White people are so scared of black people

They bulldoze out to the country and put up houses on little loop-d-loop streets

And while America gets its heart cut right out of its chest

The Berlin wall still runs down main street separating east side from west

And nothing is stirring not even a mouse in the boarded up stores and the broken down houses

So they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps

Just to prove they got no manners no mercy and no sense

And I wonder then what it will take for my city to rise

First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes

The ghost of old buildings are haunting parking lots in the city of good neighbors that history forgot

I remember the first time I saw someone lying on the cold street

I thought "I can't just walk past you this can't just be true "

But I learned by example to just keep moving my feet

It's amazing the things that we all learn to do

So we're led by denial like lambs to the slaughter

Serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water and the old farmroad's a four-lane

That leads to the mall and my dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall

And I wonder then what it will take for my country to rise

First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes

'Til nation's last taker succumbs to one last dumb decision

And America the beautiful is just one big subdivision

Ani Difranco