The Last Poets, Niggaz Are Scared Of Revolution



Niggers are scared of revolution
But niggers shouldn't be scared of revolution
Because revolution is nothing but change
And all niggers do is change
Niggers come in from work and change into pimping clothes
and hit the streets to make some quick change
Niggers change their hair from black to red to blond
and hope like hell their looks will change
Nigger kill other niggers
Just because one didn't receive the correct change
Niggers change from men to women, from women to men
Niggers change, change, change
You hear niggers say
Things are changing? Things are changing?
Yeah, things are changing
Niggers change into 'Black' nigger things
Black nigger things that go through all kinds of changes
The change in the day that makes them rant and rave
Black Power! Black Power!
And the change that comes over them at night, as they sigh and moan:
White thighs, ooh, white thighs
Niggers always goin' through bullshit change
But when it comes for real change,
Niggers are scared of revolution
Niggers are actors, niggers are actors
Niggers act like they are in a hurry
to catch the first act of the 'Great White Hope'
Niggers try to act like Malcolm
And when the white man doesn't react
toward them like he did Malcolm
Niggers want to act violently
Niggers act so coooool and slick
causing white people to say:
What makes you niggers act like that?
Niggers act like you ain't never seen nobody act before
But when it comes to acting out revolution
Niggers say: 'I can't dig them actions!'
Niggers are scared of revolution
Niggers are very untogether people
Niggers talk about getting high and riding around in 'els'
Niggers should get high and ride to hell
Niggers talk about pimping
Pimping that, pimping what
Pimping yours, pimping mine
Just to be pimping, is a helluva line
Niggers are very untogether people
Niggers talk about the mind
Talk about: My mind is stronger than yours
"I got that bitch's mind uptight!"
Niggers don't know a damn thing about the mind
Or they'd be right
Niggers are scared of revolution
Niggers fuck. Niggers fuck, fuck, fuck
Niggers love the word fuck
They think it's so fuckin' cute
They fuck you around
The first thing they say when they're mad: 'Fuck it'
You play a little too much with them
They say 'Fuck you'
When it's time to TCB,
Niggers are somewhere fucking
Try to be nice to them, they fuck over you
Niggers don't realize while they doin' all this fucking
They're getting fucked around
And when they do realize it's too late
So niggers just get fucked up
Niggers talk about fucking
Fuckin' that, fuckin' this, fuckin' yours, fuckin' my sis
Not knowing what they're fucking for
They ain't fucking for love and appreciation
Just fucking to be fucking.
Niggers fuck white thighs, black thighs, yellow thighs, brown thighs
Niggers fuck ankles when they run out of thighs
Niggers fuck Sally, Linda, and Sue
And if you don't watch out
Niggers will fuck you!
Niggers would fuck 'Fuck' if it could be fucked
But when it comes to fucking for revolutionary causes
Niggers say 'Fuck revolution!'
Niggers are scared of revolution
Niggers are players, niggers are players, are players
Niggers play football, baseball and basketball
while the white man cuttin' off their balls
When the nigger's play ain't tight enough
to play with some black thighs,
Niggers play with white thighs
to see if they still have some play left
And when there ain't no white thighs to play with
Niggers play with themselves
Niggers tell you they're ready to be liberated
But when you say 'Let's go take our liberation'
Niggers reply: 'I was just playin'
Niggers are playing with revolution and losing
Niggers are scared of revolution
Niggers do a lot of shootin'
Niggers do a lot of shootin'
Niggers shoot off at the mouth
Niggers shoot pool, niggers shoot craps
Niggers cut around the corner and shoot down the street
Niggers shoot sharp glances at white women
Niggers shoot dope into their arm
Niggers shoot guns and rifles on New Year's Eve
A new year that is coming in
The white police will do more shooting at them
Where are niggers when the revolution needs some shots!?
Yeah, you know. Niggers are somewhere shootin' the shit
Niggers are scared of revolution
Niggers are lovers, niggers are lovers are lovers
Niggers love to see Clark Gable
make love to Marilyn Monroe
Niggers love to see Tarzan fuck all the natives
Niggers love to hear the Lone Ranger yell "Heigh Ho Silver!"
Niggers love commercials, niggers love commercials
Oh how niggers love commercials:
"You can take niggers out of the country, but
you can't take the country out of niggers"
Niggers are lovers, are lovers, are lovers
Niggers loved to hear Malcolm rap
But they didn't love Malcolm
Niggers love everything but themselves
But I'm a lover too, yes I'm a lover too
I love niggers, I love niggers, I love niggers
Because niggers are me
And I should only love that which is me
I love to see niggers go through changes
Love to see niggers act
Love to see niggers make them plays and shoot the shit
But there is one thing about niggers I do not love
Niggers are scared of revolution

http://www.lyricsmania.com/niggaz_are_scared_of_revolution_lyrics_last_poets_the.html

…legislators do not follow poll results. The quality of government, I might add, would be appreciably better if they did. Legislators are not particularly responsive to public opinion, chiefly because they become entrapped and enmeshed in the power struggle and archaic rules within their own establishment. We are often told that the function of leadership is to lead. Not poll results, but that inner voice alone, should be heeded. This is an attractive and appealing concept of leadership and one which has intrigued mankind from the earliest days. Unfortunately, it fits perfectly such eminent leaders as Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Premier Stalin. All three had supreme contempt for the views of the mass of people. Hitler, you may recall, described the common people as “mere ballot cattle.” This is not the kind of leadership we want. In a democracy we demand that the views of the people be taken into account. This does not mean that leaders must follow the public’s views slavishly; it does mean that they should have available an accurate appraisal of public opinion and take some account of it in reaching their decision. (George Gallup, “Polls and the Political Process—Past, Present, and Future,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter, 1965-1966), pp. 547-8 at pp. 544-549)

The core of the anarchist tradition is that power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian, hierarchic relation is legitimate. If they can’t prove it, then it should be dismantled. Can you ever prove it? Well, it’s a heavy burden of proof to bear, but I think sometimes you can bear it. But the question that always should be asked uppermost in our mind is, Why should I accept it? It’s the responsibility of those who exercise power to show that somehow it’s legitimate. It’s not the responsibility of anyone else to show that it’s illegitimate. It’s illegitimate by assumption. If it’s a relation of authority among human beings which places some above others, that’s illegitimate by assumption. Unless you can give a strong argument to show that it’s right, you’ve lost. (Noam Chomsky)

Religion is the opiate of the masses in the sense that it is “the instrument of those who rule in that it disinvests people of their own powers by investing God with all power and thereby rendering them submissive and deferential toward the status quo.” (Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader, p. 431)




Karl Marx’s critique of religion as an impotent form of protest against suffering has an element of truth. Religion has tended to legitimize and undergird forms of oppression precisely because it provided a critique that remained spiritual and had very little understanding of the social, economic and political conditions that were sustaining the oppression. At its best, religion can provide us with the vision and the values, but it doesn’t provide the analytical tools. One doesn’t look to the Bible to understand the complexity of the modern industrial and postindustrial society. It can give us certain insights into the human condition, certain visions of what we should hope for, but we also need the tools. They are found outside of religious texts and outside of religious sensibilities. We move to the social sciences for some handle on the maldistribution of resources, wealth, income, prestige and influence in our society. So all forms of prophetic religion must be linked in some sense with a set of analytical tools. (Ibid., p. 298)

The cult of authority [is] the necessary outcome of religious education, that historical source of all of the people’s misfortunes, depravities and slavishness. (Michael Bakunin)






Governmental fetishism, like religious fetishism, has always perpetuated slavery. (Peter Kropotkin)





The custodial, transcendental, centralist State is the lackey and alter ego of the Church, and as such the permanent source of poverty, degradation and subjugation among the people. (Bakunin)

American politics are deeply contradictory of course, but anti-intellectualism . . . is the common strain. This includes a deep suspicion of anything that isn’t simple, fundamental, traditional, down-to-earth and American in the ideological sense, and can be exploited easily by demagogues and cynical politicians of the right. The key word is freedom, which includes the freedom to own and use firearms, the freedom to trade and use the marketplace without restraint even if it means serious injury to health and decency, the freedom above all to make America’s will rule all over the earth. (Edward Said)

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Gore Vidal has observed that America is not, contrary to popular mythology, a country founded by the religiously persecuted. It was started by Puritan zealots who left England because they were not allowed to persecute others. The Puritans (Pilgrims) went to Holland seeking a more compatible atmosphere, but then migrated to America because in Holland they saw themselves being absorbed into a society that had, by their lights, altogether too much freedom of all kinds, including real religious freedom. (William Blum, Irreverent Observations, http://killinghope.org/bblum6/journal.htm)

It is the courage to seek the truth and to speak it that can save us from the narcotic of self-deception. And each of us has access to some bit of truth that needs to be spoken. It is a paradox of our time that those with power are too comfortable to notice the pain of those who suffer, and those who suffer have no power. (Daniel Goleman)

The Church fixes the minds of the workers upon the next world and so distracts their attention from the pressing task of making the present world a decent place to live in. I have heard it said: “The preacher points your eyes to heaven, and then the boss picks your pocket.” “Religion is the opiate of the people.” (A.J. Muste)

A human being is part of the whole called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. (Albert Einstein)

[A]s long as we have a master in heaven we shall be slaves on earth. Our reason and will-power will be equally nullified. As long as we believe that we owe absolute obedience—and no other kind is possible in the sight of God—we are bound to submit, passively and uncritically, to the divine authority of his spokesmen and his elect: Messiahs, prophets, divinely inspired legislators, emperors, kings and all their dignitaries and ministers, the representatives and devoted servants of the two great institutions which inflict themselves upon ourselves as God’s instruments for the guidance of men. Those institutions are Church and State: all temporal or human authority derives directly from spiritual or divine authority. But authority is denial of liberty, therefore God, or rather the fiction of God, is the sanction and the intellectual and moral source of all slavery on earth, and men’s liberty will not be complete until it has utterly eradicated the pernicious fiction of a heavenly master. (Michael Bakunin)

I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. . . .When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. . . .True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. (Martin Luther King)

Even if one is not an actual immigrant or expatriate, it is still possible to think as one, to imagine and investigate in spite of barriers, and always to move away from the centralizing authorities towards the margins where you see things that are usually lost on minds that have never traveled beyond the conventional and comfortable....[T]o be as marginal and undomesticated as someone who is in real exile is for an intellectual to be unusually responsive to the traveler rather than the potentate, to the provisional and risky rather than the habitual, to innovation and experiment than the authoritatively given status quo. (Edward Said)

Even from a relative, let alone an absolute viewpoint, there is hardly one man in a thousand of whom it could be said that his wants and thoughts are his own. Both among the ignorant masses and the civilized and privileged classes, the vast majority of human individuals want and think only what the surrounding world wants and thinks: they probably believe that their minds are their own, but they are tied to the servile, routine regurgitation of thoughts and wishes of others, with utterly imperceptible, empty modifications.” (Michael Bakunin)

Th[e] perfect adaptation to society’s norms—in other words, to what is called ‘healthy normality—carries with it the danger that such a person can be used for practically any purpose. It is not a loss of autonomy that occurs here, because this autonomy never existed, but a switching of values, which in themselves are of no importance anyway for the person in question as long as his whole value system is dominated by the principle of obedience. He has never gone beyond the stage of idealizing his parents with their demands for unquestioning obedience; this idealization can easily be transferred to a Führer or to an ideology. Since authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for their children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or not. And how is this to be judged? Where are the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been told what was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity to become familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts at criticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threatening for the child? If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those with more power will always seem too threatening to him. (Alice Miller)

Our seemingly insatiable quest for money and material consumption is in fact a quest to fill a void in our lives created by a lack of love. It is a consequence of dysfunctional societies in which money has displaced our sense of spiritual connection as the foundation of our cultural values and relationships. The result is a world of material scarcity, massive inequality, overtaxed environmental systems, and social disintegration. As long as we embrace money-making as our collective purpose and structure our institutions to give this goal precedence over all others, the void in our lives will grow and the human crisis will deepen. (David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, Bloomfield (CT): Kumerian Press, 2001, pp. 239-40)

As the generations pass they grow worse. A time will come when they have grown so wicked that they will worship power; might will be right to them and reverence for the good will cease to be. At last, when no man is angry any more at wrongdoings or feels shame in the presence of the miserable, Zeus will destroy them too. And yet even then something might be done, if only the common people would rise and put down rulers that oppress people. (Greek myth on the Iron Age)

You’re obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That’s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. (Otave Mirbeau)

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. ... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters… Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. (Frederick Douglass, 1857)

In each country a web of myths evolves that allows the loyal citizenry to feel good about their nation, that depicts it and its people as generous, progressive, decent to a fault in its international behavior. People who question these myths, whether myths about a beneficent past, or the myths currently employed to put today’s actions and policies in a favorable light, are thus highly offensive to good taste and basic feelings of right and wrong. These doubters of myths may even pose a threat to communal integration and policy, which rest on this foundation of myths, and societies therefore usually have methods for containing or squelching critics who raise such questions. (Edward Herman)