Cornel West Questions Obama's Commitment to Black America, Says a Prayer for Rahm Emanuel

Editor's note: This piece was crossposted on Race-Talk:

Last week, I had an opportunity to talk with Dr. Cornel West. He is the professor of Religion and African American studies at Princeton University. Hope you enjoy the conversation.

Kathleen Wells: Dr. West, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I am speaking with Dr. West — Cornel West — who is the professor of African-American studies and Religion at Princeton University. And this month, February, being black history month, I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak with you. Thank you very much.

 

Dr. Cornel West: Thank you so much.

Kathleen Wells: Okay, let me start by asking you some specifics about President Obama’s first year. We know he’s completed his first year, and I know you’ve been a critic — or rather, I’d like to say, you’ve critically analyzed his campaign and his presidency. How do you feel that his first year has impacted the black community specifically and America as a whole?

Dr. Cornel West: Well, I think on a symbolic level I would give him an A in terms of uplifting the spirits and providing a sense of hope and possibility going into the inauguration and sustaining it up to a certain point. On a substantial level I would give him a C- when it comes to policy, when it comes to priority, when it comes to focusing on poor people and working people — which has to do with the vast majority of black people — that he has really not come through in any substantial and significant way.

We’ve got an interesting dynamic going on that at a symbolic level you’ve got this tremendous impact that is beginning now to run out of gas and on a substantial level, the C- — jobs, homes, education, health care — he has not been able to come through, and so he’s at a very pivotal moment in terms of black people. He can no longer take the black base for granted.

Kathleen Wells: Do you feel we’re being fair to President Obama? Has any President other than FDR been able to put working class, the poor, at the center of their agenda?

Dr. Cornel West: Well, I think LBJ actually put all the black folk, given the American apartheid in the south and the Jim Crow junior situation in the north, at the center of his agenda right after JFK died. And so, actually, LBJ is probably the best example, even better than FDR, because, you remember, FDR’s New Deal excluded domestic workers and agricultural laborers, which was the vast majority of black people. So that when you really look at the one President who has done that, it has been LBJ in the 20th century and Lincoln in the 19th century. But Obama talked about Lincoln, he talked about LBJ, he talked about FDR, you see? So it was Obama who raised the hopes of the people.

Kathleen Wells: So he’s one person, he’s the president…

Dr. Cornel West: He’s not one person, he’s the president who chooses an economic team that has put Wall Street and banks at the center of their project and job creation as an afterthought — the homes of ordinary people as an afterthought. Then he’s got a foreign policy team that he chooses, and he chooses to be a war President and escalating the war, not just in Afghanistan, but escalating those lethal drones in Pakistan. You see what I mean?

You know what part of the problem is, Sister Kathleen? That Obama has a team that understands the black agenda to be a narrow, parochial, provincial slice of America that he can assume he always has because he’s a black President. They don’t understand what black history is all about, which is that the black agenda, from Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells to Martin King, has always been the most broad, deep, inclusive, embracing agenda of the nation.