Matters of Justice

Cornel West argues in his new book, "Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism," that if America hopes to be a steward of democracy around the world, we must first face up to our own history of imperialist corruptions. According to West, these include racism in America, Christian fundamentalism and its political influence, Israeli-U.S. relations, and the weakness of the Democratic Party. And finally he asks of Americans: Do we have what it takes to be citizens in the ancient Greek vision of democracy?

Cornell West is Class of 1943 University Professor of Religion at Princeton University, after a fairly public exit from Harvard in 2002. The author of "Race Matters," winner of the American Book Award ten years ago, West is a multimedia citizen, featured as Counselor West in "The Matrix" films, and creator of two hip-hop CDs, "Street Knowledge" and "Sketches of My Culture."

Terrence McNally: I’ve heard you describe yourself as “a prisoner of hope.” Welcome, fellow prisoner.

Cornel West: We have to remain prisoners of hope, no matter what. Whether we face a Bush or a Kerry administration in January, we still have to continue the struggle.

What led you originally into academia, and then how and why have you expanded beyond it in so many ways?

I’m always the same person. The academy is one particular rich context in which I’m able to engage in a certain kind of intellectual ferment, but it’s always been one context among others. I’ve always been in the studio, in the nightclubs, in the churches, in the prisons, on the street. I’ve been like that since I was seventeen. I’ve tried to be myself – which is multi-contextual from the get go. ... I’ve always been the same brother I am now.

It appears Lawrence Summers [President of Harvard University] hadn’t figured that out…

Well, he’s got a technocratic conception of education so we had a deep clash. And he was disrespectful. I don’t put up with much disrespect and contempt. Life’s too short for that.

Speaking of “life’s too short” –- in a talk you gave recently, you spoke about Emmit Till’s mother…

Mm-hmm, yes…

...when she saw her son’s body for the first time after he was beaten to death, she said –-

– “I don’t have a minute to hate. I’ll pursue justice for the rest of my life.”

Speak a bit about justice.

The important thing with Emmit Till’s mother, she had so much courage. She had a spiritual strength and a moral maturity that allowed her to keep her eye on justice, not revenge. To keep her eye on the ideals that could lure the better angels of her nature, rather than get in the gutter with the cowardly gangsters who had killed her precious son.

I think that’s a real challenge to the Bush administration in particular and to Americans in general, in their response to terrorism. Terrorism is ugly, wrong and vicious, but you don’t want to get in the same gutter as the terrorist to simply reinforce the same cycle of killing innocent people, demonizing others, losing sight of the humanity of others. You want justice, justice, justice.

Emmit Till’s mother was being true to what I call the Jewish creation of the prophetic, that talks about “to be human is to be kind to the stranger, is to live a life of compassion, and to pursue justice,” always an ideal that we attempt to approximate.

May I read to you the final words of my interview last week with Arundhati Roy? They echo yours…

Oh, the great sister Roy, she’s a giant.

She said, “Finally you have to understand that more important than anything else is justice. The way we can turn the world around is if we are at least moving on a path toward justice. Maybe it can never be achieved in any pristine form. Right now, the coalition of the powerful elites across the world are making it very clear that they are not even interested in justice.”