Colour Line Feat. Ambalavaner Sivanandan

today, the colour line/is the power line/is the poverty line

Racism and imperialism work in tandem
And poverty is their handmaiden

Those who are poor and powerless to break out of their poverty
Are also those who by and large are non-white, non-western, third world
Poverty and powerlessness are interwined in colour, in race
Discrimination and exploitation feed into each other today
Under global capitalism...

We are back to primitive accumulation - plunder on a world scale
Only this time, the pillage is accompanied by aid, sustained by expert
Advice and underpinned by programmes and policies that perpetuate dependency

The imf, the world bank, structural adjustment programmes
General agreement on tariffs and trade - gatt,
Are just a few of the organisations, schemes, projects
Which under the guise of developing the third world, plunder it.

Trade agreements and commodity price-fixing, patents and
Intellectual property rights
They lock them into paralytic dependency

There's no such thing as illegal immigrants, only illegal
Governments...

Black is not just the colour of our skins
It's the colour of our politics...

There's no such thing as illegal immigrants, only illegal
Governments...

Today, the colour line/is the power line/is the poverty line