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 Copy Share Image
Martin Luther King would celebrate the symbolic status (of having a black president), but he would examine what the real substance was.… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Part of the popularity with Louis Farrakhan has less to do with the content of his message and more to do with… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
If the churches don't move, much of the community won't move. We've got a situation in which a black church is still… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The condition of truth, is to allow suffering to speak. Which means attend to suffering of the least of these, of the… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
All talks about legacies of white supremacy must be tied to empowering the lives of poor and working people as a whole.… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I was deeply influenced by the sartorial practices of both preachers and jazz musicians and actually Masha in Act One of Anton… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
When it comes to our precious poor children of all colors, maybe disproportionally in percentage black and white and red, but all… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics? — Cornel West Copy Share Image
White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The black church often has reinforced certain self images that are damaging to black peoples' beauty, black peoples' confidence. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious,… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
There has certainly been ugly, right-wing hatred targeting Barack Obama. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
What is accurately portrayed is the rich humanity not just of Martin Luther King but of the movement, which was a multiracial movement. You… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.' — Cornel West Copy Share Image
“Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.” — Cornel West Copy Share Image
“You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]” — Cornel West Copy Share Image
When we think of globalization we are thinking in part of structures and institutions that have been developed over time and that have allowed… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
I don't draw any distinctions between forms of bigotry or forms of ideology that lose sight of the humanity of people. I can't stand… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Barack Obama has domesticated the left in such a way that we feel as if we have no alternative but him...I refuse to accept… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture and so… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
