Racism is something that's systematic, it's ingrained in our culture. The only way it's going to be extracted is through a systematic extraction. It's not enough just for me to keep writing poems about it. It has to be a systematic extraction, so that it's incorporated in our educational system, in the law, in the police department. All of those things have to happen for us to resolve this problem.
Many Black men deny their responsibilities to their families.
This is what I mean when I say America is paying for its history. It's haunting America and that's why it has to be dealt with. Another aspect is the class question, which is not raised at all in American politics and again that has a historical reason. There is this thing called the melting pot, which people tend to think of as just a melting pot of ethnic groups and colors. It's also supposed to be a melting pot of classes, which is ridiculous.