has been saying the same thing for years, he simply added Obama to the list.
Cornel West on the Election of Barack Obama: "I Hope He Is a Progressive Lincoln, I Aspire to Be the Frederick Douglass to Put Pressure on Him"
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AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cornel West, you were a big supporter of Barack Obama, but you also have been giving speeches about holding him to account. What are the issues you are most concerned about right now?
CORNEL WEST: Well, I think, as a deep Democrat, I recognize I have some significant differences with Brother Barack. He’s a liberal. It looked like he wants to govern as a liberal-centrist, given the choices of Emanuel—Rahm Emanuel and others. And one has to be honest and candid in terms of one’s criticism, because in the end, it’s not about Barack Obama, it’s about empowering working people and poor people. It’s about trying to accent the dignity of those Sly Stone called “everyday people.” And when he moves in that direction, it’s good. When he doesn’t move in that direction, we need to criticize him. Same is true in terms of foreign policy: Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. We have to be honest about it.
For me, my criticism of Barack has to do with trying to acknowledge the degree to which, one, thank God we’re at the end of the age of Ronald Reagan, we’re at the end of the era of conservatism, we’re coming to the end of the epoch of the Southern Strategy. For the first time now, we’ve got some democratic possibilities. This has been a political ice age, and the melting is just beginning. And Barack Obama is a symbol, but we’ve got to move from symbol to substance. We’ve got to move from what he represents in a broad sense—and it’s a beautiful thing to have a black man in the White House, we know that, and black slaves and laborers and other white immigrants built the White House. And to have a black family there, significant; black face for the American empire, fine. Can we revitalize democratic possibilities on the ground with Barack in the White House? I think we can. We can put some serious pressure on him, and we can actually continue the democratic awakening among working people and poor people and push Barack in a progressive direction.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about just this latest news that came out last night—of course, not the official announcement, but Eric Holder, the former deputy attorney general under President Clinton, being tapped as the next attorney general, if confirmed?
CORNEL WEST: Well, two things. First, on a personal level, I know Brother Eric Holder. I’ve spent good time with him in meetings and so on. He’s a brilliant lawyer. He’s a very decent human being. I know he was very upset about Clinton’s attitude toward crime. We know during the Clinton administration we got the tightening of the mandatory sentences that’s had devastating effects on poor communities, especially disproportionately black and brown poor communities. And Eric took a strong stand in that regard. I appreciate that, because there’s a sense that we kind of whitewash the Clinton administration—welfare bill, crime, deregulation and so forth. We’ve got to be honest about some of the flaws during the age of Reagan and the Clinton moments during the age of Reagan. And Eric did take a stand.
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Video:
The Precarious Fate of Barack Obama Transcript:Cornel West: I think that my dear brother Barack Obama, President Obama, he's a very complicated fellow. He has a sterling democratic rhetoric at his best that reminds you of Saul Alinsky and the others at times. He has a technocratic team when it comes to policy, so there's not just a tension but oftentimes there's contradictions between the two, you see. He comes out of a black tradition that has been explicit about telling the truth about white supremacy, but he himself holds race at arm's length until there's a crisis: Jamal right here, and Skip Gates there, you see. And it's partly because he's such a masterful politician. He's brilliant, he's charismatic, he's a masterful politician. And he's concerned about cutting the deal and winning the election. And I think in the end this is going to be a major challenge for him.
He has to decide whether he wants to be an Abe Lincoln, who began as a mediocre politician -- remember, Abe Lincoln supported the first proposed thirteenth Amendment that set slavery for ever in the U.S. Constitution. Frederick Douglas bought a ticket to go to Haiti; he said, I would never live in a nation that has an unamendable amendment. Lincoln supported that. That was opportunistic at the core; he hated slavery, but he was willing to say keep these people in slavery for ever to preserve the union. You see, that's not the Lincoln that we talk about as great. Lincoln became great because of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, who was beat up by Preston Brooks from South Carolina, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman. It was the abolitionist movement that helped make Lincoln great. Barack Obama has a choice between the greatness of a Lincoln and the masterful Machiavellian sensibilities of a Bill Clinton, who was brilliant, charismatic, masterful, but tended to be too opportunistic. So far, Barack Obama has leaned more toward the Clinton side than the Lincoln side. That was partly because he doesn't have an abolitionist movement equivalent. He doesn't have a social movement. That's what we need to do: we need to put pressure on him.
Question: What would this effort look like?
Cornel West: Well, it's a very good question. I mean, the kind of thing you're doing here on the Internet is very important, because it won't take the old traditional form of just hitting the streets. Hitting the streets will be one form; it's got to take a whole host of different forms, different voices, different views, different visions put forward, critiques of what's going on behind the scenes to reveal the contradictions of the Obama administration. We need young people who are looking at the world through a very different set of lenses than even myself, because I'm old-school, you know. And no school has the monopoly on truth. Yes, I do still see classes, and I see empires and so forth and so on. But there's also ways of looking at the world through popular culture that young people have that I don't fully understand, so that some of their criticisms would take forms that it will take me time to understand and grasp, you see. But we have to have the courage to not just raise our voices, but connect into organizations so that people can begin to see there are alternatives than the old neoliberalism dressed up in fashionable form, with a democratic rhetoric that hides a concealed technocratic policy. And it could be that, you know, Barack Obama himself, you know, he's waiting to make his turn toward Lincolnesque greatness. He hasn't made it yet, and of course the decision on Afghanistan is going to be very important. It's going to be difficult to have a peace prize and be a war president.
His current statement is being pushed as if it's an epiphany based on the President's first two years.
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