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Celebrity scholar challenges U.S.

Even in a time of fear, the country must fight injustice, professor Cornel West says.

By MARCUS FRANKLIN
Published March 11, 2005

TAMPA - As soon as Cornel West stepped to the podium Thursday evening, the camera flashs began lighting up the dimly lit auditorium like fireflies in the night.

West, a Princeton University religion professor who has appeared in blockbuster science-fiction movies and put out a spoken-word CD, is that rare breed in academia: a celebrity scholar.

Few university professors can draw a crowd running well into the hundreds, if not more than a thousand, to a lecture about America living up to its "democratic experiment."

But while West may enjoy rock star status, there was nothing frivolous or fluffy about his lecture. As he began his hourlong talk at the University of South Florida, the 51-year-old said he hoped to "upset, unsettle and unnerve and maybe even for a moment unhouse you."

West said Americans must continue to "cut against the grain" by "criticizing and interrogating" what he called the continuing "gangsterization and corporatization" of America.

"What are we talking about? The slow but sure American imperial devouring of the best of American democracy if fellow citizens don't wake up and unleash Socratic questioning and prophetic witnessing" of injustice.

Quoting cultural figures as disparate as gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and Earth Wind & Fire, Plato, Shakespeare and the late playwright Tennessee Williams, West noted historical examples of "the night side, the underside of American democracy" For example, he contrasted the "terrorism and random violence" on U.S. soil, including lynching of black men and women and the bombing of four black girls in Alabama, with the current fight against global terrorism.

"The dominant leadership manipulates the fears and anxieties and insecurities of a people who, for the first time, feel unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hated."

Black people have endured the same sort of terrorism since being brought to the United States in bondage, West said.

With the Sept. 11 attacks, the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty has been visited upon the entire nation, and white Americans must grapple with emotions and anxieties long familiar to black citizens, he said. "You say to yourself, "Hmmm, to be a nigger in America for 400 years is to feel unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hated for who you are. Now America, the whole nation is niggerized, let's see what your response is going to be."

There is much talk of revenge, but where, he asked, is the talk of justice? A democracy can't survive with revenge as its motivation. Referring to Sept. 11, he said the nation must not descend to the "same gutter as the gangsters" who attacked it.

"Will America meet the challenge? Open question," West said as he wrapped up. "All empires come and go, all civilizations ebb and flow."

West earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard and Princeton and has taught at Princeton, Union Theological Seminary in New York City and Harvard, which he left in 2002 after a public dispute with Harvard president Lawrence Summers.

Summers accused West of devoting too much time to political activities at the expense of his teaching and academic responsibilities. The following year, in 2003, West appeared as Counselor West in the movies Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.

But West didn't only urge Americans to engage in Socratic "questioning and interrogating." He also said the questioning should be accompanied by compassion, caring and love.

Marcus Franklin can be reached at mfranklin@sptimes.com or 727 893-8488.

[Last modified March 11, 2005, 01:23:21]