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The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.

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
Action
Doesn
Part
Problem
Affirmative
Children
Apply
Even
Though
People
Working
Poor

More quotes by Cornel West

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It's impossible to translate Wall Street greed into one or two demands.
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Martin Luther King was a radical democrat, by which I mean someone who is a foe of wealth inequality.
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I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes. It could be homophobia, it could be white supremacy, male supremacy, imperial arrogance, class subordination or whatever.
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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.
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Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.
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There is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.
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My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.
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To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.
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I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself.
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There used to be corporations that produced products. Now there are just banks that produce deals, hedge-fund-driven banks and derivatives and those things.
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As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.
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The important thing for me as an educator is how to - how do we unsettle the minds and touch the souls of significant numbers of young people who don't read texts or don't read my texts.
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All you have is a gift a to give.
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To be human you must bear witness to justice.
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Martin Luther King wanted to be morally consistent and speak out against various things that were wrong, not just racism.
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For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.
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Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
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When you love poor people THAT MUCH, when you love 'working people' THAT MUCH, that makes you the freest man/woman in the country. - Cornel West in explaining that Obama is A fulfillment of MLK's dream not THE fulfillment of MLK's dream
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In situations of sparse resources along with degraded self-images and depoliticized sensibilities, one avenue for poor people is in existential rebellion and anarchic expression. The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.
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The legacy of [Martin Luther] King is the very thing that must be expanded if America is to be free and democratic in the 21st century. It's just as simple as that.
Cornel West