Cornel West - Hope on a Tightrope

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Selected Books by
CORNEL WEST

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism

The Cornel West Reader

Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America
(edited by Kelvin Shawn Sealey)

Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America

Race Matters

Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity

The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism

Prophetic Fragments

The War Against Parents: What We Can Do
for Americas Beleaguered Moms and Dads
(with Sylvia Ann Hewlett)

Jews & Blacks: Let the Healing Begin (with Michael Lerner)

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Copyright 2008 by Cornel West
Published in the United States by SmileyBooks

Distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast: www.raincoast.com Published and Distributed in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Design: Charles McStravick

Interior Photos: Grateful acknowledgment is made for the photographs from the following sources: Jefry Andres Wright, The Smiley Group, Fredrica S.Goodman, Kawai Matthews, Quillard Inc., and Cornel West.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The opinions set forth herein are those of the author, and do not necessarily express the views of the publisher or Hay House, Inc., or any of its affiliates.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-3076-9
Digital ISBN: 978-1-4019-2360-0

14 13 12 11 6 5 4 3

1st edition, November 2008
3rd edition, January 2011

Printed in the United States of America

To my beloved children,
Clifton West and Zeytun West,
and my blessed grandson,
Kalen West,
in whom
I am well pleased.

W e are now in one of the most truly prophetic moments in the history of America. The poor and very poor are sleeping with self-destruction. The working and middle classes are struggling against paralyzing pessimism and the privileged are swinging between cynicism and hedonism. Yes, these are the circumstances that people of conscience must operate under during this moment of national truth or consequences.

We have witnessed the breakdown of the social systems that nurture our children. Our rootless childrennot just the one-out-of-three black, one-out-of-four-brown, and nearly one-out-of-three red children who live in poverty, but the one-out-of-five children in America who live in poverty. We are talking about the state of young souls: culturally naked, with no safe moorings, these children have no cultural armor to protect them while navigating the terrors and traumas of daily life. Young people need a community to sustain them, so that they can look death in the face and deal with disease, dread, and despair. These days, we are in deep trouble.

The audacity of hope won the 2008 Democratic primary, yet we are still living in the shadow of the vicious realignment of the American electorate, provoked by the medias negative appeals to race and gender and the right-wing propaganda that bashes vulnerable groups. The effects of the U.S.s economic contraction that began in 1973 have only intensified in the new global economy. Even as deep-democratic struggles began in the mid-1990s in response to corporately controlled globalization, we faced an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from working people to the elite and the gutting of the nation into public squalor and private opulence.

Culture, in part, provides people with the tools and resources to steel themselves against adversity and convinces them not to kill themselves or others. This is the reason why I am preoccupied with a sense of the tragicomic. At the moment in which we must look defeat, disillusionment, and discouragement in the face and work through ita sense of the tragicomic keeps alive some sense of possibility. Some sense of hope. Some sense of agency. Some sense of resistance. We have not been too successful in persuading people not to kill themselves or others: from the police homicide of Sean Bell in New York City to the torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, from street thugs to corporate thugspeople of color, women, youth, the working poor, gays, and lesbians are being targeted. I call it the gangsterization of America.

This is what happens in moments of cultural decay. This is what happens in moments of cultural breakdown. Moreover, to talk about cultural resistance at this time means to ask: How do we analyze this present moment and discern some sources of vision and hope? I look at culture from the vantage point of a black freedom fighter. We are not going to be here that long. Culture moves usit helps create the structures of meaning, feeling, and purpose that keep the deep democratic tradition alive.

As bad as things are, we have faced worse conditions. We have always had courageous people willing to stand up and tell the truth, expose lies, and bear witness to love and justice. We still have people who say they are willing to build on this tradition.

As our society faces deeper and deeper crisis, progressives are beginning to be heard again. People are looking to a variety of different voices and visions for leadership and direction about how we can overcome these situations. For too long, Americans looked to the right. We have looked to neocons, Republicans, Reagan, Bush and Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. They have pulled us deeper into a dark, bottomless pit. Yet if people are interested in looking somewhere else, progressive possibilities are reemerging.