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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

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Cornel West
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: June 2
Actor
Critic
Philosopher
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Cornel Ronald West
Cornel R. West
Persons
Road
Person
Dangerous
Self
Society
Mean
American
Thing
Freedom
Respecting
Means
Powers
Black
Loving
Running
Gonna

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Education is soul crafting.
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I think anytime we talk about transforming in capitalist society, we are talking about a process not a particular event so you can't talk about a socialist revolution.
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Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense.
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Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.
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The condition of truth, is to allow suffering to speak. Which means attend to suffering of the least of these, of the orphan, the widow, the poor, the working people, the gay brother, the lesbian sister, the transgender, the black people.
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For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.
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There's a number of hip-hop artists who are highly talented but politically retrograde.
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Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people.
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There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely.
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Wealth inequality has increased.
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To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
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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.
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And as a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can never be reduced to anything.
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As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.
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Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land.
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Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.
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I was blessed to be part of a commercial, pushing for this energy bill, but we've been unsuccessful.
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We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
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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.
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I think hip-hop can be prophetic and progressive, and at the same time, the dominant forms tend to be homophobic, misogynistic and something that we need to critically call into question.
Cornel West