I was very disturbed by this recent recommended diary and its implications for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders: Cornel West Has No Place in a Democratic Presidential Campaign
So I ran it by an African-American doctoral student friend of mine. His response was so eloquent and well reasoned that I am (with his permission) sharing it here:
Thanks for involving me.
As you may remember, I love Obama. I am the first to defend him, and think he is doing an excellent job given the job he is doing. I believe that a lot of the attacks against him are unfair and often focus on the negative only, ignoring the many, many wonderful things he has done--both politically and in terms of societal conversation. Of course, I do not agree with every choice he makes. I hope that he would tackle certain issues that continue ignored. However, I believe he is a good person and, overall, a good president.
Cornel West, on the other hand, is a giant. He does not hate Obama, but disagrees with the way Obama plays the game. He bemoans the fact that Obama is willing to compromise here, ignore there. He criticizes him for not doing more to drag people out of poverty, for not doing more to end wars, for not spreading more love. The fact is, Cornel West would not be a good American president. He is, however, a superlative activist for freedom and justice--worldwide. He is relentlessly steadfast in his fight for racial equality. He gets down and dirty. He tells it like it is. He is Malcolm X-like, Amiri Baraka-like in his sometimes abrasive use of language. Also similar to those giants, he is unapologetic and can support his provocation.
West and Obama occupy two different spaces in society. I can assure you they respect each other, and appreciate the good things the other does. As is the way in America, that article--along with countless media figures--seeks to draw a divisive line between the two of them that doesn't exist. Perhaps the most "offensive" language, for example, was taken from an interview in which Cornel West praised Obama finally confronting race so publicly. He referred to Obama as being "niggerized" (his usage is FAR removed from any racist remark from a White person) to suggest that Obama is afraid to disappoint, scare, upset White people. At the point we can concede that there are certainly privileged facts, experiences, hopes, etc. that Obama (as a Black man) chooses not to discuss in his Presidency because he is conscious of how the American people (read: White people) will react, we agree with Cornel West. West enjoys the luxury of such a critique, while Obama does not enjoy the luxury to entertain it.
During a time when successful Black people are forced to code-switch so often, having these two leaders is monumental. They represent either side of what Du Bois called "double consciousness," being the twoness of Americanness and Blackness. Together they represent the profound simultaneity within Black folks like me--trying to reconcile an ambivalence on either side.
P.S. Here's a video that gets at the telling subtleties of West's account of his "dear brother Obama": Cornel West on Obama