The lyrics to the song are supposedly filled with historical facts. Are any of these claims accurate?

by ObieUno

Artist: Ras Kass

Album: Soul On Ice

Year: 1996


Lyrics


Let freedom ring with a buckshot, but not just yet

First, we need to truly understand the nature of the threat

And a pale man walks in the threshold of darkness

Roughly 20,000 years ago the first humans evolved

With the phenotypical trait, genetic recessive

Blue eyes, blonde hair and white skin

Albinism apparently was a sin to the original man, Africans

So the mutants traveled North of the equator

Called Europeans later, the first race haters

So here's the Devil's alpha to the beta

Cause history's best qualified to teach one

Quoting German philosopher Schopenhauer

"Every white man is a faded or a bleached one"

Migration created further mutation

Genetic drifts, evolution through recombination

Adaptation to the climate

As the Caucus mountain man reverted to that of a primate

Savage Neanderthals, until the late Paleolithic age

That's when the Black Grimaldi man came

With the symbol of the dragon, fire and art

Check cave paintings in France and Spain to the Venus of Willendorf

Around 2000 B.C. Southern Russians migrate in small units

Those who travel West populated Europe

Those who went East settled in Iran, known as Aryans

1500 B.C. some crossed the Khyber Pass into India and

Created Hinduism, the first caste system, the origins of racism

A white dot on the forehead meant elite

The black dot - defeat; untrustable, untouchables

They wrote the holy Vedas in Sanskrit

That's the language that created Greek, German, Latin and English

Now the Minoans around 2000 B.C

Starts on the island of Crete, in the Agean Sea

The Greek culture begins Western Civilization

But "Western Civilization" means "white domination"

Mycenaeans learned from Kemet, called Egypt in Greek

It existed since at least 3000 B.C

Creatin' geometry and astronomy

This knowledge influenced Plato, Socrates and Hippocrates

Cause Imhotep, the real real father of medicine

Was worshiped in Greece and Rome in the form of a Black African

The word Africa comes from the Greek "Aphrike"

Meaning "without cold"; the word philosophy means "love of knowledge"

Stole from first man, Greek power expands

The first Greek fraternities band

The word gymnasium is Greek for "naked"

This was the place where adolescent boys were educated, and molested

This was accepted because Greek culture was homosexual

For example, Sappho trained girls on the island of Lesbos;

Hence, the word word Lesbian. [Ey, let these dumb motherfuckers know!]

December 25th, the birth of Saturn

A homosexual god, now check the historical pattern

December 25th, now thought the birth of Christ

Was Saturnalia, when men got drunk

Fucked each other then beat their wife

Fact is, it was still practiced, 'til they called it Christmas

So put a gerbil on your Christmas list

The Hellenistic Era, Alexander the Great

Conquers all the way to India leavin' four successor states

By the Fifth century B.C., R.O.M.E

Succeeds to be the conqueror of Egypt and Greece

But had the threat of the Black Phoenicians in Sicily

The Punic Wars began 264 B.C

The Black general Hannibal and Carthaginian Peace

In 146 B.C. Carthage fell after a six-month siege

Rome sold every citizen to slavery

The first genocide of history

And more bisexuality in sight; Julius Caesar was known as

"every woman's husband and every man's wife"

Spartacus Revolt, a slave rebellion that lost

Where 6,000 slaves was nailed on a cross

Cross, aw, shit, Jesus Christ, Time for some act-right

Christians get your facts right

Cause Christ was not his name

That's Greek for "One who is anointed"

Yeshua Ben Yosef was his name, do Christians know this?

So who do you praise, do you know his name

Or do you do this in vain

Accepting the religion they gave slaves to behave

Peep the description of historian Josephus

"Short, dark, with an underdeveloped beard was Jesus"

He had the Romans fearin' revolution

The solution was to take him to court and falsely accuse him

After being murdered by Pilate how can it be

These same white Romans established Christianity

Constantine would later see the cross in a dream

In his vision, it read In hoc signo vinces

"In this sign we conquer" - Manifest Destiny

In 325 he convened the Nicene Creed and separated god into three

Decided Jesus was born on December 25th

And raised then on the third day is a myth

Plus to deceive us

Commissioned Michelangelo to paint white pictures of Jesus

He used his aunt, uncle, and nephew

Subconsciously that affects you

It makes you put white people closer to God

True indeed, fuck it, Jihad

In the eight century Muslims conquered

Spain, Portugal and France and controlled it for 700 years

They never mention this in history class

Cause o'fays are threatened when you get the real lesson

Moors from Baghdad, Turkey threatened European Christians

Meaning, the white way of life; hence the Crusades for Christ

On November 25th, 1491

Santiago defeats the last Muslim stronghold, Granada

King Ferdinand gave thanks to God for victory

And the Pope of Rome and declared this date to forever be

A day of "Thanksgiving" for all European Christians

Now listen, when you celebrate "Thanksgiving"

What you are actually celebratin'

Is the proclamation of the Pope of Rome

Who later, in league with Queen Isabella

Sent Cardinal Ximenos to Spain To murder any blacks that resisted Christianity

These Moors, these black men and women were from Baghdad, Turkey

And today, you eat the turkey, for your "Thanksgiving" day

As the European powers destroyed the Turkeys

Who were the forefathers of your mothers and fathers

Now fight the power, you bitch-ass niggas

Now around this time, Whites started callin' us Negroes

That's Spanish for black object meaning we're not really people

But property, and the triangle trade begins - they seize us

Queen Elizabeth sends the first slaves on a ship named Jesus

Stealin' land from the indigenous natives

Gave them alcohol to keep the Red Man intoxicated

Whites claim they had to civilize these pagan animals

But up until 1848 there's documented cases

Of whites bein the savage cannibals, eatin' Indians

In 1992, it's Jeffery Dahmer

They slaughtered a whole race with guns

Drugs, priests and nuns

1763, the first demonic tactic of biological warfare

As tokens of peace, Sir Jeffery Amherst

Passed out clothing and blankets to the Indian community

Infested with small pox, knowing they had no immunity

Today it's AIDS, you best believe it's man made

Cause ain't a damn thing changed, let me explain

Now since people of color are genetically dominant

And Caucasoids are genetically recessive

And Whites expect to be predominant, meaning survive as a race then

They simply must, take precautions

That's why they're worried about their future now

Cause by 2050, almost all the Earth's population

Will be brown, then black, so understandin' that, whites counter-react

So they created a system

To force blacks into an unnatural position

That re-enforces the position of natural inferiority

In addition, created guns and developed the ethnocentric view

That God justifies every fuckin' thing they do

Condition people to perceive whites' culture as civilized

And every other culture considered primitive - not true

Racism is the system of racial subjugation against non-whites

In every areas of human relation

Entertainment, education, labor, politics

Law, religion, sex, war and economics

See blacks were 3/5ths of a man with tax purposes intended

You think you're Afro-American? You're a 14th amendment and a good nigga

Jews don't salute the fuckin' swastika

But niggas pledge allegiance to the flag that accosted ya

They never teach about the break of islands like Jamaica

But before slaves came here Whites would take a Pregnant women, hang her from a tree by her toes

Slice her stomach with a knife

And let the unborn baby fall to the flo'

And stop an unborn child in front of all the slaves

To inbreed fear, so they'd be scared and behave

And not rebel more

Understand all Whites must be perceived as potential predators

I paraphrase historian Ishakamusa Barashango

"Understand that regardless of the lofty ideas engraved on paper

In such documents as the Constitution or Declaration

The basic nature of the European American white man

Remains virtually unchanged", so check

This is the nature of the threat

talondearg

The song conflates and confuses historical data to serve it's rhetorical purposes, which I am not really interested in addressing. Below I go through some elements of the song dealing with Christianity and Late Antiquity in particular.

Hannibal was not 'black' in the way that Sub-Saharan Africans are. Carthage is generally considered a colony of Phoenicia, and so Hannibal was more likely from a Phoenician, and thus Semitic, background.

The reference to Caesar as 'every woman's man and every man's woman' is attributed to Curio in a speech, by Suetonius in his Twelve Caesars, Caesar, ch 52. But Romans did not construct their sexuality around hetero/homo dichotomy like we do, so calling him bisexual is a bit anachronistic. Certainly his enemies exploited rumours about his (widespread) sexual activities.

Christians get your facts right / Cause Christ was not his name / That's Greek for "One who is anointed" / Yeshua Ben Yosef was his name, do Christians know this?

Yes, this is well known.

Accepting the religion they gave slaves to behave

If the song is referring to later US slavery, I can't answer this. If it is suggesting that Christianity made early headway primarily among slaves, this is largely considered incorrect - it made inroads into all levels of society. Furthermore Christianity was seen as socially subversive for its first 300 years or so.

He had the Romans fearin' revolution / The solution was to take him to court and falsely accuse him / After being murdered by Pilate how can it be

This is a simplification of the complex events around Jesus' execution. The main offense to the Jews appears to be a collocation of blasphemous words and deeds. The Jewish presentation to Pilate appears to revolve around political charges that would sound like revolutionary activity, but paradoxically the gospels go to significant lengths to portray a Jesus uninterested in political revolution of that kind.

Constantine would later see the cross in a dream / In his vision, it read In hoc signo vinces / "In this sign we conquer" - Manifest Destiny / In 325 he convened the Nicene Creed and separated god into three / Decided Jesus was born on December 25th / And raised then on the third day is a myth / Plus to deceive us / Commissioned Michelangelo to paint w hite pictures of Jesus

It's true that Constantine is reported as seeing a sign in a dream/vision, but this is the Chi-Rho symbol, not the cross. Linking in hoc signo with Manifest Destiny is not a historical connection, and one ought to consider the 19th century idea of Manifest Destiny on its own terms. The Nicene creed was formulated in 325, but it was not Constantine's creation, it sought to regulate some beliefs about the Trinity, but did not bring Trinitarian belief into existence. Neither Constantine nor Nicaea had anything to do with establishing 25th Dec as Christmas, nor is this necessarily linkable to the birth of Saturn as earlier in the song. The belief in resurrection appears in the 1st century, not the 4th. Michaelangelo is a 15-16th century figure having zero to do with Constantine. His depictions of Jesus ought to be considered against the background of Renaissance art history before making any judgment about racialisations of Jesus.

Now around this time, Whites started callin' us Negroes

It's true that 'negro' begins to appear from the end of the 15th century onwards in Spanish and Portuguese sources to refer to black people of African origin. It did not necessarily mean 'black object', this is linguistically and historically incorrect. The sense that 'negro' is pejorative only appears around the late 1960s.

ebowner

These lyrics take a highly Afro-Centric stance towards the role of Africans and their descendants. It also greatly simplifies several of these topics into an issue of just race within the context of the present (or at least in the context of late nineties race relations.)

Thurgood_Marshall

The Punic Wars began 264 B.C...The first genocide of history

Ben Kiernan, a genocide scholar agrees. But that's not something you're going to find consensus on.