South Somewhere Else

It was assumed that the South was a thing
 That took place somewhere else
 We grew up in a town that our parents just found
 On a job search and liked it quite well
 Who had so many friends who arrived just like them
 So their kids were our kin for a spell
 It was assumed that the South was a thing
 That took place somewhere else
 Like the feeling of home was a book on a loan
 From a college town private school shelf
 We took in every chapter with interest and laughter
 But never quite a sense of ourselves
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 A dangerous narrative, haunting imperative
 Led us little kids to believe
 That the place we were from shed a sheen we should shun
 Like the salt of the sweat dripping down from our sleeves
 It was assumed that the South was a thing
 That took place somewhere else
 Like the sun that went down on the edge of my town
 Progressed no further west as it fell
 And on visits to relatives, couldn't quite tell
 'Cause his pounding heart sank as they swelled
 It was assumed that the South was a thing
 That took place somewhere else
 As if Jim Crow geographies didn't haunt all of the
 Streetscapes we'd come to know well
 Not just the old neoclassical mansions we passed
 Or the high school had stories to tell
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 I mean, the segregate sound of that old college town
 Rings so loud to me now, I must say
 As we worked all-white restaurants, trash-talking debutantes
 Our nascent class conscience, obnoxious displays
 It was assumed that the South was a thing
 That took place somewhere else
 And maybe it was, which I say just because
 We weren't noticing where power was held
 Captivated, the capitol's capitacratical
 White liberal logics prevailed
 It was assumed that the South was a thing
 That took place somewhere else
 Multiracial resistance to greedful ambitions
 Cast out in revisionist spells
 Power concedes 'bout as much as it leads
 As we started to see for ourselves
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 It was assumed that the South was a thing that took place
 In a retrograde rendering of absolute space
 As though everything left in the world wasn't traced
 By production, subjection, resistance, escape
 Seen squarely through this disidentified gaze
 And through textbooks and TVs, our modernist ways
 Could never quite focus our participating
 Renewing, rejecting, affirming, negating