You know, when I see what I saw happening in Philadelphia (again), I ask myself how far have we came, and are we sometimes deceiving ourselves about how progressive and so-called “conscious” we are in this country. Are we using these terms too superficially in describing our African-centered and political-cultural movement here in America? For how conscious and progressive are we, as the would Last Poets say, as “related to what?”
To keep this in perspective, we need to understand that these unprecedented police beatings and killings are not happening in some small backwater redneck town, in some rural all-white area full of redneck sheriffs, or in one of the historically well-documented areas of the deep south where this...