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But this is a pissing match—not prophetic witness.
Cornel West v. Barack Obama
Professor West says that Obama has “a certain fear of free black men.” But this is a pissing match—not prophetic witness.
By Melissa Harris-Perry
Take for example West’s ad hominem attack on the president’s racial identity.
“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men.… It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation.”
This comment is utter hilarity coming from Cornel West who has spent the bulk of his adulthood living in those deeply rooted, culturally rich, historically important black communities of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Princeton, New Jersey. And it is hard to see his claim that Obama is “most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they” as anything other than a classic projection of his own comfortably ensconced life at Harvard and Princeton Universities. Harvard and Princeton are not places that are particularly noted for their liberating history for black men.
http://www.thenation.com/article/cornel-west-v-barack-obama/
Professor West says that Obama has “a certain fear of free black men.” But this is a pissing match—not prophetic witness.
By Melissa Harris-Perry
Take for example West’s ad hominem attack on the president’s racial identity.
“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men.… It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation.”
This comment is utter hilarity coming from Cornel West who has spent the bulk of his adulthood living in those deeply rooted, culturally rich, historically important black communities of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Princeton, New Jersey. And it is hard to see his claim that Obama is “most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they” as anything other than a classic projection of his own comfortably ensconced life at Harvard and Princeton Universities. Harvard and Princeton are not places that are particularly noted for their liberating history for black men.
http://www.thenation.com/article/cornel-west-v-barack-obama/
I think MHP explains some of the dislike of CW
15 replies
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Asking for a friend...
And because being a scholarship boy at an elite yet incredibly racially diverse school in Honolulu totally imbued young Obama with those values Brother West projects on him.
Has Cornel West ever been anywhere outside his academic bubble on the East Coast? Has he ever even put a toe in the vast Pacific Ocean and contemplated life across those waters?
