what’s in,
Is where our des­tinies begin.
Yeah the his­tory is here,
But life’s not just where we’ve been.

I always try to live this,
Break free from the stiff­ness.
Not warped by the woes of the world,
That I’ve wit­nessed.

I remem­ber days past,
School pulled from stand­ard class.
For a spe­cial­ised pro­ject,
But to me it was a farce.

See, the inten­tion that was men­tioned,
Was the ignor­ance pre­ven­tion,
Of the struggle in our veins,
Of the chains and deten­tions.

For the know­ledge I was grate­ful,
I lay that on the table,
but so less impressed,
How we were sor­ted and labelled.

See with this pro­ject,
You could only get in,
If you had tanned, brown,
Black, Melan­in skin.

So while teach­er go on,
‘bout tak­ing pride in ‘our side’,
I can’t not notice,
This classroom apartheid.

It didn’t gel with me,
But she didn’t seem to see.
That we shouldn’t segreg­ate,
This Human His­tory.

See my blood bears,
Col­on­iser and Colony.
From both ‘sides’ stares,
But won’t let that both­er me.

So, just as I,
Won’t split myself in half.
Neither should this know­ledge,
Be col­our filtered in class.

How can we decon­struct,
These social con­structs,
That have strangled so many,
Left so many so fucked.

If the very found struc­ture,
Of the sys­tem that we learn,
Can’t provide some instruc­tion,
To fix bridges that were burned?

-The times are a ‘chan­ging.
And we shall over­come.
So at this dawn­ing of a dream,
Let us rise, like the Sun.