I think that the main message behind the song is about the causes and effects of prejudices and discriminations. In the song, I can see that prejudices and discriminations cause a very huge destruction in the society from “People killing people dying / Children hurtin you hear them crying / Can practice what you preach / Would you turn the other cheek? / Father father father help us / Send some guidance from above / Cause people got me got me questioning / Where is the love?” This showed that even the children, being the purest stage of mankind, were even hurt and upset about what is going on. They are doubt the adults and questioned them if they could live up to what they say, furthermore, they are feeling so hopeless that they are calling upon the god to send some guidance from above as they cannot feel the love among people.
“Overseas yeah we tryin to stop terrorism / But we still got terrorists here livin”, this phrase suggests that USA fear of the extremists in the Muslims, or in other words, the terrorists, because they discriminate them. Therefore, rather than making peace with the Muslims, they actually try to stop them “overseas”, for example having war with Iraq. However, they seemed to be the one who is helping to maintain peace in the world, whereas actually, they did not even maintain peace in their own country.
For example, like what the lyrics revealed, in USA, there are organizations that caused the citizens in USA to live in constant fear and paranoia. The “KKK”, which is also known as the Ku Klux Klan, instills terror in the citizens because they are white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration and anti-communist, and expressed their believes, or maybe discriminations, through terrorism. The “Crips” are notoriously known to be one of the largest and most violent associations that are involved in murders, robberies and drug dealing and they are rivalry between them and the other street gangs known as “Bloods”.
The song also conveyed a message that it was cinemas that changed our values of humanity, fairness and equality: “Infecting their young minds faster than bacteria / Kids wanna act like what the see in the cinema / Whatever happened to the values of humanity / Whatever happened to the fairness and equality”, this also showed that if we want the world to change, we must start with ourselves, and not let our next generation carry on the mistakes we made.
I have the strongest feeling for the lyrics:
“As I'm getting older y'all people get colder
Most of us only care about money makin
Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction
… …
Instead of spreading love, we're spreading animosity
Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity”
I think that this part of the song reflects very well and very precise on how the society is going on now. Just take me as an example. When I am small, I feel that the friendship between my friends is all very genuine and real. However, now that I am in secondary school, I feel that people might seem very close to you and understanding, whereas actually they are just taking advantage of you if you are very good in academic grades. For example, when real problems come, they might just leave you to face the problem alone. Therefore, I agree that “people get colder” when we get older as we would be starting to think who are the better friends to go with. In the past, friends are just playmates and we could talk to them from the bottommost of our heart, now it is a lot different. Hence, I totally agree with the sentence “Most of us only care about money makin / Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction”, though it might not be earning money, I agree that as we grow older, we would be more and more selfish, and we would never be able to lead a simple and straightforward life. Therefore, we are getting more and more hostile to each other and start to lack understanding for one another, because we rarely treat each other truthfully and do not pour our hearts out to them. Now, I still find my primary school friends more frank. Just why can’t we be united and have our hearts linked together nowadays?
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