Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6cF3ayJgM4

Black man got a lotta problems
But they don't mind trowin' a brick
White people go to school
Where they teach you how to be thick

White Riot is the first single released by the Clash, and pretty much seems to set the agenda of the band. They find that while everything is going to shit, white folks have been dumbed down and pacified to a point where they are completely harmless to the ruling elites.

All the power's in the hands
Of the people rich enough to buy it
While we walk the streets
Too chicken to even try it

At the time Joe Strummer saw little hope in the white population:

Everybody's doing
Just what they're told to
And nobody wants
To go to jail

He wants a "white riot - a riot of my own". It's a call for white folks to join black people in the fight against the powers that be, and to rise up against injustice instead of being so god-damn complacent.

Are you taking over
Or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards
Or are you going forwards?

Released in March '77, a couple of months before Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen, White Riot could be seen to mark the beginning of the UK wave of punk music, which was influenced by the New York scene and later caused a second British invasion (or a "phony Beatlemania", as the Clash themselves later coined it) in the US. The studio version of White Riot ends with the following appeal to the listener:

Hey, you, standing in line
Are we gonna sign an agreement?

Considering the influence of the punk movement in the years that followed, it's fair to say that many audience members were, in fact, ready to sign on. It might be time we renew the terms.

Here's Rage Against the Machine doing the song justice.