I smell like a white man. I guess I'm catching on.
So I press against the window, wishing I was gone.
The student with the glasses, he don't even look at me.
I guess it takes more than a smile and an is that seat free?"

He's listening to the single mother with the noisy child.
She's been on the road since Wednesday, says one more day and she'd go wild.
The road was long and weary, and the bus kept breaking down,
And new folks crowded in at every stinking little town.

What am I? What are you? I hoped we were the same.
What do you want from me? What can I do to clear my name?

Some European tourist guy is standing in the aisle,
And clutching at his baggage in the nervous tourist style.
There's one more white boy here. He's got a stocking on his head,
But no heads turn, no eyebrows rise, and not a word is said.

And two rows down a ghetto blaster blares what I'd call noise.
But who am I to make such calls? It's music for these boys.
In fact I can't make any calls, we'd be where we began,
So I press against the window, and I smell like a white man.

What am I? What are you? Who's outnumbered now?
How can I see deeper than as deep as you'll allow?

The road is long and weary, and the bus keeps breaking down,
And new folks will crowd in at every stinking little town.
But what I think you think I think would kill if it were true.
I'm small as I can be. Your turn. Now tell me what to do.

-Marco Klaue

(I’m used to being an ethnic minority, but I still remember the moment when I was the only white guy on a bus in the Bay Area and felt strongly disapproved of. It suddenly occurred to me that when a minority group develops its own culture, it’s usually because the majority has forced them to. I love the sax/guitar interlude in this song.)

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