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The Conscious Gospel Poem Analysis

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The Conscious Gospel and its Short-Comings

While growing up in the 80’s and early 90’s, in the black community, we had a term to refer to folks who understood the social structure, was in touch with black history, and who knew the truth and was not blinded by the lies of white supremacy. They were called “conscious.” We had our conscious rappers (i.e. Sista Soulja, KRS One, and Public Enemy), our conscious artists (usually spoken word poets), and the conscious religious folks (i.e. The Nation of Islam and Five Percenters). Whenever these conscious folks rapped, spoke, or taught, you heard “da truth” as well as their love for their people, for creating awareness, and for imparting knowledge.

That conscious spirit is still alive today in 2015 through the music of artists like Kendrick Lamar and through the phrase “stay woke”--- which means to stay informed and aware despite the B.S. that may attempt to convince you otherwise. That conscious spirit is also present in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. …show more content…

It is something he inherited. In Section I, he describes how his parents was always pushing him to be politically conscious; something he describes as “much as a series of actions as a state of being, a constant questioning, questioning as ritual, questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty.” His conscious spirit during college was evident by his own recognition that “I was made for the library, not the classroom.” In Between the World and Me, Coates attempts to impart this consciousness to his son and to us, the reader. He achieves in speaking the

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