I'm not romanticizing black people, because we've got gangsters like everybody else. — 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
Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics? — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 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
The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of… — 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
Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos… — 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
There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives. — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 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
Most importantly for me growing up, it was a spirituals, it was a gospels, it was James Cleveland, Aretha Franklin, Marion Williams;… — 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
My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a… — 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
liberty, which means resisting all forms of cultural authoritarianism, be it from the right wing church, black ideologues, black nationalists, or mainstream… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
The authority of science promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies. Cartesian… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 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
The black agenda, from Frederick Douglas to Ida B. Wells to Martin King, has always been the most broad, deep, inclusive, embracing… — 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
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
The black church is dormant, much of the community is dormant. If the black church is leaning toward the right, much of… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get… — 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
So much has to do with going beyond treating black people as cosmetic and symbolic items, as opposed to genuine personalities and… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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 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
Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy… — Cornel West Copy Share Image
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
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
I do believe that healing takes place on a number of different levels and that in fact black healing can be deepened… — 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
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.' — Cornel West Copy Share
“Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.” — Cornel West Copy Share
“You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]” — Cornel West Copy Share
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit. — Cornel West Copy Share
Anybody who takes Martin Luther King seriously has got to go beyond the standard understanding of who he was, has to connect those dots. — Cornel West Copy Share
![“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? Because we don't hear our president talking about the new Jim Crow, the prison-industrial complex.” quote by Cornel West](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/981/cornel-west-708_barack_so-more-and-more-black-folk-tend-to-be-w_2283384.jpg)
