Black Quotes by Cornel West

Black people have been working hard for decades.

— Cornel West

Jesus loves a free black man.

— Cornel West

I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered.

— Cornel West

I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else.

— Cornel West

Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.

— Cornel West

Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics?

— Cornel West

When black America is on the move, America is on the move.

— Cornel West

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos…

— Cornel West

Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a…

— Cornel West

Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental…

— Cornel West

I think we must never, ever demonize one another. That's true not just black people to black people; that's human being to…

— Cornel West

The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of…

— Cornel West

I'm black, so, you know, I'm again with black folk, but it's a love that spills over to vanilla suburbs and red…

— Cornel West

The black church often has reinforced certain self images that are damaging to black peoples' beauty, black peoples' confidence.

— Cornel West

The black agenda, from Frederick Douglas to Ida B. Wells to Martin King, has always been the most broad, deep, inclusive, embracing…

— Cornel West

Most importantly for me growing up, it was a spirituals, it was a gospels, it was James Cleveland, Aretha Franklin, Marion Williams;…

— Cornel West

I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That's why, for me, the issues…

— Cornel West

I was deeply influenced by the sartorial practices of both preachers and jazz musicians and actually Masha in Act One of Anton…

— Cornel West

So more and more black folk tend to be well-adjusted to [Barack] Obama's presidency, but does that mean they're well-adjusted to injustice?…

— Cornel West

But black folks have never really been optimists. We've been prisoners of hope, and hope is qualitatively different from optimism in the…

— Cornel West

So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and…

— Cornel West

The American Dream is individualistic. Martin Luther King's dream was collective. The American Dream says, "I can engage in upward mobility and…

— Cornel West

The street is as diverse as any other sector, but in peoples' mind it gets appropriated as a black man who's tough.…

— Cornel West

The authority of science promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies. Cartesian…

— Cornel West

Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their…

— Cornel West

The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and…

— Cornel West

I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason…

— Cornel West

There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.

— Cornel West

The black church is dormant, much of the community is dormant. If the black church is leaning toward the right, much of…

— Cornel West

When it comes to our precious poor children of all colors, maybe disproportionally in percentage black and white and red, but all…

— Cornel West

It's no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect and self-love.

— Cornel West

American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a…

— Cornel West

There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get…

— Cornel West

White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the…

— Cornel West

liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream…

— Cornel West

My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a…

— Cornel West

All talks about legacies of white supremacy must be tied to empowering the lives of poor and working people as a whole.…

— Cornel West

I do believe that healing takes place on a number of different levels and that in fact black healing can be deepened…

— Cornel West

The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you…

— Cornel West

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other…

— Cornel West