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




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