Speaking Truth to Power-Keep standing tall Cornell West.
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He is well-dressed but needs better shoes. Nothing ostentatious, I get this is his uniform. But the horribly cheap-looking shoes are undermining it. Harvard's paycheck needs to touch the ground.
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Is he deliberately misinterpreting the title of Coates' book? Or has he just not read it?
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Keep it PI Dr West ... PI = preserving integrity
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So not surprising that West disparages Coates. I could have predicted it even before reading the column. He similarly turned on Obama after he wasn't invited to inauguration. His ego gets in the way of his message.
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People like West are just a talk. They don’t contribute anything to either the society as a whole or the black community in particular.
West is simply interested in making arguments. and making points.
By opposing Obama on every issue he has contributed to a Trump being President, even if ever so slightly.
They all satisfied their so called inner conscious by thrashing Obama and Clinton thilnking Trump will never be elected anyway.
Well, He was elected. Thanks to all Sander supporters and the likes of Prof West
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Well said . Thank you!
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You are more than welcome. If it were at least as likely for you to consider Sanders as it would be for some of us to betray our consciences, then Trump wouldn't be president anyway.
Low-denomination voters hold no special appeal. I would never settle for the choice of a person who makes an argument online, only to misspell the most important word in it.
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Not a single word about Bernie? Cornel West was his strong supporter and they connected at a deeper brother level. But trust NYT not to mention that.
Regarding Barack Obama, Cornel will never understand a child raised by white mother and white grandparents, whose black father never really showed his face. Barack Obama identifies himself as black but in reality he is as much black as he is white (check with your colleague Henry Louise Gates Jr). Obama was not a descendant of slaves, he was in fact a child of a highly intellectual Kenyan scholar. By marrying Michelle Obama, Barack embraced his blackness.
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West is something of a well meaning twit. He never advances any kind of realistic suggestion, just moralizing with a painfully calculated hipster pose. It's ineffectual, put on, and boring.
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I attended a speech by Cornell West at a university some years ago and was struck by how gentle - yes, tender - he was with students, in listening to their ideas and formulating a response. His rhetoric may be fiery but his heart is tender.
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Cornel West is a scholar of Judeo-Christian traditions and scriptures, what Christians refer to as the "Old Testament" and Jews call the Talmud and Torah.
He is speaking in the tradition of the old Prophets who "cried out in the wilderness" about the sins of the people and their leaders. He's "out in the wilderness" because he is so far from the mainstream of opinion and practice. But the other part of this tradition of crying out in the wilderness is that in those very same scriptures, the prophets are time and again proved correct.
Therein resides his truth and his power.
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Except that he ISN'T "out in the wilderness" like Jeremiah. He's in a cushy Harvard position, with lots of perks. Just look at the suit he's wearing in the photo.
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The writer is obviously not speaking about material matters. One needn't be impoverished to be exiled to the wilderness. But being exiled for having provocative ideas is such a common punishment within the American culture that we can imagine that like other exiles---Malcolm X, Mohammed Ali, Martin Luther King---he will be proven correct.
4
Actually we call it the Hebrew Bible and not the Talmud and Torah. The Hebrew bible is the scriptures of Torah, Prophets and Writings. The Talmud is a 5-9th century compilation of commentary, law and lore.
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If Cornel West doesn't want to be a neoliberal (albeit retro) darling, let him resign his comfortable post at Harvard Divinity School and work closer to the lives that poor and marginalized people lead.
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Once again, why no mention of Bernie? Cornel called him brother. he recognized Bernie's compassion.
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I wouldn't be all that surprised if such a statement was blacked out by an editor's pen. After all, this is the NYTimes.
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If you're so cynical about NYTs editing decisions, why do you read it?
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Loren, because we readers are the ones who should demand objective reporting, relentlessly.
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Cornel West is an unpleasant fraud. If he weren't Black, no one would ever have heard of him. He got in on the ground floor of the "every Ivy League school needs an African-American professor" movement and has moved around that cloistered world a good bit.
His appearances on Bill Maher's Real Time show are particularly vacuous and odious, as he calls everyone "Brother" or "Sister" (e.g., addressing Maher as "Brother Bill"), while leaning forward and exuding self-importance. He spouts outrageous opinions as though they were Gospel, following each with a smug grin.
I agree with Wohl's comment (below) that West's criticism of Ta-Nehisi Coates arises from jealousy. Black leadership may well be under-represented among the "elite" class of leaders, but Cornel West sure ain't no role model.
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@SBG
"If he weren't Black...." Do you really believe that it's easy to earn a tenured faculty position at Harvard and Princeton (where he has been on the faculty) just because of skin color? You should do some research about the job requirements before you attribute someone's success to skin color. You aren't likely to have the courage to do that bit of homework, though, because your own intellect would be called into question.
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Uhmmm...yes, SCSmits, with this guy? Yes, I do. It has always seemed to me that he has nothing to offer but his own self-importance.
9
Years of catching this fellow doing his quasi-Liberal style Don King routine only confirms that facts never get in the way of his laughable shtick.
10
Nobody admires Cornel West more than does Cornel West. I'm not sure what he's done since "Race Matters" except carp incessantly and put down other black writers who are clearly more important. His egotistical disparagement of Barack Obama demonstrated his reluctance to acknowledge the accomplishments of any black man other than himself. And his failure to support the one Presidential candidate who could save this nation from Trump was an unforgiveable act of narcissism.
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I don't always agree with Dr. West, but his conviction and intelligence are admirable.
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Did West even read Coates' book? The irony of the title seems to have escaped him, as did its referent (made explicit early in the book). I am disappointed that West has allowed his envy of Coates' to get the better of him: it is undignified and ignorant, and West is a better man than that...I so I had hoped.
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Thank you for this. I came on to say the same thing. He seems to be basing his judgment on the title alone, and did not read the book.
12
I had to read Dr. West's comment twice because I couldn't believe he missed the meaning of Coates' book!! I would like to know what happened to the man who wrote "Race Matters."
11
We need a Hundred or five hundred Dr. West's... speaking absolute truth to lying, manipulative power... we probably would not be in this predicament we are in right now. Always a pleasure to listen to a real leader.
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Dr. West rocks.
Keep on keepin' on, Sir...
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Give this man some more space! He's speaking the truth and there's still a huge hole in the Black Leadership class.
60
Please. Reach higher than this guy.
11
We need more educated and thoughtful voices on both sides, less grunting and screaming.
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Cornell West attacks Ta-Nehisi Coates and specifically his new book "We Were Eight Years in Power," without knowing what the title of the book means.
West: "Who's the 'we'? When's the last time he's been through the ghetto, in the hoods .....We were in power for eight years? My God. Maybe he and some of his friends might have been in power, but not poor working people."
West wrongly assumes "we were eight years in power" refers to Coates himself ("and some of his friends") during the Obama years. It does not. It refers to an 1895 speech by Thomas Miller, a black state congressman in South Carolina, who spoke of the progress achieved during Reconstruction: "We were eight years in power. We built schoolhouses, established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary system, provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the ferries. In short we had reconstructed the State, and placed it upon the road to prosperity." Black politicians were purged from the South Carolina state legislature in 1895 to restore white supremacy.
It's dishonest for West to try to use Coates' own writing to impugn him as a sycophantic 'darling' when West hasn't bothered to read Coates' writing. After smearing Coates, West bemoans "we're losing the capacity to learn from and listen to one another." West shows no capacity to learn from Coates when he's smearing Coates work without having read it. Where's the respect???
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I've read Coates, and find nothing there which will give big money and prevailing power the slightest discomfort. Not Republicans, not Democrats, not Wall Street -- nobody loses sleep over Ta-Nehisi Coates.
His books do. however, make white people feel virtuous, and it's true that this multi-millionaire does have a prose style, sort of, though his foray into comic books is laughable for tone-deaf dialogue. Nothing like success to turn a man's head.
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How do you know that he didn't read it? The title is a metaphor not just the reference to the Reconstruction 8 years... and Coates is a fancy fraud.
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No, West is right, the title is mainly intended as marketing to people who felt Obama's presidency meant they were in power. I understand your point that Coates claims this double meaning.
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Female voices are needed... I mean Black females...
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"Given the provocativeness of your own language, your asking for tenderness is pretty interesting."
Essays could be written about the problems with this statement. I will pass because the inquisitor is clearly unfamiliar with Dr. West's role as the foremost public advocate of the need for LOVE in society. When he strongly attacks grifters like Coates, it's because they so richly deserve it.
31
Cornel West speaks many truths. Especially about liberal complicity in what's happened to the middle class in the last 25 years.
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Or how about liberals' complicity - including the Clinton and Obama wings of the Democratic Party - in the two longest wars in US history, those in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Dr. West doesn't let up on that stuff, either. And these wars and the economic underpinnings are some of the really ugly parts of US foreign policy and actions. Many, many people have died or have been maimed. And way, way more of them are brown skinned non-Christians. It was Jesus who told us to look after strangers (the Good Samaritan) and to look out for the marginalized (Matthew Chapter 25).
I'm not a Christian, but I was raised among them and when I ditched the Christian faith, I hung onto the Christian ethics as proclaimed by their god, Jesus.
20
A true intellectual. One we should listen to.
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"Who’s the “we”? When’s the last time he’s been through the ghetto, in the hoods, to the schools and indecent housing and mass unemployment? We were in power for eight years? My God. Maybe he and some of his friends might have been in power, but not poor working people."
Exactly. Poor working people -- black and white -- have not felt that anybody was looking out for their interests for a long, long time. And by interests I don't mean "here, take some more table scrap entitlements and keep voting for us." I mean "here is a chance to change your life."
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When the "interests" of those blacks and whites who occupy the proverbial 47% are specifically to redistribute money from the 1%, who pay 40% of federal income taxes, to themselves, who pay no federal income tax, then those interests aren't worth addressing. Using the numbers as a club isn't democracy. It's mob rule.
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@JerseyGirl
And whose interests were being served by the Affordable Care Act? Not the middle class or the rich. Are people voting for a change in their lives by continuing to vote for Republicans?
2
A good condensed interview.
Surprised that he was not asked about Rep. Conyers and his troubles.
After all, Mr Conyers is as giant on the liberal side as they come.
3
Love Mr. West's principled stand. We need so many more like him.
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I have always admired Brother West's commitment to humanizing differing factions in a debate as opposed to demonizing them. Similarly his commitment to intellectual honesty and rigor in supporting his positions.
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Wow--I was recently thinking about we all can benefit from this man having wider recognition, as he demonstrates for himself how positive it can be. Here is the essence of an intelligent, thinking person who is a master of logic--true reason that sees a premise (especially a false one!) coming from a mile away and rationally addresses it. Two examples: the "college campuses" question and answer (simplistic thinking blasted) and "provocativeness" in language assuming that it automatically means contradiction about preferred manner (nope!). (Regarding the latter, MLK was dedicated to nonviolence but relentless in his use of it to promote change.) West's exposure of the veritable parade of emperors-with-no-clothes in leadership roles is profoundly necessary. Many top scholars of history and politics have identified "change" as the essential element in 2016. Interesting, considering eight years previously, "change you can believe in" was a major political slogan. Guess whose? West and I are about the same age. May we both live to see a genuine change for the benefit of the common good.
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He doesn't want to be a neoliberal darling, but he'll take their money. I admire his words on political discourse, however.
5
So the man shouldn't get paid especially when it grants him access and a degree of credibility that he wouldn't otherwise have? (BTW, I know that this sounds terse, but I ask respectfully.)
19
Dr. West's 1996 essay "Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization" is one of the greatest influences on me as a thinker and I recommend it without reservation to anyone; it is still as relevant now as it was then. I wish that he would return to the rigor and precision of his earlier works. It seems to me that he has given up scholarship for advocacy. There is nothing shameful about this trade, but while there are many advocates who are as eloquent as Dr. West, while were few scholars as passionate and erudite. I will forever respect the man, but I miss the thinker who opened new intellectual vistas to me. I hope there is still a third act in this great American life, one which fuses the best of both that came before.
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Does West have any remorse for not encouraging as strong an anti-Trump vote as possible, since he urged people to support a candidate who couldn't win despite the severe consequences? He should.
31
it is important to speak truth to power when the DNC shoved an unlikable candidate down our throats, while refusing to support the guy outside of the establishment, that everyone wanted. this will happen again if they don't listen to the people.
29
It's complicated and every person has their unique blind spots. Cornel West has important things to say, but he doesn't have the whole story, His discrediting of others who are giving their takes (TNC, for example) betrays him.
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