Union Songs
White Man's Blues
A Song by Smokey Dymny©Smokey Dymny 1986
- [play]
Oh Lord, it's hard to be humble,
When you're white & you're rich & you're male.
You've got houses and cars you want to protect,
So you throw all the poor folks in jail.
You've got t' send your two children to college,
So they'll learn t' get ahead in this life.
If they drop out or become alternative,
Make sure they don't corrupt your wife.
And make sure that they don't get political,
Start to picket and protest and strike:
If they start to be just like those black folks,
You'll have to cut them right out of your life.
So make sure that they always get fed well,
And make sure that they're always well paid,
And make sure they're not gay or bisexual,
God forbid they should ever get laid.
So Lord, it's hard to be humble,
When you're white and you're rich and you're male.
You've got houses and cars you want to protect,
So keep throwin' those poor folks in jail.
Notes
Many thanks to Smokey Dymny for permission to add this song to the Union Songs collection.
Smokey Dymny writes
"I used to go to the summer gatherings of the People's Music Network/Songs of Freedom And Struggle in the U.S Catskill mountains. This network was organized by Charlie King at first. He was a Wobbly singer from Cambridge Massachusetts. (boy it's hard to spell those US names, but I got that one right off.) One fine June I managed to drive down a group of Canadians in my van, and we "blew them away". Here's why. One of us was a native Canadian singer-songwriter, Jay Mason. One, a French-Canadian historian singer-songwriter, David Welch. The next was a third generation black Canadian woman from Nova Scotia, Faith Nolan. And I was a Polish-Canadian D.P. (displaced person) Wobbly. We sang our songs interspersed between all those 'Amurricans' as L.B.J. used to say.
Then at lunch one day, Faith asked, "Why are all our songs about poor folks and how awful our lives have been? Why aren't there any songs abut rich white men and all there priviledges? I responded, "'Cause we haven't written one, yet." Then with the help of two other U.S. songwritin' woman we wrote this little ditty. Faith's verse was the third one.""Smokey's voice is a pork chop with a little bit of road dirt."- Art Farquharson
http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/Smokey
http://www.newunionism.net/solidarityidol.htm
CDs at: http://store.iww.org/ or:
$17 Cdn, to this address, includes postage.
Smokey Dymny
Box 745, Quathiaski Cove, B.C.
V0P 1N0, Canada
phone: 250-285-2447
union songs..........a selection by mark gregory