Kery James
Lettre à la République (English Translation)
Letter to the Republic
To all those racists with hypocritical tolerance
Who built their nation on blood
And now pose as sermonizer
Riches raiders, african killers
Colonist, algerian torturers
This colonial past, it's yours
You chose to bind your story to ours
Now, you have to face it
Thje smell of blood follows you even if you put perfume
Us, arabs and black
We're not here by blind luck
Every arrival has its beginning
You wished for immigration
Thanks to it you filled your bellies up, until indigestion
I think France never was charitable
Immigrants are just cheap working force
Keep to yourselves your republican illusion
Of a gentle France violated by the African immigration
Ask to the Senegalese riflemen and the harkis
Who took advantage ofwho ?
The Republic's innocent only in your dreams
And you've got clean hands only in your lies
Us, arabs and black
We're not here by blind luck
Every arrival has its beginning
But you thought that as time passes
Negros would mutate and become white ?
But human nature brushed off your prospects
We can't integrate in rejection
We can't integrate in the french ghettos, parked
With other immigrants, get some sense !
How can you pinpoint communities who turn in on themselves
When you initiated it with the Ghettos of Nanterre
Pyroman and fireman, Your memory is selective
You didn't come in peace your story is agressive
Here, we're better off than there, we know it
'Cause for you decolonization is destabilization
And the more I look at history the less I feel beholden
I only know what it's like to be black since the time of the backpack
And even if I am not ungrateful, I don't want to thank you
Because what I have here I had to conquer it
I grewup in Orly, in the favellas of France
I bloomed in th scrub I'm at war since my childhood
Narcotrafic, hold-up, violence... Crimes !
What do my brothers do expect money just like Clear... stream
Who could sermon them ? You ?
Misuser of company property, frauders
True thugs in suits, bags of hypocrites !
Do the french people have the leaders they deserve ?
At the heart of the debates, debates without any heart
It's always the same one you point your finger at in your france of grudge
In the middle of an economic crisis, you need a guilty party
And it's straight to Muslims that all your blows come flyin'
I ain't afraid to write : France is islamophobic
And nobody's hiding it anymore in the xenophobic France
You treat us as less than human beings on your public tv
And you'd want us to scream : Hail to the Republique ?
My respect got raped in this country said to be the one of Human rights
It's hard to feel french without Stockholm syndrome
Because I'm black, muslim, hoodrat and proud of it !
And when you see me you can put a face on what the other France hates
This are the same hypocrites who talk about diversity
And express their racism under the cover of laicity
They dream of a unique french, a sole identity
And keep discriminating the same minorities
In front of the same electers, the same fears are shaken
We put communities against one another, just to hide precariousness
And please don't be amazed if tomorow all this shit blows up
How can we like a counrty who refuses to accept us
Far from transparent artists, I write this text as a mirror
France should take a hard look at it if she wants to look at herself
It'll break the illusion she has got of herself
I ain't missing her affection
You've got to understand I ain't waiting for her love anymore !