Shatter the Stereotypes

After studying ethics and international justice, and conducting research in Greece last summer about immigration I have been thinking a lot about the sentiments, intuitions, and justifications for borders and constricting the movement of people. Now I have friends in Rome, Italy and they report to me many of the same things that I have experienced, observed and studied. That is when it dawned on my that the issue of Feudal Privilege is more than just an American thing. In fact, what I have observed is that the same arguments exist all over the world for constricting the movement of people. What it tends to come down to is fear, which is caused by concern over access to resources.

Scarcity is a thing that is created by those who control the resources we have. It is a fact that there is enough produced on the planet to feed everyone on the planet, but that is not profitable. It is also the case that empires still exist. It is more hidden because states have been replaced by corporations, but the results are the same, people are relegated to inferior positions as a labor force. To maintain the public’s adherence to the arbitrary borders that have been drawn the people have to believe that they will benefit from them; in other words, those within certain borders receive a privilege simply because of where they happen to be born. Then the people who have this privilege seek to protect the rewards that result from it and this is what social scientist would call Inclusive Fitness; i.e., making sure that those who share their genes have what is necessary to promote the flourishing of those genes. What this does is place groups in competition over the access to resources and this competition leads to the formation of Stereotypes.

There is a point in time that in many regions that it may have been necessary to form stereotypes about particular groups that others competed with, simply for survival’s sake. Heuristics is the term that social scientist use to describe the immediate association of something so that the brain can focus on what it needs in order to survive. Stereotypes help this process because it assists in the identification of potential threats and permits immediate response to those threats. The problem is that social conventions, such as stereotypes, have a way of becoming traditions, and traditions tend to outlive their necessity for functioning. Yet, while it may have been the case that there was a time the these stereotypes were necessary, they have now become tradition and have come to cause more harm then good because they have lost their usefulness.

This song addresses the core of those beliefs that persist today, which are based on false perceptions and maintain the feudal privilege wall thus, barring access to resources to others.

Chorus

We have to smash the Stereotypes

Breaking our ties, and robbing our Rights

Destroying our Lives, Confounded with Lies

Open your Eyes, We have to Devise

A way to Revise, the Power Divides

If no one Abides, and no one Complies

Then the Privilege dies, and we’re up on the Rise

For the Surmise, reject the Lies

Verse One

Slam shut, closed tight,

Kept out, that’s right

Can’t be havin immigrants

Stealin jobs, becoming plights

A tax payer burden

Burning holes up in they pockets

Cuz all of them are jobless

Homeless, robbers

Liars and connivers

Will be Filling up our streets

Our Hospitals are breached

Obamacare defeats

They looking for a hand out

Not to come here and compete

Wanna lay at home and get a check

Having babies, living fat

Using all our resources, not adding to the pot

Invading our culture bringing junk that we will naught

The freedom of association is a right to stop

You from coming in my house, yo, somebody call a cop

Verse Two

It’s the same everywhere you go

Unrestrained, regrettable

People are hated, cuz their rated as detestable

Labeled as the ‘other’ and a ‘foil’ to amenable

Discounted as a human, till you think they are an ‘animal’

This feudal privilege paradox

Boxes I would rather not

Have to shatter from the start

Migration is a normal part

Natural in the truest form

Corrupted from cuneiform

Specialized the labor force

Till work is what they’re bringing home

Stacked against the odds

Now they’re fighting for their jobs

Against those they once called friends

Work drove a wedge; between them

The demon competition, risen

Derision made incisions in them

Hatred spewing venom in’em

(Ster-eo-types)

Verse Three

The danger is a single story

Robs us all of glory

Paints as the enemy

The phantom of the Tory
Afraid of change

And thus estranged

And campaigns,

A, moratory

To keep at odds

The working class

Surviving in the allegory

By listing our differences

Focusing on pittances

Heightening the instances

We resort to hate

Lashing out with violence

At those who come to make

A new life for themselves

Their family and to break

Away from troubled markets

Hardest fact to harvest here

Is the reason they’re in trouble

Is because they’re labor fare

And are the work force

Producing our food

Can’t let them move and undo

The undue (HARM)

Verse Four

It’s simply not true

That migrants

Are lazy, crime driven individuals

When in truth they are

Some of the hardest working,

Tax paying, community, contributors

And they tend not to benefit

On systems that the rest of us

Take for granted, blasphemous

But that’s the way it is

And to top it all off

They re-invigorate culture

Their constant flux of ideas

Remolds us

But conservative elites

Would have us believe

Without a reprieve that scarcity

Is a thing that we need

as humanity, the vanity

disparaging it is

that falsities and half-truths

found the feudal privilege

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