The White Shore lyrics

We grew up into lives scrawled on back of mediated maps
In their lines invisibly entrapped
And this birthright, more like a birthmark
Whose area and edges grow ragged with age

A malignancy untested
It consumes us anyway
It consumes us anyway
It consumes us anyway

I grew up near the white shore
Without ever knowing that name
Just how lines starkly drawn will check you in one box or another
And in the space between past and passing

We have classroom discussions of Amy Tan novels
But this is personal
Family is always personal
History is always personal

I will not condemn what anyone did to survive
But I will not defend a culture that makes us decide
To assimilate or die
Or that defines survival as

Running as fast as you can from the places
You came from, forgetting the things that have made us
Till all that is left is the burning in your lungs
Or the pounding in your heart that only has space for
Contempt for the ones who couldn't quite make it
That we are all the same: what a happy myth
Where race records become erased records
With time and meter to help us forget
Or to take away the sting as we define survival as

Running as fast as we can from the places we came from
Forgetting the things that have made us
Until all that is left is the burning in our lungs or
The pounding in our heart that only has space for
Contempt for the ones who couldn't quite make it