Dr. Cornel West is an American racial theorist, civil rights activist and philosopher of political and moral ethics – perhaps you’ve heard of him? Like with most thinkers or philosphers whose ideas are actually worth half a damn, West is a somewhat controversial figure. He’s what some might call “radical” in his politics and more importantly, his ideas. Recently, West has made some rather petty and provocative statements about Barack Obama’s presidency. However, despite West’s self-important pontification on the issue his critiques are unfortunately right on the money.
To get a good insight into how he thinks and speaks, watch this clip of Dr. West talking about courage and critical thinking, truth, Classical music, Jazz music, Romanticism and the notions of the absolute, wholeness and the meaning of life from the movie Examined Life, directed by Astra Taylor. (If you haven’t the time for the whole clip, the last six minutes is my favorite section):
Dr. West isn’t getting any younger, and he’s been thinking and writing about gender, race and inequality in American for twenty odd years – enough to drive anyone absolutely crazy. An ardent supporter of Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency from quite early on, West appeared at dozens of Obama campaign events. However, relations between the two (and between Obama and the African-American intellectual-activist set in general) began to cool as Obama became increasingly uninterested in bowing to the demands of what Melissa Harris-Perry describes in her article in The Nation as “the self-appointed black leadership class.”
Dr. West is an extremely emotive speaker and idealistic thinker but that, again, is the job of the philosopher: to articulate the ideas that are cast out of the world of the mundane, day-to-day workings of society and economics as being too unworkable, too outrageous. In doing so, he encourages us to ask whether what he is proposing is desirable to us and if it is, why is the implementation of these ideas so unreasonable? Why can’t we bring these desirable developments and outcomes to bear in the “real world”?
Despite his critiques of Romanticism, West is obviously a romanticist at heart and was overwhelmingly seduced by Obama’s romantic and idealist message of hope and rhetoric of dispensing with “business as usual” in Washington. Unfortunately as Obama’s presidency has progressed from a brand new day to an ever-encroaching twilight, it is becoming more obvious that Obama is unwilling or unable to implement the changes he claimed to herald. This has lead to disillusionment among many of Obama’s supporters with West voicing his displeasure in a particularly forceful way.
West comes from a perspective based very much in the critical theory and neo-Marxist school; his PhD thesis, completed at Stanford in 1980, was titled “Ethics, Historicism and the Marxist Tradition.” So it is perhaps not surprising that West is alarmed by how Obama has embraced the trappings of American power, namely military might and corporate dominance.There is no question that Obama’s economic policies are extremely neoliberal in their goals and execution: he may want to address inequality in America but he sees free-market capitalism as an ally in this pursuit not the cause of the problems themselves, something which is at absolute odds with West’s abhorrence toward capitalism. West has argued time and again that free-market fundamentalism “trivializes concern for the public interest,” and has also contended that capitalism’s insidious influence on American politics creates a climate in government that is “deferential to the corporate goals of profit-often at the cost of the common good.”
Perhaps sensing Obama’s own deference to corporate interests, West has recently lashed out at Obama calling him a “black mascot for Wall street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats,” adding that he had held out hope that Obama would give voice to “concerns about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck.”
Indeed, last night West went to point on The Ed Show (in which Ed uses the word “diss” because, you know, he’s talking to black people) with Harris-Perry and maintained his assertion that Obama has done little, if anything, to address the systemic problems that result in abosolute down-ward mobility for all everyone but the super-wealthy, even the previously “secure” middle-class (West and Harris-Perry unfortunately didn’t have an opportunity to debate one another):
It’s hard not to agree with what West is saying and Harris-Perry, for her part, doesn’t seem to disagree with West’s specific critiques and seems obsessed with keeping this an issue of disgruntled “leftists.” West doesn’t primarily identify with being a leftist but clearly is more concerned about the very real issues of run away poverty and operates from a perspective of have and have-not. He doesn’t claim to speak for black people at all, he only wishes to “speak truth to power” on the issue of poverty in America. To dismiss West as just another disgruntled lefty misses the point entirely.
West acknowledges his insecurity over his personal relationship with Obama: obsessing over returned phone-calls and whether or not he is being recognized enough, whether Obama is grateful enough. In his petty reminiscences of his interactions with Obama what comes across more than anything is that it was obviously a relation of fandom, and fandom can end in disillusionment rather abruptly.
West would probably do well, though, to keep his critiques of Obama on the axis of haves and have-nots; when he begins talking about Obama’s “fear of being a white man in black skin” and having a “certain fear of free black men,” West’s authority and reputation can only suffer as he is clearly allowing his emotions to cloud his ability to think critically as personal attacks like this have no place whatsoever in critical thought.
However, none of this makes the main thrust of West’s critiques of Obama any less valid. West may have a point when he says that Obama’s personal history is quite different from the many generations of African-Americas that lived and still live with a personal history of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and the violence of the black civil rights movement. Yet, Obama has never claimed to be a crusader for black America, but the fact does remain that Obama’s political beginnings were absolutely rooted in civil rights and empowering the political clout of marginalized communities and people. In this light it is extremely dissapointing that Obama’s economic policies completely fail to address long-term, systemic causes of poverty, erosion of worker’s rights and an insane inequality gap.
From West’s point of view, “this was maybe America’s last chance to fight back against the greed of Wall Street oligarchs, to generate some serious discussion about common good which sustains any democratic experiment.” Again, looking around American politics today, at state and federal levels, it’s hard not to agree with this statement.
So we return to the question of whether West’s ideas are unreasonable. It seems completely disingenuous to argue that “liberal” ideas such as West’s are good on paper but don’t work in the “real world.” Well, why don’t they work in the real world? Is it because this is a cold, hard fact or is it because the people themselves stand in the way of them becoming reality by our outright dismissal of them? Rather than dismiss West’s critiques, or get hung-up on his unfortunately personal way of delivering those critiques, should we not ask ourselves instead whether we think what he is proposing is desirable? And if we do find that we want these ideas to be reality, should we not then set about understanding how we can make them work in the real world? We make our world the way it is, don’t forget that. As John Steinbeck tells us in his great epic of haves and have-nots, The Grapes of Wrath: “There’s some way to stop this. It’s not like lightning or earthquakes. We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change.”
