Dr. Cornel West
Dr. Cornel West's loss. And ours.
Commentary by Chitown Kev
I think that Dr. Cornel West is a modern-day Socrates not quite gone mad. Yet.
And I say that with all due gratitude, respect, and derision for the esteemed philosopher.
In 1992, as my alcohol and drug addiction progressed, I began "boosting" certain select African-American books to sell primarily in black barbershops and beauty salons to support my habit. Some books I kept for my own personal use; others I would read prior to selling them; occasionally, I would take orders from regular patrons. (Malcolm X books were hot items in barbershops and beauty salons in the early nineties).
One of those stolen books which I read and kept was Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life by bell hooks and Dr. Cornel West.
Every page of Breaking Bread teemed with beautiful black intellect and was grounded in black culture; a culture that often felt alienating to me. (That feeling of alienation from black culture played a significant part in my addictions.) I was "book smart," and therefore "like a white boy" (even according to some of my family members), I have absolutely no rhythm when I dance (hence my preference for white gay bars at that time). I couldn't stand the church (in fact, one of my personal criticisms of Breaking Bread at that time was that it was waaaaaay too "churchy" for me).
Dr. West's definition of what a philosopher does and what a philosopher is was a big reason that I migrated to the study of philosophy and then to classics.
As a philosopher, I'm fundamentally concerned with how we confront death, dread, despair, disappointment, and disease. These are existential issues. And sociologists, economists, social scientists, they are not primarily concerned with their doom, their inescapable extinction.
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life p. 33
Breaking Bread was (and is) as
vital as any other recovery literature to my recovery (the subject of addictions comes up quite a bit in
BB).
If it weren't for Dr. West's work, I doubt that I would be writing this biweekly column for Black Kos. I probably would not be alive.
And I owe a debt to Dr. Cornel West and bell hooks that I can never repay.
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There are several items in the news this week regarding Dr. West.
There's his very curious endorsement of Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination to be President of the United States on his Facebook page.
Why I Endorse Brother Bernie and Reject Brother Trump
The American Empire is in decline. Our market-driven culture is in decay. The criminal justice system has failed us. And the political system is collapsing due to the weight of corrupt lobbyists and greedy capitalists. Only organized power of courageous and compassionate people can turn around these catastrophic realities. Social movements in the streets and jails over against the Establishment in both decrepit political parties are fundamental. And prophetic politicians -- always with their faults and blind spots -- who tell the truth about Wall Street, white supremacy, empire, patriarchy and homophobia, deserve our critical support. Yet even more important is the issue of integrity.
Brother Bernie and Brother Trump are authentic human beings in stark contrast to their donor-driven opponents. Yet only Bernie has authenticity and integrity, whereas Trump is for real but not for right. Trump's attacks on precious Mexican brothers and sisters are unconscionable -- even as his blessed mother was born in Scotland and grandfather (Mr. Drumpf) was born in Germany. His kind of nativistic hostility could have excluded them. And Trump's unpatriotic complicity with the plutocratic corruption of our political system for over 30 years calls into question his integrity, including his commitment to "make America great again."
My endorsement of Brother Bernie in the primaries is not an affirmation of the neo-liberal Democratic Party or a downplaying of the immorality of the ugly Israeli occupation of Palestinians. I do so because he is a long-distance runner with integrity in the struggle for justice for over 50 years. Now is the time for his prophetic voice to be heard across our crisis-ridden country, even as we push him with integrity toward a more comprehensive vision of freedom for all.
There's also the interview Dr. West conducted (
via e-mail) with Dr George Yancy, professor of philosophy at Emory University at
The New York Times .
Cornel West: The Fire of a New Generation
And, of course, as a backdrop to all of that there's the matter of Dr. West's racially tinged commentary about President Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President the United States and the first African-American to occupy the office of the Presidency. Michael Eric Dyson (Dyson's churchified-ness is as annoying to me as West's) summarized in his now famous New Republic article, "The Ghost of Cornel West"
Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. He has accused Obama of political minstrelsy, calling him a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface”; taunted him as a “brown-faced Clinton”; and derided him as a “neoliberal opportunist.”
Since then, Dr. West has come out and called President Obama "
the first niggerized black president."
"Too many black people are niggerized," West said Monday on CNN. "I would say the first black president has become the first niggerized black president."
"A niggerized black person is a black person who is afraid and scared and intimidated when it comes to putting a spotlight on white supremacy and fighting against white supremacy," West explained. "So when many of us said we have to fight against racism, what were we told? 'No, he can't deal with racism because he has other issues, political calculations. He's the president of all America, not just black America.' We know he's president of all America but white supremacy is American as cherry pie."
I
diaried about Dyson's article at that time and said:
Amongst other black folks (and only black folks!) in an informal setting such as a barber shop or at a card table?
You might hear anything.
I don't know too many African Americans that haven't had criticisms of President Obama, at various times and for all sorts of reasons. Noone that I know views President Obama as being Jesus (or even the Pharoah). And, yes, in the (somewhat) safe space of the black community things can get said in a manner and tone that no white person need (or should) ever hear.
So the issue (at least with me) isn't so much that Dr. West has called President Obama a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface” or a “brown-faced Clinton” or "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs"
I've occasionally heard worse.
But it was for my ears and for the ears of other black folks only.
Language and tone of that sort is inappropriate for any formal lecture or address and definitely not for any crowd of mixed race folks or for a worldwide YouTube audience.
Dr West's "pulpit" is way too big and respected of that.
And there's also the matter of his invective against anyone he perceives as being allied with the President. His latest target in that regard is The Atlantic national correspondent and author of
Between the World and Me,
Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Coates is a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power. Baldwin’s painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements... Coates’s fear-driven self-absorption leads to individual escape and flight to safety – he is cowardly silent on the marvelous new militancy in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Oakland, Cleveland and other places.
And even gets in a swipe at Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison.
But in our age of superficial spectacle, even the great Morrison is seduced by the linguistic glitz and political silences of Coates as we all hunger for the literary genius and political engagement of Baldwin.
In another posting, the man who once skipped an Al Green concert to read
Wittgenstein's Vienna had the unmitigated gall to call Coates's prose "nerdy."
Frankly, though, I can't say that I'm surprised by all of this. Dr. West posted a warning side about this loooooong ago in his essay "The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning," which was collected in his 1994 best-seller, Race Matters.
...any claim to black authenticity-beyond that of being a potential object of racist abuse and an heir to a grand tradition of black struggle-is contingent on one's political definition of black interest and one's ethical understanding of how this interest relates to individuals in and outside black America.
Race Matters p. 39
Even back then I asked myself just who
is to be the arbiter of the appropriate "political definition of black interest and one's ethical understanding of how this interest relates to individuals in and outside black America."
I guess that Dr. West feels that he is.
Dr. Cornel West, sadly, as a prophet. is no Jeremiah, no Delphic Oracle, or even a Diogenes...he is increasingly, sadly, becoming a prophet much like Cassandra; the carrier of a vital message that no one can hear or understand (well, except for nice white progressives, I guess) because of all the other, juicier drama.
Or, in other words, if I may use "behind-The-Veil" terminology:
Negro, please.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Creating content that reflects the real lives of a community. The New Republic: Stock Photos of Black People Are Finally Moving Beyond Racist Stereotypes.
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Like so many millennial ideas, Kenneth Wiggins’s innovation gained its momentum from social media. This April, the web designer and front-end developer posted a tweet to a now-deleted Instagram post to gauge interest in an idea he’d been tossing around in his head: “Any photographers interested in submitting work for an open source (free) stock photography site featuring African Americans?”
Wiggins had been working on a project for a client and grew frustrated when all the stock images of black people he found online felt inauthentic—pictures that hardly moved beyond the stale stereotypes that categorize the vast majority of black representation in visual culture.
“I couldn’t really find the images that invoked the messaging behind the brand visually,” Wiggins told me. “There are other resources out there that have images of black people…but just the attitude and the emotion I was looking for behind the pictures, I couldn’t find.”
Within days of his initial post, photographers had chimed in, eager to be part of the kind of platform Wiggins was proposing: a stock photography site dedicated to providing nuanced, varied images of black people. Catalyzed by the positive response, BlackStockImages took shape rapidly, its pace matching the urgency of its mission.
“The response was kind of overwhelming so I just sat down and thought about it [all] weekend and kinda hit the ground running ever since,” Wiggins said. “The original idea was to just do something small where I just uploaded images or had images uploaded [by others] and people could download them.”
The site is still in beta—and recently had its soft launch—but already its features exceed this first vision. Users can create accounts and access a variety of images on a sliding pay scale. Free accounts come with access to three image packs, each pack containing eight images. At present, more than 420 images are available for purchase, spanning categories like food, objects, scenery, travel, and—of course—people.
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Hopefully they will be only the first of many. New York Times: Maryland Restricts Racial Profiling in New Guidelines for Law Enforcement.
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Eight months after the Justice Department announced new curbs on racial profiling, Maryland became on Tuesday the first state to follow suit, with guidelines aimed at severely restricting law enforcement officers from singling out suspects based on traits including race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
Attorney General Brian E. Frosh of Maryland issued the rules in a nine-page memorandum in which he condemned profiling of racial minorities by the police, calling it a “deeply unfair” practice.
“Racial profiling continues despite the fact that it is against the law of the United States; it’s against Maryland law,” Mr. Frosh said in a telephone interview shortly after announcing the guidelines at a news conference in the state capital, Annapolis. “We need people to understand that racial profiling is illegal, and it’s bad police work.”
U.S. to Continue Racial, Ethnic Profiling in Border PolicyDEC. 5, 2014 Maryland law requires law enforcement agencies to have policies prohibiting racial and ethnic profiling during traffic stops; the new guidelines expand on that in two ways, Mr. Frosh’s office said. Under the law, officers may not use race and ethnicity in making police decisions; the guidelines also include national origin, identity, disability and religion as traits that may not be considered. They apply to routine operations, to investigations and to traffic stops.
Law enforcement officers may not consider personal characteristics while “conducting routine police activity,” the memorandum says. They may do so only if they have “credible information” that such characteristics are “directly relevant” to the investigation of a crime
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Liberia’s forests were plundered to fund war and profit for a few, but deforestation deal with Norway offers a way for natural resources to transform lives. The Guardian: Has Liberia found the way to share its forest plenty with the poor?
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The “paradox of plenty” debate tends to focus on fossil fuels and minerals. Countries that are rich in these resources are often – paradoxically – kept financially poor, with the proceeds of natural wealth largely profiting political elites, foreign companies and commodities traders, rather than being used strategically to bring whole populations out of poverty.
What is often overlooked is that forests too can be a curse not a blessing for countries that are rich in them. Across the Amazon, the Congo basin and many parts of south-east Asia, rainforests have been stripped out at a dizzying rate to line the pockets of foreign logging companies and their supporters in government. Forest communities – often among the country’s poorest – are robbed persistently of the resources they rely on for life and livelihood.
Kofi Annan’s Africa Progress Panel has long advocated for Africa’s natural wealth to be better managed so that it drives dynamic and inclusive growth. While its 2013 report looked at the issue of Equity in the Extractives, in 2014 Grain, Fish, Money highlighted the paradox of poverty amid plenty within the forestry sector, focusing on one example that is close to my heart – the forests of Liberia.
It’s time to reopen that report. A recent $150m (£96m) forest protection deal between Liberia and Norway signalled a bold new direction in forest management – to shift Liberia’s forest economy from a model of extraction to one of protection, and to make forest communities the beneficiaries. The first payment from Norway is now due. As Grain, Fish, Money showed, the history of the forest sector warns us to be vigilant.
Logged timber in Liberia, where a new deal with Norway aims to shift focus from extraction to protection. Photograph: Courtesy Global Witness
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Stopping the pipeline to prisons starts with stopping unfair treatment in schools. NPR: Study Tracks Vast Racial Gap In School Discipline In 13 Southern States
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For years there has been mounting evidence that U.S. schools suspend and expel African-American students at higher rates than white students. A new study by the University of Pennsylvania singles out 13 Southern states where the problem is most dire.
Schools in these states were responsible for more than half of all suspensions and exclusions of black students nationwide.
"Black kids on the whole are suspended for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with safety," says report co-author Shaun Harper of Penn's Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education.
The 13 states named in the study are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
The researchers examined more than 3,000 school districts in those states. In 132 of those districts, they found, the suspension and expulsion rates of blacks were off the charts, with suspension rates far greater than their representation in the student body.
"Blacks are only 24 percent of students enrolled in public schools in those states, yet they are 48 percent of students suspended, 49 percent of students expelled," Harper says. "There are 84 districts where blacks were 100 percent of students suspended from school."
Shaun Harper of the University of Pennsylvania is a co-author of the new report.
Stuart Goldenberg/University of Pennsylvania
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