Dr. Cornel West: Greetings From a 21st-Century Prophet

Dr. Cornel West: Greetings From a 21st-Century Prophet

Sunday 5 June 2011

by: Max Eternity, Truthout

Dr. Cornel West provides illumination on the state of the nation in the intellectual sanctuary of his Princeton office (Photo: Max Eternity)

"There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie."
-Dr. Cornel West

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
 

Can America's col­lec­tive economics in­form who we are as a peo­ple, whereby - through ob­ses­sive bean-counting - we sculpt our de­stiny, tacit­ly sanction­ing the stripp­ing of basic di­gn­ity from fel­low citizens, the eros­ion of civil li­bert­ies, the evi­scera­tion of pub­lic educa­tion poli­cies, of the arts and humanit­ies, bankrupt­ing en­tire com­munit­ies, tar­nish­ing longstand­ing values of the populace and its self-image, thus ul­timate­ly de­stroy­ing all that was once valu­able to society?

For even after the world swooned from the megahype of En­gland's latest royal wedd­ing and the hip, hip, hur­rah of Pre­sident Obama's or­dered as­sas­sina­tion of Osama bin Laden, a cor­nucopia of cat­astrop­hic socioeconomic hor­rors - in ad­di­tion to America's con­tinued un­prepared­ness for natur­al dis­ast­er - still face this na­tion: end­less war, long-term un­employ­ment, swell­ing prison popula­tions and multi­ple years of record-breaking home forec­losures.

All of these pro­blems may be well on their way to be­com­ing the new norm­al in the US, but they won't be here to stay if a cer­tain bril­liant, black man of pro­phetic word and deed can help it - name­ly, Dr. Cor­nel West.

West equates America's bank­ing elite with gangst­ers and de­plores Pre­sident Obama's choice to sur­round him­self with their min­ions - Timot­hy Geithn­er, Larry Summ­ers et al. This well-heeled phalanx of crimin­als is, in West's view, to blame for many, if not most, of America's cur­rent ills.

Man of Mys­te­ry: LEGENDS - Cor­nel West from the Man of Mys­te­ry se­ries (Limited-edition di­git­al print by Max Etern­ity)

In a mo­ment when the clatt­er and chatt­er of aus­ter­ity economics has rea­ched a fever pitch, West ob­ser­ves that some elec­ted of­fici­als and policymak­ers want to take aus­ter­ity to yet an­oth­er level of penny-pinching belt-tightening, which al­most al­ways means cutt­ing America's already-anemic soci­al pro­grams to de­pres­sed new lows of pauc­ity. The union-busting in Wis­consin and el­sewhere as­sures the near-irreversibility of those lows.

It would seem money is tight, ex­cept when it comes to fin­d­ing $100 mill­ion a day to drop bombs on Libya. That's a peculiar­ity that ser­ves as proof that, no matt­er how sup­posed­ly broke the co­unt­ry is, the American govern­ment seems to al­ways have a blank check handy for cer­tain th­ings, such as the am­bigu­ous and wild­ly un­suc­cess­ful war on drugs, and the war on ter­ror.

Pre­sident Obama once em­bodied the pro­m­ise of a glori­ous fu­ture for this na­tion. In these times, howev­er, West points out that Obama's leadership more or less re­presents a re­nais­sance de­nied, a plat­form of un­ful­filled as­suran­ces.

Pre­sident Obama, he said in an in­ter­view with Pulitz­er Prize-winning jour­nal­ist Chris Hed­ges, is the, "black mas­cot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black pup­pet of cor­porate plutoc­rats." Yet such critic­isms come much to the chag­rin of some African-American heavyweights like Al Sharpton, who re­cent­ly ap­peared on MSNBC say­ing that, "too many of us are putt­ing it all on the pre­sident," and Melis­sa Harris-Perry, who wrote in an ar­ticle pub­lished in The Na­tion that many of West's com­ments were "utter hilar­ity."

West stands firm­ly by his re­marks. For all the pre­sident's super-sophistication and caviar ora­tion, in West's view, the end­ur­ing fact re­mains that al­most every­th­ing Obama has chos­en to put in place, such as the Summers-Geithner economic team, spells busi­ness as usual. This pat­tern leads to one to ques­tion: does hope minus chan­ge equal more of the same ... a la Dubya?

"To be human, you must bear wit­ness to just­ice," West writes in his book, "Hope on a Tightrope," for, "[j]us­tice is what love looks like in pub­lic." It's an idea that West is pas­sionate about, even though truth and just­ice might seem anti­quated in this water­board­ing, Guan­tanamo Bay world where wars of aggress­ion have be­come com­monplace.

Nevertheless, in a pod­cast re­cor­ded in his Prin­ceton Uni­vers­ity of­fice on April 27, 2011, West dug deep into his pass­ion for just­ice and his kinship and em­pat­hy for the poor and work­ing class, and also shared what it means to be a "funkmast­er." It was an electrify­ing con­ver­sa­tion in which West spoke frank­ly about the Obama ad­ministra­tion and the un­fold­ing de­velop­ments in Egypt and other na­tions of that re­g­ion. He also spoke about some of the more private joys in his life, such as the par­ticulars of his favorite mus­ical legends. This dis­cour­se came after en­joy­ing a shared round of homemade gour­met co­ok­ies from re­now­ned cake mast­ers Ellen Baum­woll and Cheryl Klein­man at Betty Bake­ry in Brook­lyn. It was a chat that found West im­part­ing wis­dom about the crit­ical im­por­tance of Franklin De­lano Roosevelt's (FDR) Works Pro­jects Ad­ministra­tion (WPA) as an ex­am­ple from which America could be learn­ing. He also pro­vided some il­lumina­tion as to why Obama has not chos­en the co­ur­se of re­ig­nit­ing FDR's grand civic plan in a way that is approp­riate­ly nuan­ced for today.

"For me, I come out of a black freedom move­ment that is on in­timate terms with death," West says. "The soci­al death of slave­ry ... civic death, Jim Crow ... psyc­hic death, taught to hate our­selves ... but America," he says "is a death-dodging, death-denying, death-ducking cul­ture - so they clash."

In the di­alogue, West spoke of the power of love, too, il­lustrat­ing the idea by hold­ing up Mal­colm X and Dr. Mar­tin Luth­er King Jr. as both a uni­fied field and contra­st­ing man­ifes­ta­tions of what love means in ac­tion:

West ex­plains what it means to be a "funkmast­er," while also com­ment­ing on America as a "death-dodging, death-ducking, death-denying cul­ture."

West makes a com­parative an­alysis of the re­spec­tive lega­cies of MLK and Mal­colm X.

West talks about the two forms of a new Jim Crow of­fered by the De­moc­ratic and Re­pub­lican part­ies, also speak­ing to the "gangster-like" ac­tivit­ies of Pre­sident Obama's big-banking al­l­ies on Wall Street. West shares his un­derstand­ing of casino capital­ism and what he calls "turbo-capitalism." West also ex­plains why Pre­sident Obama is un­like FDR.

In this clip, West says the left in America has been pus­hed out to the wil­der­ness - the "poor peo­ple de­monized, pover­ty criminalized, trade uni­ons scapegoated," while at the same time we saw "pro­phetic churches, mos­ques and syn­agogues mar­ginalized." West com­ments on Pre­sident Obama's choice to prop up Wall Street by plac­ing the very peo­ple who de­stroyed the US economy - Timot­hy Geithn­er, Larry Summ­ers, et al. - on his economic team.

West talks about Pre­sident Obama's un­wil­ling­ness to make men­tion of poor peo­ple in his 2011 State of the Union Address and as­serts that Obama's economic team has no care or con­cern for the poor.

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