Colour Line - Asian Dub Foundation

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