Stevie Wonder sang of a young man from "Hard Time, Mississippi," born into a nearly inescapable poverty where employers "don't use colored people."Before the album version of "Living for the City" ends, the protagonist unwittingly steps into the middle of a crime, gets arrested and jailed for 10 years, the prison guard dismissing him with the N-word as he shoves him into the cell.In 2019, Mickey Guyton delivered her own version of that story by writing "Black Like Me." She wasn't referencing Wonder, though she could be when she contemplates cultural inactivity in the prechorus: "Now I'm all grown up, and nothing has changed.""Black Like Me" reached the public sphere in May after murders of unarmed Black men by whites were caught on cell.
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