Quote

American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows.

Cornel West

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
American
Misery
Priority
Black
Flow
Flows
Social
Creativity
Context
Music
Genius
Mainstream
Time
Walk
Puts
Walks
Priorities
Style
Obsessed
Creative
Lows

More quotes by Cornel West

Image
The interesting thing for me is, if that had been a left-wing person raising questions, [President Obama] probably would have expressed his anger. Because Obama really does get upset about progressives.
Cornel West
Image
Philosophy is fundamentally about how you come to terms with living your life and trying to do it in a wise manner, and, for me, that means decently and compassionately and courageously and so forth.
Cornel West
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 white supremacy. I can't stand male supremacy. I can't stand imperial subjugation. I can't stand homophobia.
Cornel West
Image
I've been blessed, I think, to have tremendous joy in my life in pursuing my vocation, my calling.
Cornel West
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 that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.
Cornel West
Image
Poor people and working people have not been the focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.
Cornel West
Image
Martin Luther King wanted to be morally consistent and speak out against various things that were wrong, not just racism.
Cornel West
Image
There's a number of hip-hop artists who are highly talented but politically retrograde.
Cornel West
Image
There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.
Cornel West
Image
And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you.
Cornel West
Image
It's fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering
Cornel West
Image
To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.
Cornel West
Image
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can't get away with their abuse. They can't get away with subjection. They can't get away with subjugation. They can't get away with exploitation. They can't get away with domination. It takes courage for folk to stand up.
Cornel West
Image
I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That's why, for me, the issues of self-love, self-respect and self-regard are preconditions for human agency and especially black agency, given the fact that we have been and are such a hated and despised people.
Cornel West
Image
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
Cornel West
Image
To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.
Cornel West
Image
We are a democracy and we don't believe in just hunting down gangsters and killing them. We believe in trying to find the gangsters and bring them back for trial, and give them a trial under rule of law. That's what democracies do.
Cornel West
Image
The conversation with the dead is one of the great pleasures of life. Somebody who is sitting reading Chekhov, Beckett, reading Toni Morrison - you are not in any way dead, in many ways you are intensely alive.
Cornel West
Image
You keep folks so intimidated. You can give them money, access, but they're still scared. And as long as you're scared, you're on the plantation.
Cornel West
Image
Death is always a constant possibility and probability and of course an inevitability, as well.
Cornel West