These lyrics came to me months ago, after an impassioned conversation with my bandmate Nick. We were talking about how incomprehensible it is to us to want to enslave, to oppress, to belittle, to bully, anybody. Never mind actually doing it.
Doesn’t mean we don’t have prejudices, fears, concerns about people who may look and act different. But he, as a white British guy and I, as an African American woman, have in common that we know that our knee-jerk reactions are just that. We talk through uncomfortable stuff sometimes because talking it through helps to get the anxiety out into the open. The unspoken end goal is to be better people. And better means being, not ‘colour-blind’, but open-minded and self-aware.
Treating people as you want to be treated – that concept informs this song. I know it’s much, much too late for the slaver and the enabler to do anything about what they did to their fellow human beings.
But if I could talk with them, I think this is at least part of what I’d say:
