Cornel West and the Fight to Save the Black Prophetic Tradition
By Chris Hedges
There is an insidious and largely unseen effort by the White House to silence the handful of voices that remain true to the black prophetic tradition. This tradition, which stretches back to Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, has consistently named and damned the cruelty of imperialism and white supremacy. It has done so with a clarity and moral force that have eluded most other critics of American capitalism. President Barack Obama first displayed his fear of this tradition when he betrayed his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, abetting the brutal character assassination of one of the church’s most prophetic voices. And he has sustained this assault, largely through black surrogates such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, Tom Joyner and Steve Harvey, in vicious attacks on Cornel West.
"Jeremiah Wright was the canary in the mine," West said when we met a
few days ago in Princeton, N.J. "The black prophetic tradition has been
emptied out. Its leaders have either been murdered or incarcerated. ...
A lot of political prisoners who represent the black prophetic
tradition [are] in jail. They have been in there for decades. Or we have
leaders who have completely sold out. They have been co-opted. And
these are the three major developments. With sold-out leaders you get a
pacified followership or people who are scared."
"The black prophetic tradition has been the leaven in the American
democratic loaf," West said. "What has kept American democracy from
going fascist or authoritarian or autocratic has been the legacy of
Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Martin King, Fannie Lou Hamer.
This is not because black people have a monopoly on truth, goodness or
beauty. It is because the black freedom movement puts pressure on the
American empire in the name of integrity, decency, honesty and virtue."
The tradition is sustained by a handful of beleaguered writers and intellectuals, including Glen Ford and his Black Agenda Report, James Cone, Carl Dix, Bruce Dixon, Boyce Watkins, Yvette Carnell, Robin Kelley, Margaret Kimberley, Nellie Bailey, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, Maulana Karenga, Ajamu Baraka
and Wright, but none have the public profile of West, who is routinely
attacked by Obama’s black supporters as a "race traitor," the equivalent
of a "self-hating Jew" to hard-line supporters of Israel. It is
understandable why this tradition frightens Obama. It exposes him as the
ideological heir of Booker T. Washington, a black accommodationist whose core message to black people was, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois,
"adjustment and submission." The wide swath of destruction Obama has
overseen on behalf of the corporate state includes the eradication of
most of our civil liberties and our privacy, the expansion of imperial
war, the use of kill lists, abject subservience to Wall Street’s
criminal class and the military-industrial complex, the relentless
persecution of whistle-blowers, mass incarceration of poor people of
color and the failure to ameliorate the increasing distress of the poor
and the working class. His message to the black underclass in the midst
of the corporate rape of the nation is drawn verbatim from the Booker T.
Washington playbook. He tells them to work harder—as if anyone works
harder than the working poor in this country—and obey the law.
"Obama is the highest manifestation of the co-optation that took
place," West said. "It shifted to the black political class. The black
political class, more and more, found itself unable to tell the truth,
or if they began to tell some of the truth they were [put] under
surveillance, attacked and demonized. Forty percent of our babies are
living in poverty, living without enough food, and Obama comes to us and
says quit whining. He doesn’t say that to the Business Roundtable. He
doesn’t say that to the corporate elites. He doesn’t say that to AIPAC,
the conservative Jewish brothers and sisters who will do anything to
support the Israeli occupation against Palestinians. This kind of
neglect in policy is coupled with disrespect in his speeches to black
folk, which the mainstream calls tough love."
"He is a shell of a man," West said of Obama. "There is no deep
conviction. There is no connection to something bigger than him. It is a
sad spectacle, sad if he were not the head of an empire that is in such
decline and so dangerous. This is a nadir. William Trotter and Du Bois, along with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were going at Book T tooth and nail. Look at the fights between [Marcus] Garvey and Du Bois, or Garvey and A. Philip Randolph.
But now if you criticize Obama the way Randolph criticized Garvey, you
become a race traitor and an Uncle Tom. A lot of that comes out of the
Obama machine, the Obama plantation."
"The most pernicious development is the incorporation of the black
prophetic tradition into the Obama imperial project," West said. "Obama
used [Martin Luther] King’s Bible during his inauguration, but under the
National Defense Authorization Act King would be detained without due
process. He would be under surveillance every day because of his
association with Nelson Mandela, who was the head of a 'terrorist’
organization, the African National Congress. We see the richest
prophetic tradition in America desecrated in the name of a neoliberal
worldview, a worldview King would be in direct opposition to. Martin
would be against Obama because of his neglect of the poor and the
working class and because of the [aerial] drones, because he is a war
president, because he draws up kill lists. And Martin King would have
nothing to do with that."
"We are talking about crimes against humanity—Wall Street crimes, war
crimes, the crimes of the criminal justice system in the form of Jim
Crow, the crimes against our working poor that have their backs pushed
against the wall because of stagnant wages and corporate profits going
up," West said. "Abraham Heschel
said that the distinctive feature of any empire in decline is its
indifference to criminality. That is a fundamental feature of our time,
an indifference to criminality, especially on top, wickedness in high
places."
"This is not personal," West said. "This was true for [George W.]
Bush. It was true for [Bill] Clinton. We are talking about an imperial
system, manifest in Obama’s robust effort to bomb Syria. War crimes
against Syrian children do not justify U.S. war crimes. We are talking
about a corporate state and a massive surveillance and national security
state. It operates according to its own logic. Profit on the one hand,
and secrecy to hide imperial policy on the other. Jesse [Jackson]
was the head house Negro on the Clinton plantation, just as Sharpton is
the head house Negro on the Obama plantation. But there is a
difference. Jesse was willing to oppose Clinton on a variety of issues.
He marched, for example, against the welfare bill. But Sharpton loves
the plantation. He will not say a critical word. It is sad and pathetic.
We are living in the age of the sellout."
"Garvey used to say that as long as black people were in America the
masses of black people, the poor and the working class, would never be
treated with respect, decency or fairness," West said. "That has always
been a skeleton in the closet, the fundamental challenge to the black
prophetic tradition. It may very well be that black people will never be
free in America. But I believe, and the black prophetic tradition
believes, that we proceed because black people are worthy of being free,
just as poor people of all colors are worthy of being free, even if
they never will be free. That is the existential leap of faith. There is
no doubt that with a black president the black masses are still treated
unfairly, from stop and frisk to high unemployment, indecent housing
and decrepit education."
"It is a spiritual issue," West said. "What kind of person do you
choose to be? People say, 'Well, Brother West, since the mass of black
folk will never be free then let me just get mine.’ That is the dominant
response. 'I am wasting my time fighting a battle that can’t be won.’
But that is not what the black prophetic tradition is about. History is a
mystery. Yes, it doesn’t look good. But the masses of black folk must
be respected. Malcolm X used to say as long as they are not respected
you could show me all the individual respect you want but I know it’s
empty. That is the fundamental divide between the prophetic tradition
and the sellouts."
The tradition has been diminished by what West called the
"emaciation" of the black press that once amplified the voices of black
radicals. The decline of the black press and the consolidation of the
media, especially the electronic media, into the hands of a few
corporations means that those who remain faithful to this tradition have
been shut out. West does not appear on MSNBC, where the black and white
hosts serve as giddy cheerleaders for Obama, and was abruptly dropped
as a scheduled guest on an edition of CBS’ "Face the Nation" that aired
after the 50 anniversary of the march on Washington. The black prophetic
tradition is rarely taught in schools, including primarily
African-American schools, and West said that this deterioration
threatens to extinguish the tradition.
"It no longer has a legitimacy or significant foothold in the minds
of the black masses," West said. "With corporate media and the narrowing
of the imagination of all Americans, including black people, there is
an erasure of memory. This is the near death of the black prophetic
tradition. It is a grave issue. It is a matter of life and death. It
means that the major roadblock to American fascism, which has been the
black prophetic tradition, is gone. To imagine America without the black
prophetic tradition, from Frederick Douglass to Fannie Lou Hamer, means
an American authoritarian regime, American fascism. We already have the
infrastructure in place for the police state."
"Black intelligence and black suspicion is still there among the
masses," West said. "Black people are not stupid. We are not completely
duped. We are just scared. We don’t think there is any alternative. This
is re-niggerization of the black professional class. They have big
money, nice positions, comfort and convenience, but are scared,
intimidated, afraid to tell the truth and will not bear witness to
justice. Those who are incorporated into the black professional and
political class are willing to tolerate disrespect for the black masses
and sip their tea and accept their checks and gain access to power. That
is what niggerization is—keeping people afraid and intimidated."
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