It is somewhat disingenuous for Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, a black man, to suggest that Monday night's beat-down of three black men by about half-dozen uniformed officers was not about race. Of course it was about race (and class). Could this 'traffic stop' beating have possibly happened to three white men? I can't even imagine it.

For a long time now, I have been calling for a series of serious 'sit downs' between the Philadelphia Police Department and the leading members of the most challenged communities that they must police. A candid look at the history of race and policing in Philly must be at the heart of these discussions.

The police force's extraordinary bombing of MOVE headquarters in 1985, the enduring intensity of the 27-year-old Mumia Abu Jamal case, and Philadelphia's perennial status as one of most murderous cities in the nation collude to construct a narrative of alienation between police and the communities most in need of their protection.

Unfortunately in the City of Ugly Thugs, as underground Philly rap group the V.I.Kings calls us, sometimes Thugs wear blue and even if they are black they have been indoctrinated by Philadelphia's violent history and through their own police training to see young black men as criminals, first.

What Mr. Ramsey, the Mayor and others must know is that our history informs the present. Thus the historically racialized conflict between police and the black community tends to under-gird and override our interpretations of these horrendous incidents. Whether the three black men (Dwayne Dyches, Brian Hall and Pete Hopkins) who were punched and kicked were actually involved in a shooting is mysteriously unclear. They certainly were not involved in the murder of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, the officer whose murder last Saturday prompted the 'beat-first-ask-questions-later' attitude of the officers captured in the FOX news footage.

Monday night's incident is all about race. A white institution (the Philadelphia Police Department) felt under attack by the Black (criminal) community because a white officer, Liczbinski, was murdered as he attempted to prevent black bank robbers from escaping. In the ensuing manhunt, white and black police officers brutally violate the human and civil rights of three black men.

Those are the facts as Philadelphians see them. And since there is, now, only back-pedaling and the erection of the "blue wall of silence"--a code far more stringent than the notorious "don't snitch" rule and far more lethal to police-community cooperation--we are ultimately left contemplating if these differences are not just irreparable but irreconcilable.

We have to wonder now, how Mayor Nutter's credibility has been affected by the brutal beating of these three black 'suspects'. How believable is his measured condemnation of the behavior of the officers involved in this incident?

After all, Mayor Nutter ushered in his administration on the law and order platform of "Stop and Frisk," a municipal measure that allowed police officers to aggressively detain and frisk 'suspects'. "Stop and Frisk" was an excellent political maneuver, but it criminalized Philly's young black males and further exacerbated the never-ending conflict between Philadelphia's finest and the community still affectionately known as the City of Brotherly Love.

James Braxton Peterson, PhD is an Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University and the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC.