Liberation Front, I'm on a militant tip
No Exclusion Act could ever make this immigrant dip
How you anti-Asian when it was a Chinese-American
That paved the way for birthright citizenship?
Look how uncomfortable my heritage done made them
The first sex symbol in America was Asian
Sessue Hayakawa got their women hooked
Hollywood shook when he became their infatuation
You think COVID just a one-off fluke?
Forget internment camps, with nowhere to run off to?
Traces of Japanese blood got you locked in a cage
Separated families over that one-drop rule?
And even still, they enlisted instead of throwing a coup
Singled out by their lieutenants like, this who you're supposed to shoot
Fighting in the white man's war to kill our own
And they still called those Asian-American soldiers "gooks"
But even when the US loses in Vietnam
They made films acting like they're the heroes like they had won
They'll tell you about bombing civilians in Okinawa
But nothing on Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama
Intentional erasure's why you heard of Cesar Chavez
But not the labor strikes that Larry Itliong started
Or when you say American and don't think of me
If they omit it, gotta tell our own history
All we want is to be seen
Story of my life, it's a movie
Be a part of history
Like the ones that came before me
Unity is what we need
Passion of our elders live through me
Be a part of history
This a real American story
Third World, I'm on a unity tip
Shouts to every single Asian isn't crazy or rich
How you think we white-adjacent when you look at our kin?
That's just the lack of colours in the box they painting us in
Cut the branch but the root runs deep
I'm a product of the moment that freed Chol Soo Lee
Bodies in the streets at the march
Unity is free, but it don't come cheap
No slacking, no anti-Blackness
Chinaman face but the bars need no captions
Cash only, I do pay my taxes
But they don't go to fund Little Tokyo youth centres
History of violence, they don't tell
We've been dying in the West, this is Oregon Trail
Question the history the textbooks sell
Filipinos was in Cali 'fore the Brits set sail
They used the gifts that we bring
Then they killed thirty Chinese miners at Rock Springs
Inherit the trauma, we bear it with honor
The cuts in the skin make the bamboo sing
All we want is to be seen
Story of my life, it's a movie
Be a part of history
Like the ones that came before me
Unity is what we need
Passion of our elders live through me
Be a part of history
This a real American story