I'm probably wrong on this, as Rise Against as never covered such a topic, but I feel like this song has to do with slavery.
The entire first verse really makes me think of the Middle Passage when African slaves are being transported like overstocked cargo on boats across the Atlantic Ocean.
As for "Equality, an invitation that we won't extend" - well, that's pretty self explanatory. Despite claiming equality for all, Americans still saw African Americans as inferior, and they were provided with way fewer rights, if any at all.
And for "We did nothing to stop the murder of a people just like us" - Timothy is stating that we continued to kill people, who we thought were less than human, while in reality they were hardly different from us at all.
I'm probably wrong on this, as Rise Against as never covered such a topic, but I feel like this song has to do with slavery.
The entire first verse really makes me think of the Middle Passage when African slaves are being transported like overstocked cargo on boats across the Atlantic Ocean.
As for "Equality, an invitation that we won't extend" - well, that's pretty self explanatory. Despite claiming equality for all, Americans still saw African Americans as inferior, and they were provided with way fewer rights, if any at all.
And for "We did nothing to stop the murder of a people just like us" - Timothy is stating that we continued to kill people, who we thought were less than human, while in reality they were hardly different from us at all.
That's my interpretation - Hope it helped! :-)