2012년 3월 28일 수요일

Society's Child -- Janis Ian


Come to my door, baby,  face is clean and shining black as night.
My mother went to answer, you know,  and you looked so fine.
Now I can understand your tears and your shame.  She called you "boy" instead of 
your name.  When she wouldn't let you inside.  When she turned and said
"But honey, he's not our kind."   She said I can't see you any more, baby.
Can't see you anymore.

Walk me down to school, baby.  Everybody's acting deaf and blind.
Until they turn and say  why don't you stick to your own kind.
My teachers all laugh, they smirk and stare.  Cutting deep down in our affair.
Preachers of equality. They say "Believe us"  but why won't they just let us be?
They say I can't see you anymore, baby.  Can't see you anymore.

One of these days I'm gonna stop my listening,  Gonna raise my head up high.
One of these days I'm gonna raise my glistening wings and fly.
But that day will have to wait for awhile.  Baby, I'm only society's child.
When we're older things may change.  But for now this is the way they must remain.

I say I can't see you any more, baby.  Can't see you anymore.
No, I don't wanna see you any more, baby.


This song is about an interracial romance. Janis was living in an all-black neighborhood in East Orange, NJ, where she was one of 5 white kids in the school. She told us: "I saw it from both ends. I was seeing it from the end of all the civil rights stuff on the television and radio, of white parents being incensed when their daughters would date black men, and I saw it around me when black parents were worried about their sons or daughters dating white girls or boys. I don't think I knew where I was going when I started it, but when I hit the second line, 'face is clean and shining black as night,' it was obvious where the song was going."                                                                                                                  (songfacts) 

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