Cornel West launches new lecture series honoring Toni Morrison

Describes long struggle of blacks against terrorism as a lesson in how to better deal with today’s world

By: Jake Uitti
   The long struggle of blacks against terrorism — and the ways that struggle has shaped the black community — can serve as a lesson on how to better deal with today’s political world, said Princeton professor Cornel West in talks Friday and Saturday, in which he described how the black community has made strides to overcome those challenges.
   Professor West’s speech, "The Gifts of Black Folk in the Age of Terrorism," commenced the inaugural Toni Morrison Lectures, a new lecture series honoring the Nobel Prize-winning author who Professor West said had profoundly influenced American culture. The lecture series comes on the heels of the newly launched Center for African American Studies, established this fall at Princeton University.
   Professor West highlighted three particular gifts that have been given to the world by the black community as it has struggled through years of slavery, segregation and the still-prevalent racist tendencies of the 21st century.
   Terrorism strikes, Professor West said, when a particular violent group makes a community feel hated for what it is, unprotected and afraid of being subjected to random violence. The black community, Professor West observed, has been subjected to terrorism since the first slave ship docked in the United States.
   In the face of this, the black community has questioned publicly the injustices it faces, not letting the problems it encounters go silent despite the looming specter of violence. This, Professor West said, is comparable to the methods Socrates used while questioning the authorities in Athens, which ultimately led to his execution.
   "The unexamined life is not worth living," Professor West said, quoting Plato’s "Apology."
   It takes a certain courageous love, Professor West said, to be able to publicly question a violent authority that seems indomitable. It takes an ability to look intimately at one’s own death, consider it, accept it and work toward positive goals while still alive.
   "You can grow old, you can grow rich, you can grow wealthy, but you will never grow up if you don’t come to terms with the forms of death in your midst," he said.
   Continuing to question those same threatening authorities over the centuries, he added, takes immense devotion.
   In Billie Holiday’s "Strange Fruit," she sang about "black bodies swinging" from the trees. It is this "prophetic witness," as Professor West called it, that the black community has used to strive toward political justice.
   In her song, Professor West said, she mustered the capacity to love while seeking justice, while at the same time not speaking in blanket statements of pure victims and impure victimizers.
   This is a lesson that can be reviewed by many today, Professor West said, especially in an age of war and terror.
   He gave another example, telling the story of Emmett Till, who was beaten to death in 1955 in Mississippi by two whites for winking at a white woman. On the day of his funeral, Professor West said, Emmett’s mother declared to the crowd, "I don’t have a minute to hate, but I will pursue justice for the rest of my life."
   The blues bring the ideas of justice, love and prophetic witness together in an art form, Professor West said.
   "It’s not just an aesthetic genre. It’s a mode of being, a way of life," he said, adding, "Black people made dissonance a way of life."
   The blues artist — or the tragic comic, as Professor West said — creates hope.
   "It has nothing to do with American optimism," he explained. "It has everything to do with hope, a mature, hard-earned hope. A hope against the grain."
   The blue note resonates that sound of hope, he said.
   With all this in mind, Professor West said there is one thing above all else the world should strive for to bring itself out of an age of terror. Maturity, he said, is essential — a maturity that has to do with thinking critically at any cost, as well as a courageous caring and the ability to love.
   It is when these are realized that we can strive for a Democratic form of paideia, or a deep greatness of character, in the face of terrorism, he said.
   Sponsored jointly by the Center for African American Studies and the Princeton University Press, the Toni Morrison Lectures will be published in book form annually by the Princeton University Press.