Lyrics Colour Line - Asian Dub Foundation

Colour Line

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 intertwined in colour, in race
Discrimination and exploitation feed into each other today, under global
capitalism
We are back to primitive exploitation
Plunder on a world scale
Only this time, the pillage is accompanied by aid, sustained by expert advice
and underpinned by programmes and polices 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 is no such thing as illegal immigrants, only illegal governments
Black is not just the colour of our skins, it is the colour of our politics
There is no such thing as illegal immigrants, only illegal governments
Today, the colour line
Is the power line
Is the poverty line