This is the text, rather than the video. The audio of Cornell West was very
muffled. I tried to listen to the original video on Truthdig and missed part
of what he said so this is much better.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, August 07, 2015 10:52 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Here's the entire interview
Thankks Miriam,
I'll be eager to listen to this when I return home this evening.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/7/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chris Hedges Interviews Cornel West On Black Prophetic Tradition |https://www.popularresistance.org/chris-hedges-interviews-cornel-west-on-the
PopularResistance.Org
Chris Hedges Interviews Cornel West On Black Prophetic Tradition |
PopularResistance.Org frame
popularresistance.org
-black-prophetic-tradition/more
Chris Hedges Interviews Cornel West On Black Prophetic Tradition
Bio
Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on
Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central
America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from
than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor,His
National
Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he
was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has written nine books,
including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle (2009), I Dont Believe in Atheists (2008) and the
best-selling
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2008).
book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2003) was a finalist for thePh.D.
National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is
the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. He
graduated
Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and
in Philosophy at Princeton. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary,great
Yale, Harvard and the University of Paris. He has written 19 books and
edited 13 books. He is best known for his classic Race Matters, Democracy
Matters, and his new memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. He
appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, Colbert Report, CNN and C-Span
as
well as on his dear Brother, Tavis Smileys PBS TV Show. He can be heard
weekly with Tavis Smiley on Smiley & West, the national public radio
program distributed by Public Radio International (PRI).
Transcript
[music plays]
CHRIS HEDGES, HOST, DAYS OF REVOLT: Hi. Im Chris Hedges. Welcome to Days
of
Revolt. The song youve been listening to is by Willie King, Willie King
and
the Liberators, Terrorized, written after the events of 9/11 in response
to the outcry, mostly by white society, that this was the first attack of
terror on American soil. King sings, dont talk to me of terror, Ive been
terrorized all my days.
Im here with Dr. Cornel West, that great defender of the black prophetic
tradition, I think the most important intellectual tradition in American
society. And were going to discuss that tradition as hes laid out in his
great book Black Prophetic Fire.
Thank you, Dr. West.
WEST: What a blessing to be here with you, my dear brother. I salute your
wonderful new show, Days of Revolt, also your powerful new [incompr.], The
Wages of the Rebellion.
HEDGES: Thank you. Well, youre my first two guests.
WEST: What a blessing. What a blessing.
HEDGES: So lets talk about this. In the book you profile some of the
figures of the black prophetic tradition, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm, Ellareally
Baker, Martin Luther King, of course, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells.
What
is, how do you define the black prophetic tradition?
WEST: Well, I think in many ways its embodied in that wonderful song by
brother Willie King and the Liberators. If the blues is defined as a
personal narrative of catastrophe lyrically expressed, then what you
have, you have a catastrophe of white supremacy, slavery, the catastropheintegrity,
of
Jim and Jane Crow senior, the catastrophes of Jim and Jane Crow juniors.
And
the black prophetic tradition is simply one that says in the face of that
catastrophe, weve got to analytically understand it, weve got to
prophetically bear witness, and weve got to generate forms of fightback
that organize and mobilize, beginning on the chocolate sides of town, but
also embracing all freedom fighters of all colors. So a Frederick Douglass
working with William Lloyd Garrison and Ida B. Wells working for
antiterrorist, antilynching groups, not just here but in Britain as well,
all the way up to Malcolm and Martin and Ella Baker, so that in a sense
what
were really saying is that these towering figures who exemplify
honesty, and decency, that theyre trying to get us to come to terms witha
people, my own folk, my tradition, whove been terrorized, traumatized,and
stigmatized for 400 years.antiterrorist
And heres the best of the response. Black church, prophetic,
institutions, black music, prophetic, antiterrorist, anti-trauma. How doat
you
straighten your back up? How do you tell the truth? How do you bear
witness?
How do you organize? How do you mobilize? How do you generate forms of
resistance and resiliency in the face of some very, very ugly forms of
terror and trauma and stigma?
WEST: One of the things about the black prophetic tradition which I look
as somebody who writes a lot about empire is that that has been the majorcolor,
intellectual force in American society in terms of its critique and
understanding of empire, I think largely because African Americans have
suffered internally the effects of empire, so that they understand
externally what poor people who are subjugated, often poor people of
are enduring on the outer reaches of empire.The
WEST: Theres no doubt that when you wrestle with the vicious legacy of
white supremacy, that youre going to sooner or later have to engage in a
critique of capitalism, of imperialism. You hope that you get the vicious
legacies of male supremacy and homophobia. But youre going toits going
to
situate you right at the center of the operations of power in wrestling
with
his legacy of white supremacy.
Now, there are some and too many black figures that want to say, well, the
original sin of America was slavery. And thats a lie. Thats not true.
white supremacist beginnings of this nation really had to do withbut
indigenous
peoples, a violation of their humanity, the dispossession of their lands,
and so on. But its true that enslaved Africans will become the generators
of wealth based on exploited labor. That will be the precondition for
American democracy, so that when you look at genocidal attacks on the one
hand and enslavement of Africans on the other, youve got two fundamental
pillars which constitute the lens through which you look at the history of
this nation. And thats the best of the black prophetic tradition.
HEDGES: Which is why the black prophetic tradition has traditionally been
antimilitarist.
WEST: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
HEDGES: And thats been, I thinkwell, I dont know if you would agree,
I think thats been one of the most important contributions, because wewhite
have
very few critiques of imperial power. We did through figures like Debs and
through some of the anarchists, but theres been a consistency with the
black prophetic tradition that has warned America, I think, about its
adventurism and its notion of exceptionalism and its propensity to use
violence, both internally and externally, to promote its supposed virtues.
WEST: Absolutely. Look at somebody like Ella Baker, who deserves so much
more attention. She spends so much of her years, her later years, with the
Puerto Rican independence movement with Albizu Campos and Oscar López
Rivera, still a political prisoner today. She makes the connection between
struggling against white supremacy in the States and struggling against
U.S.
colonialism on the island of Puerto Rico. So that critique of empire,
supremacy, always interwoven, always intermingling in the best sense.that
But I think in our day and time, thoughand this is what this book is very
much about; its a love letter to the younger generation in our age of
Ferguson and Baltimore and Staten Island and Cleveland and Oakland and
soand Charleston, North Charleston and Charleston. And what I mean by
is to say, young people, you are waking up in a magnificent way from yourthat
sleepwalking. But theres a magnificent tradition that constitutes wind at
your back.
Youre not going to get it in corporate media, youre not going to get it
in
mainstream discourse. The neoliberals who dominate corporate media, they
want to financialize, privatize, and militarize. Lo and behold, the black
prophetic tradition says, no, were critical of pro-Wall Street policy
generate more capitalist wealth and inequality. When it comes tohave
privatizing, no, we want public life. We want a sense of what we hold in
common, including at the workplace vis-à-vis bosses, oftentimes just run
amok with corporate greed. And the same would be true in terms of
militarize. Thats part of the anti-militarism that you rightly talk about
that goes hand-in-hand with anti-imperialism.
And so somebody like Martin King, who of course reaches this point with
tremendous eloquence in the last three years of his life, what does he
to do? He has to cut against the grain: 72 percent of Americans disapproveLuther
of him; 55 percent of black people disapprove of Martin.
HEDGES: And you write in the book, since the assassination of Martin
King Jr., it is clear that something has died in black America.havethere
WEST: Absolutely. Absolutely.
HEDGES: Whats died?
WEST: What died was a sense of we consciousness. The market mentality took
over, the I consciousness, the narcissistic, predatory, careeristic,
opportunistic proclivities took over.
HEDGES: How did that happen?
WEST: It, one, was the vicious attack on the black freedom movement, of
which they either killed so many of the leaders or they incarcerated so
many
of the leaders. And what was left
HEDGES: Whichand I think we should stop there and just say were talking
about hundreds, hundreds, which I think most people who dont examine the
system of mass incarcerationwe still have 150 black revolutionariesMumia
Abu-Jamal, whom you and I visited.
WEST: Absolutely, with brother Jim Cone.
HEDGES: Youwith brother Jimgreat theologian James Cone. But we
was a conscious effort by the state to destroy those torchbearers.There
WEST: Absolutely.
HEDGES: And they did.
WEST: Well, they didnt destroy them. They pushed back.
HEDGES: Or silenced them, lets say.
WEST: Thats right. They pushed back, because, I mean, Mumia Abu-Jamal is
still as strong. We know that. Assata Shakur is still strong in Cuba.
are a number of powerful, grassroot, local activists who are still strong.not
But in terms of the national presence of the black prophetic tradition,
look
at Jeremiah Wright. Vicious attacks trying to demonize him and somehow
dampen his spirit as we moved into the culmination of the highly
individualistic, narcissistic proclivities of black professional class,
which is, of course, the first black president.
HEDGES: Well, and youre very critical of this class, and you see it as a
very destructive force. Would it be fair to say that there are two
principal
strains, the black prophetic tradition and the Booker T. Washington
accommodationist tradition? Would it be too much of a stretch to say that
figures like Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Mr. Coates from The Atlantic, who
you have called out, I think, recently, do they veer more towards the
Booker
T. Washington tradition? Or is it different? Theyve certainly walked away
from the black prophetic tradition.
WEST: Yeah, they certainly walked away from the black prophetic. I think
what you get, though, the black neoliberal tradition, which would still
necessarily be the same as Booker T. Washington. Booker T. Washingtondid
really
goes straight to Clarence Thomas. Hes actually deeply conservative. He
some wonderful things for black people on an individual level, withrun
Tuskegee, with white money, and so on, but hes deeply conservative. Hes
anti-labor, his anti-immigration, and so forth.
HEDGES: Well, heand he would not announce lynching.
WEST: Edit least publicly he wouldntand therefore Ida B. Wells has to
right into the fire with unbelievable courage.that
But, no, the neoliberal one is one that comes out of the civil rights
movement, in which you get the formation of a black professional class
acts as if theyre prophetic, who really convince themselves theyretheyre
progressive, when in fact theyre so tied to capital.
HEDGES: Right. The lumpen bourgeoisie.
WEST: The lumpen bourgeoisie. Absolutely.
HEDGES: Is that a Cornel West term?
WEST: No. That comes out of E. Franklin Fraziers great text The Black
Bourgeoisie. You see. Absolutely. Its a middle-class beneath the American
middle class, with less capital, less credit, less power.
HEDGES: But its aspirations.
WEST: But the aspirations are intense and want to somehow act as if
tied to Malcolm. I mean, the peace by brother Coates a few years ago saidMalcolm
that brother Barack Obama was part of the culminating expression of
X, now, that is about as wrongthats like saying I come out of the Beachwhich
Boys. You know what I mean? And Malcolms legacy had nothing to do with
Barack Obama.
Barack Obama comes out of a highly cultivated black professional class
thats tied to neoliberal policies of Wall Street domination, drones,
are U.S. war crimes, massive surveillance, so COINTELPRO on steroids,every
day, keeping track of what we do and so forth. What that is is in fact aclass
culmination of not just black professional class; its a professional
in contemporary monopoly capitalist America, you see. And so itswithin
pro-imperialist. It acts as if its antiracist. And it is antiracist
a very narrow bourgeois liberal order. But when it comes to massiveexample,
unemployment, massive underemployment, decrepit housing, dealing with this
unbelievablywhats the right word with our educational system? Lets say
soul-murdering educational system, you see. Where is the structural
critique? Hardly at all. And when it comes to the Middle East, for
if you can get a black neoliberal to say that the killing of 500 preciousas
Palestinian babies is a crime against humanity, it would be fascinating to
see that take place. It will never take place.
HEDGES: You write that Obama displaces, is part of this process thats
displacing the black prophetic tradition. And one gets a sense from your
book that youre worried thatyou know, and you certainly stand up in
defense of this tradition, but one gets a sense from the book that youre
worried that these forces are so powerful that they may extinguish it.
WEST: Oh, theres no doubt about it. Thats why I fight so vehemently. You
know, people say, oh, you hate the president. No, no, no. I love black
people, I love black freedom, I love the black prophetic tradition. And
when
you have someone who is displacing itand this is true for intellectuals
well, neoliberal intellectuals who act as if theyre coming out of thewhat
black
prophetic tradition, and in fact they are calling it into question, and
oftentimes suffocating it, if not destroying it.
And see, for me, that means Ive got to come out swinging, come out
swinging, you see. Why? Because, one, its the tradition that produced
I try to do in my life. Black people themselves, especially the blackpoor,
especially the black masses, always connected to other poor, other masses,it
here and around the world, its the only real hope that we have of telling
the truth, bearing witness, and making sure that the Jamal and Leticias on
the corner are not overlooked as the black professionals that breakdancing
at the top as they break glass ceilings day in and day out.
HEDGES: Well, you also writeand I think this is true, thatthe primary
tradition that has contributed to the renewal and regeneration of American
democracy.
WEST: Oh, yes.
HEDGES: And I think thats right.
WEST: Oh, yeah. Oh, no. The black prophetic tradition, the black freedom
struggle is the leaven in the American democratic loaf. You see, when you
have a conception of democracy from the vantage point of the slave, then
looks different than Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder. Then it looksdifferent
from George Washington, slaveholder. It looks different in AbrahamLincoln,
who fought colonization of black people, going to other parts outside ofdemocracy
the
United States up until 1862.
So when you have that conception, then youve got what Du Bois, the great
Du
Bois, called the reconstruction of freedom, the reconstruction of
from the vantage point of those below. And we must also, of course, alwaysAmerican
embrace our indigenous brothers and sisters and make sure that their land
rights, make sure that their humanity and dignity are thoroughly affirmed.
HEDGES: Which makes Du Bois maybe the most important intellectual in
American history.
WEST: He is the greatest public intellectual in the history of the
empire. No doubt about it.that
HEDGES: Because like the Jews in Europe at the time of fascism, he had
intellectual brilliance, which you carry, but also as a black man stoodfar
enough away from the centers of power, and was certainly by the end of hisof
life a victim of that power, that he understood how power worked in a way
that the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr I think finally did not.
WEST: Well, James Cones laid bare the truth about Reinhold Niebuhr.
Theres
a wonderful play by the great Amira Baraka, the last play that he wrote I
just saw just a few weeks ago, The Most Dangerous Man in America, is about
Du Boiss trial, February 1951, when he comes in in handcuffs at the age
83 years old. Hardly anybody would touch him. NAACP has already kickedthem
out. Why? Because he says, Im not going to capitulate to the Cold War andworld,
become just a domestic liberal; I am a freedom fighter with connections to
various freedom movements in Africa and other parts of the world.
HEDGES: Well, and we should be clear, and I cant remember whether its
from
this book or not, but the NAACP was set up as a counterweight to more
radical elements, and in particular the Communist Party.
WEST: After World War II, Gerald Horne and Robin Kelly and the other fine
truth telling historians lay it out. And when Paul Robison attends the 31
Grace court in Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, the best borough in the
its just the two of them, Paul Robison under house arrest. The mostare
popular
Negro in the world in 1939, hes under house arrest. Du Bois basically
under
house arrest, passport taken. Theyre in dialog. Theres John Killens.
Theres Harry Belafonte coming in every once in a while. Thats the Du
Bois,
that is the Paul Robison that our young folk in Ferguson, young folk in
Baltimore, they need to be attune to the vision and courage, because we
catching up with them. The American empire is in deep trouble.this
HEDGES: Can I read this passage from The Souls of White Folks, from your
book, by Du Bois.
WEST: Sure. Yeah. Its Du Boiss language. But yes.
HEDGES: Its Du Bois. Its Du Bois.
WEST: Thats right. The great Du Bois.
HEDGES: It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on
herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral
protagonist
in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this rôle. For two or
more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human
hatred,making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and
making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,rather a
great religion, a world war-cry. . . .
Now, Muslims in the Middle East would understand that language.
WEST: Oh, absolutely. And that is the terrorism that brother Willie Kings
singing about with such power.
HEDGES: But its a terrorism that Americans are largely
WEST: In denial about.
HEDGES: In denial, and certainly the corporate media institutions have
blocked from view quite effectively.
WEST: Absolutely. Absolutely. But were living at a time in which with
escalating visibility of police terror and police murder, with hardly anysee,
police going to jail, no serious accountability, and most importantly with
the marvelous new militancy of the young brothers and sisters of all
colors,
but disproportionately chocolate, who have broken the back of fearyou
once you break the back of fear and say, I am not afraid any longer, I ambrother
willing to bear witness, put my body on the line, go to jailand this is
exactly what weve seen.
HEDGES: But that killings not new. I mean, for decades black people have
beenI mean, American society, maybe because of video thats been leaked,
you know, theyre shocked.
WEST: Thats right.
HEDGES: But black people have been killed at this rate for decades.
WEST: Absolutely. But when you have a wave of resistanceyou see, we just
had the wonderful march at Newark, my dear brother Larry Hamm, Peoples
Organization for Progress. Were going to have a major march here in New
York city October 24, brother Carl Dix and myself. And even my dear
Minister Louis Farrakhan, who is controversial, especially among a lot ofbrother
progressives who wonder why it is that the minister Louis Farrakhan still
has a presence, but he has a strong presence in terms of keeping track of
the terrorism coming at black folk. Hes going to have a 20th anniversary
of
the Million Man March thats part of all the different, ideologically
variegated expressions of how do you keep track of white supremacy and its
ugly effects, you see. Thats escalating.
And thats a beautiful thing, because the system now is just decrepit. You
know, the two-party system is as weak as it can be. Youve got escalating
ecological catastrophe. Youve got increasing nuclear catastrophe. Youve
got the economic catastrophe in terms of the wealth inequality that
Bernie Sanders and others talk about. Youve got the moral catastropheof.
regard.
HEDGES: He wont talk about empire, though.
WEST: Now, weve got to put some pressure on brother Bernie in that
And I think that.of
HEDGES: And he wont talk about the Palestinians, and he wont take on the
military.
WEST: I think hes more and more open to a critique of the Israeli
occupation. I think he at the same time has to somehow walk a tightrope
between the liberals who are excited about him. But thank God hes talking
about Wall Street domination.
HEDGES: Hes raising real issues. Yes, he is.
So I want to close this segment. Were going to talk in the next segment
about whats happened to the black prophetic tradition. But you have a
quote
in the book where you write about Ella Baker as saying that political
change
is not primarily politically motivated. And I think one of the strengths
the black prophetic tradition is that itespecially because it hasinstitutional,
confronted these frightening monolithic forceswhite supremacy, lethal
violence, terror itself, discrimination in all of its forms,
economicit sustains itself finally through an element of faith. And IPalestinians
wonder if you could address that.
WEST: Yeah. I think that when you talk about loving poor people, loving
black people, loving gay brothers, lesbian sisters, and loving
vis-à-vis Israeli occupation, or loving Jewish brothers and sistersdeepercompassion,
vis-à-vis a Hitler, that thats not just a political resistance. Thats a
deep moral and spiritual form that highlights power and the operations of
power. And theres no way you can sustain your movements over time based
solely on political calculation or motivation. Something
empathy. And for my tradition, the black tradition, because music has beenabout
the privileged form of expression, theres a sonic dimension to it, you
see,
so that the Donny Hathaways and the Marvin Gayes and the Nina Simones and
the John Coltranes and Max Roaches, they are as much love warriors and
freedom fighters as was Malcolm X, as was Martin Luther King, as was Ella
Baker.
HEDGES: Which isand Baldwin, when he writes about Malcolm, he writes
how gentle Malcolm was.Im
WEST: Absolutely.
HEDGES: And he was one of the gentlest people hed ever met.
WEST: Absolutely.
HEDGES: And I think they gets to the core of it, because when you love
those
people, you cannot betray them.
WEST: You cant betray them.
HEDGES: And if you cant betray them, it doesnt matter what they throw at
you. And that is the power of, I think, your work and is the power of that
prophetic tradition.
WEST: Which is the power of the tradition Im just a small part of. But
going to go down fighting defending that tradition, even given the folkwho
try to lie about it.is
HEDGES: Thank God youre here. Thank you very much.
WEST: Yeah. Well, Im blessed, Im blessed, my brother.
HEDGES: So stay tuned. Were going to come back next week and talk to Dr.
West about whats happened to the black prophetic tradition, the assault
that has been carried out to essentially shut down its voice, and why he
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Chris Hedges Interviews Cornel West On Black Prophetic Tradition
Bio
Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on
Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central
America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from
than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor,His
National
Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he
was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has written nine books,
including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle (2009), I Dont Believe in Atheists (2008) and the
best-selling
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2008).
book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2003) was a finalist for thePh.D.
National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is
the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. He
graduated
Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and
in Philosophy at Princeton. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary,great
Yale, Harvard and the University of Paris. He has written 19 books and
edited 13 books. He is best known for his classic Race Matters, Democracy
Matters, and his new memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. He
appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, Colbert Report, CNN and C-Span
as
well as on his dear Brother, Tavis Smileys PBS TV Show. He can be heard
weekly with Tavis Smiley on Smiley & West, the national public radio
program distributed by Public Radio International (PRI).
Transcript
[music plays]
CHRIS HEDGES, HOST, DAYS OF REVOLT: Hi. Im Chris Hedges. Welcome to Days
of
Revolt. The song youve been listening to is by Willie King, Willie King
and
the Liberators, Terrorized, written after the events of 9/11 in response
to the outcry, mostly by white society, that this was the first attack of
terror on American soil. King sings, dont talk to me of terror, Ive been
terrorized all my days.
Im here with Dr. Cornel West, that great defender of the black prophetic
tradition, I think the most important intellectual tradition in American
society. And were going to discuss that tradition as hes laid out in his
great book Black Prophetic Fire.
Thank you, Dr. West.
WEST: What a blessing to be here with you, my dear brother. I salute your
wonderful new show, Days of Revolt, also your powerful new [incompr.], The
Wages of the Rebellion.
HEDGES: Thank you. Well, youre my first two guests.
WEST: What a blessing. What a blessing.
HEDGES: So lets talk about this. In the book you profile some of the
figures of the black prophetic tradition, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm, Ellareally
Baker, Martin Luther King, of course, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells.
What
is, how do you define the black prophetic tradition?
WEST: Well, I think in many ways its embodied in that wonderful song by
brother Willie King and the Liberators. If the blues is defined as a
personal narrative of catastrophe lyrically expressed, then what you
have, you have a catastrophe of white supremacy, slavery, the catastropheintegrity,
of
Jim and Jane Crow senior, the catastrophes of Jim and Jane Crow juniors.
And
the black prophetic tradition is simply one that says in the face of that
catastrophe, weve got to analytically understand it, weve got to
prophetically bear witness, and weve got to generate forms of fightback
that organize and mobilize, beginning on the chocolate sides of town, but
also embracing all freedom fighters of all colors. So a Frederick Douglass
working with William Lloyd Garrison and Ida B. Wells working for
antiterrorist, antilynching groups, not just here but in Britain as well,
all the way up to Malcolm and Martin and Ella Baker, so that in a sense
what
were really saying is that these towering figures who exemplify
honesty, and decency, that theyre trying to get us to come to terms witha
people, my own folk, my tradition, whove been terrorized, traumatized,and
stigmatized for 400 years.antiterrorist
And heres the best of the response. Black church, prophetic,
institutions, black music, prophetic, antiterrorist, anti-trauma. How doat
you
straighten your back up? How do you tell the truth? How do you bear
witness?
How do you organize? How do you mobilize? How do you generate forms of
resistance and resiliency in the face of some very, very ugly forms of
terror and trauma and stigma?
WEST: One of the things about the black prophetic tradition which I look
as somebody who writes a lot about empire is that that has been the majorcolor,
intellectual force in American society in terms of its critique and
understanding of empire, I think largely because African Americans have
suffered internally the effects of empire, so that they understand
externally what poor people who are subjugated, often poor people of
are enduring on the outer reaches of empire.The
WEST: Theres no doubt that when you wrestle with the vicious legacy of
white supremacy, that youre going to sooner or later have to engage in a
critique of capitalism, of imperialism. You hope that you get the vicious
legacies of male supremacy and homophobia. But youre going toits going
to
situate you right at the center of the operations of power in wrestling
with
his legacy of white supremacy.
Now, there are some and too many black figures that want to say, well, the
original sin of America was slavery. And thats a lie. Thats not true.
white supremacist beginnings of this nation really had to do withbut
indigenous
peoples, a violation of their humanity, the dispossession of their lands,
and so on. But its true that enslaved Africans will become the generators
of wealth based on exploited labor. That will be the precondition for
American democracy, so that when you look at genocidal attacks on the one
hand and enslavement of Africans on the other, youve got two fundamental
pillars which constitute the lens through which you look at the history of
this nation. And thats the best of the black prophetic tradition.
HEDGES: Which is why the black prophetic tradition has traditionally been
antimilitarist.
WEST: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
HEDGES: And thats been, I thinkwell, I dont know if you would agree,
I think thats been one of the most important contributions, because wewhite
have
very few critiques of imperial power. We did through figures like Debs and
through some of the anarchists, but theres been a consistency with the
black prophetic tradition that has warned America, I think, about its
adventurism and its notion of exceptionalism and its propensity to use
violence, both internally and externally, to promote its supposed virtues.
WEST: Absolutely. Look at somebody like Ella Baker, who deserves so much
more attention. She spends so much of her years, her later years, with the
Puerto Rican independence movement with Albizu Campos and Oscar López
Rivera, still a political prisoner today. She makes the connection between
struggling against white supremacy in the States and struggling against
U.S.
colonialism on the island of Puerto Rico. So that critique of empire,
supremacy, always interwoven, always intermingling in the best sense.that
But I think in our day and time, thoughand this is what this book is very
much about; its a love letter to the younger generation in our age of
Ferguson and Baltimore and Staten Island and Cleveland and Oakland and
soand Charleston, North Charleston and Charleston. And what I mean by
is to say, young people, you are waking up in a magnificent way from yourthat
sleepwalking. But theres a magnificent tradition that constitutes wind at
your back.
Youre not going to get it in corporate media, youre not going to get it
in
mainstream discourse. The neoliberals who dominate corporate media, they
want to financialize, privatize, and militarize. Lo and behold, the black
prophetic tradition says, no, were critical of pro-Wall Street policy
generate more capitalist wealth and inequality. When it comes tohave
privatizing, no, we want public life. We want a sense of what we hold in
common, including at the workplace vis-à-vis bosses, oftentimes just run
amok with corporate greed. And the same would be true in terms of
militarize. Thats part of the anti-militarism that you rightly talk about
that goes hand-in-hand with anti-imperialism.
And so somebody like Martin King, who of course reaches this point with
tremendous eloquence in the last three years of his life, what does he
to do? He has to cut against the grain: 72 percent of Americans disapproveLuther
of him; 55 percent of black people disapprove of Martin.
HEDGES: And you write in the book, since the assassination of Martin
King Jr., it is clear that something has died in black America.havethere
WEST: Absolutely. Absolutely.
HEDGES: Whats died?
WEST: What died was a sense of we consciousness. The market mentality took
over, the I consciousness, the narcissistic, predatory, careeristic,
opportunistic proclivities took over.
HEDGES: How did that happen?
WEST: It, one, was the vicious attack on the black freedom movement, of
which they either killed so many of the leaders or they incarcerated so
many
of the leaders. And what was left
HEDGES: Whichand I think we should stop there and just say were talking
about hundreds, hundreds, which I think most people who dont examine the
system of mass incarcerationwe still have 150 black revolutionariesMumia
Abu-Jamal, whom you and I visited.
WEST: Absolutely, with brother Jim Cone.
HEDGES: Youwith brother Jimgreat theologian James Cone. But we
was a conscious effort by the state to destroy those torchbearers.There
WEST: Absolutely.
HEDGES: And they did.
WEST: Well, they didnt destroy them. They pushed back.
HEDGES: Or silenced them, lets say.
WEST: Thats right. They pushed back, because, I mean, Mumia Abu-Jamal is
still as strong. We know that. Assata Shakur is still strong in Cuba.
are a number of powerful, grassroot, local activists who are still strong.not
But in terms of the national presence of the black prophetic tradition,
look
at Jeremiah Wright. Vicious attacks trying to demonize him and somehow
dampen his spirit as we moved into the culmination of the highly
individualistic, narcissistic proclivities of black professional class,
which is, of course, the first black president.
HEDGES: Well, and youre very critical of this class, and you see it as a
very destructive force. Would it be fair to say that there are two
principal
strains, the black prophetic tradition and the Booker T. Washington
accommodationist tradition? Would it be too much of a stretch to say that
figures like Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Mr. Coates from The Atlantic, who
you have called out, I think, recently, do they veer more towards the
Booker
T. Washington tradition? Or is it different? Theyve certainly walked away
from the black prophetic tradition.
WEST: Yeah, they certainly walked away from the black prophetic. I think
what you get, though, the black neoliberal tradition, which would still
necessarily be the same as Booker T. Washington. Booker T. Washingtondid
really
goes straight to Clarence Thomas. Hes actually deeply conservative. He
some wonderful things for black people on an individual level, withrun
Tuskegee, with white money, and so on, but hes deeply conservative. Hes
anti-labor, his anti-immigration, and so forth.
HEDGES: Well, heand he would not announce lynching.
WEST: Edit least publicly he wouldntand therefore Ida B. Wells has to
right into the fire with unbelievable courage.that
But, no, the neoliberal one is one that comes out of the civil rights
movement, in which you get the formation of a black professional class
acts as if theyre prophetic, who really convince themselves theyretheyre
progressive, when in fact theyre so tied to capital.
HEDGES: Right. The lumpen bourgeoisie.
WEST: The lumpen bourgeoisie. Absolutely.
HEDGES: Is that a Cornel West term?
WEST: No. That comes out of E. Franklin Fraziers great text The Black
Bourgeoisie. You see. Absolutely. Its a middle-class beneath the American
middle class, with less capital, less credit, less power.
HEDGES: But its aspirations.
WEST: But the aspirations are intense and want to somehow act as if
tied to Malcolm. I mean, the peace by brother Coates a few years ago saidMalcolm
that brother Barack Obama was part of the culminating expression of
X, now, that is about as wrongthats like saying I come out of the Beachwhich
Boys. You know what I mean? And Malcolms legacy had nothing to do with
Barack Obama.
Barack Obama comes out of a highly cultivated black professional class
thats tied to neoliberal policies of Wall Street domination, drones,
are U.S. war crimes, massive surveillance, so COINTELPRO on steroids,every
day, keeping track of what we do and so forth. What that is is in fact aclass
culmination of not just black professional class; its a professional
in contemporary monopoly capitalist America, you see. And so itswithin
pro-imperialist. It acts as if its antiracist. And it is antiracist
a very narrow bourgeois liberal order. But when it comes to massiveexample,
unemployment, massive underemployment, decrepit housing, dealing with this
unbelievablywhats the right word with our educational system? Lets say
soul-murdering educational system, you see. Where is the structural
critique? Hardly at all. And when it comes to the Middle East, for
if you can get a black neoliberal to say that the killing of 500 preciousas
Palestinian babies is a crime against humanity, it would be fascinating to
see that take place. It will never take place.
HEDGES: You write that Obama displaces, is part of this process thats
displacing the black prophetic tradition. And one gets a sense from your
book that youre worried thatyou know, and you certainly stand up in
defense of this tradition, but one gets a sense from the book that youre
worried that these forces are so powerful that they may extinguish it.
WEST: Oh, theres no doubt about it. Thats why I fight so vehemently. You
know, people say, oh, you hate the president. No, no, no. I love black
people, I love black freedom, I love the black prophetic tradition. And
when
you have someone who is displacing itand this is true for intellectuals
well, neoliberal intellectuals who act as if theyre coming out of thewhat
black
prophetic tradition, and in fact they are calling it into question, and
oftentimes suffocating it, if not destroying it.
And see, for me, that means Ive got to come out swinging, come out
swinging, you see. Why? Because, one, its the tradition that produced
I try to do in my life. Black people themselves, especially the blackpoor,
especially the black masses, always connected to other poor, other masses,it
here and around the world, its the only real hope that we have of telling
the truth, bearing witness, and making sure that the Jamal and Leticias on
the corner are not overlooked as the black professionals that breakdancing
at the top as they break glass ceilings day in and day out.
HEDGES: Well, you also writeand I think this is true, thatthe primary
tradition that has contributed to the renewal and regeneration of American
democracy.
WEST: Oh, yes.
HEDGES: And I think thats right.
WEST: Oh, yeah. Oh, no. The black prophetic tradition, the black freedom
struggle is the leaven in the American democratic loaf. You see, when you
have a conception of democracy from the vantage point of the slave, then
looks different than Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder. Then it looksdifferent
from George Washington, slaveholder. It looks different in AbrahamLincoln,
who fought colonization of black people, going to other parts outside ofdemocracy
the
United States up until 1862.
So when you have that conception, then youve got what Du Bois, the great
Du
Bois, called the reconstruction of freedom, the reconstruction of
from the vantage point of those below. And we must also, of course, alwaysAmerican
embrace our indigenous brothers and sisters and make sure that their land
rights, make sure that their humanity and dignity are thoroughly affirmed.
HEDGES: Which makes Du Bois maybe the most important intellectual in
American history.
WEST: He is the greatest public intellectual in the history of the
empire. No doubt about it.that
HEDGES: Because like the Jews in Europe at the time of fascism, he had
intellectual brilliance, which you carry, but also as a black man stoodfar
enough away from the centers of power, and was certainly by the end of hisof
life a victim of that power, that he understood how power worked in a way
that the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr I think finally did not.
WEST: Well, James Cones laid bare the truth about Reinhold Niebuhr.
Theres
a wonderful play by the great Amira Baraka, the last play that he wrote I
just saw just a few weeks ago, The Most Dangerous Man in America, is about
Du Boiss trial, February 1951, when he comes in in handcuffs at the age
83 years old. Hardly anybody would touch him. NAACP has already kickedthem
out. Why? Because he says, Im not going to capitulate to the Cold War andworld,
become just a domestic liberal; I am a freedom fighter with connections to
various freedom movements in Africa and other parts of the world.
HEDGES: Well, and we should be clear, and I cant remember whether its
from
this book or not, but the NAACP was set up as a counterweight to more
radical elements, and in particular the Communist Party.
WEST: After World War II, Gerald Horne and Robin Kelly and the other fine
truth telling historians lay it out. And when Paul Robison attends the 31
Grace court in Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, the best borough in the
its just the two of them, Paul Robison under house arrest. The mostare
popular
Negro in the world in 1939, hes under house arrest. Du Bois basically
under
house arrest, passport taken. Theyre in dialog. Theres John Killens.
Theres Harry Belafonte coming in every once in a while. Thats the Du
Bois,
that is the Paul Robison that our young folk in Ferguson, young folk in
Baltimore, they need to be attune to the vision and courage, because we
catching up with them. The American empire is in deep trouble.this
HEDGES: Can I read this passage from The Souls of White Folks, from your
book, by Du Bois.
WEST: Sure. Yeah. Its Du Boiss language. But yes.
HEDGES: Its Du Bois. Its Du Bois.
WEST: Thats right. The great Du Bois.
HEDGES: It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on
herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral
protagonist
in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this rôle. For two or
more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human
hatred,making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and
making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,rather a
great religion, a world war-cry. . . .
Now, Muslims in the Middle East would understand that language.
WEST: Oh, absolutely. And that is the terrorism that brother Willie Kings
singing about with such power.
HEDGES: But its a terrorism that Americans are largely
WEST: In denial about.
HEDGES: In denial, and certainly the corporate media institutions have
blocked from view quite effectively.
WEST: Absolutely. Absolutely. But were living at a time in which with
escalating visibility of police terror and police murder, with hardly anysee,
police going to jail, no serious accountability, and most importantly with
the marvelous new militancy of the young brothers and sisters of all
colors,
but disproportionately chocolate, who have broken the back of fearyou
once you break the back of fear and say, I am not afraid any longer, I ambrother
willing to bear witness, put my body on the line, go to jailand this is
exactly what weve seen.
HEDGES: But that killings not new. I mean, for decades black people have
beenI mean, American society, maybe because of video thats been leaked,
you know, theyre shocked.
WEST: Thats right.
HEDGES: But black people have been killed at this rate for decades.
WEST: Absolutely. But when you have a wave of resistanceyou see, we just
had the wonderful march at Newark, my dear brother Larry Hamm, Peoples
Organization for Progress. Were going to have a major march here in New
York city October 24, brother Carl Dix and myself. And even my dear
Minister Louis Farrakhan, who is controversial, especially among a lot ofbrother
progressives who wonder why it is that the minister Louis Farrakhan still
has a presence, but he has a strong presence in terms of keeping track of
the terrorism coming at black folk. Hes going to have a 20th anniversary
of
the Million Man March thats part of all the different, ideologically
variegated expressions of how do you keep track of white supremacy and its
ugly effects, you see. Thats escalating.
And thats a beautiful thing, because the system now is just decrepit. You
know, the two-party system is as weak as it can be. Youve got escalating
ecological catastrophe. Youve got increasing nuclear catastrophe. Youve
got the economic catastrophe in terms of the wealth inequality that
Bernie Sanders and others talk about. Youve got the moral catastropheof.
regard.
HEDGES: He wont talk about empire, though.
WEST: Now, weve got to put some pressure on brother Bernie in that
And I think that.of
HEDGES: And he wont talk about the Palestinians, and he wont take on the
military.
WEST: I think hes more and more open to a critique of the Israeli
occupation. I think he at the same time has to somehow walk a tightrope
between the liberals who are excited about him. But thank God hes talking
about Wall Street domination.
HEDGES: Hes raising real issues. Yes, he is.
So I want to close this segment. Were going to talk in the next segment
about whats happened to the black prophetic tradition. But you have a
quote
in the book where you write about Ella Baker as saying that political
change
is not primarily politically motivated. And I think one of the strengths
the black prophetic tradition is that itespecially because it hasinstitutional,
confronted these frightening monolithic forceswhite supremacy, lethal
violence, terror itself, discrimination in all of its forms,
economicit sustains itself finally through an element of faith. And IPalestinians
wonder if you could address that.
WEST: Yeah. I think that when you talk about loving poor people, loving
black people, loving gay brothers, lesbian sisters, and loving
vis-à-vis Israeli occupation, or loving Jewish brothers and sistersdeepercompassion,
vis-à-vis a Hitler, that thats not just a political resistance. Thats a
deep moral and spiritual form that highlights power and the operations of
power. And theres no way you can sustain your movements over time based
solely on political calculation or motivation. Something
empathy. And for my tradition, the black tradition, because music has beenabout
the privileged form of expression, theres a sonic dimension to it, you
see,
so that the Donny Hathaways and the Marvin Gayes and the Nina Simones and
the John Coltranes and Max Roaches, they are as much love warriors and
freedom fighters as was Malcolm X, as was Martin Luther King, as was Ella
Baker.
HEDGES: Which isand Baldwin, when he writes about Malcolm, he writes
how gentle Malcolm was.Im
WEST: Absolutely.
HEDGES: And he was one of the gentlest people hed ever met.
WEST: Absolutely.
HEDGES: And I think they gets to the core of it, because when you love
those
people, you cannot betray them.
WEST: You cant betray them.
HEDGES: And if you cant betray them, it doesnt matter what they throw at
you. And that is the power of, I think, your work and is the power of that
prophetic tradition.
WEST: Which is the power of the tradition Im just a small part of. But
going to go down fighting defending that tradition, even given the folkwho
try to lie about it.is
HEDGES: Thank God youre here. Thank you very much.
WEST: Yeah. Well, Im blessed, Im blessed, my brother.
HEDGES: So stay tuned. Were going to come back next week and talk to Dr.
West about whats happened to the black prophetic tradition, the assault
that has been carried out to essentially shut down its voice, and why he
one of the v