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SPOTLIGHT: O happy day! Brother Cornel West recollects …

‘We went through the history and what Martin Luther King meant to him — the level of sacrifice, the commitment to justice.’

By JAKE UITTI Special Writer
    Reflecting upon Tuesday’s events, Dr. Cornel West, professor of religion at Princeton University and a nationally prominent advocate of social justice, noted that above all else, the election of Barack Obama to the presidency is a moment of inspiration — one which may signal a new definition of the American Dream.
    “We need to be inspired in such a way that we think we can meet our challenges,” Dr. West said in an interview with The Packet the morning after the election. “That’s part of the genius of the ‘Yes, we can’ theme of brother Barack Obama’s campaign, and now victory. He has a unique capacity to inspire.”
    Dr. West seemed giddy as a schoolboy not 12 hours after the election of America’s first black president. Phones rang off the hook in his office (including some from the Obama campaign), and Dr. West spoke freely and excitedly with his neighbor across the hallway, Professor Eddie Glaude, trying to come up with new ways to push for progress in an atmosphere of national euphoria.
    “It’s a good day,” said Dr. West, who had watched the returns and the candidate’s speeches the night before with his students and fellow Princeton professors.
    The election comes at a time when America is at a fork in the road, he said. There has been an escalation of wealth inequality as well as ecological crisis over the last 40 years, an era he calls an “intellectual Ice Age” for America.
    “We have to be able to tell a story about the age of Reagan in such a way that we can build on the best. Reagan was masterful in some ways, but at the same time the neglect that took place during that age is something we have to be honest with.”
    Dr. West said America now must look to its “blues people” to more firmly authenticate democracy.
    “The blues people are all those who are willing to look unflinchingly at catastrophic conditions,” he said. “It is not tied to pigmentation, though it is true that if you’re black in America for 200 years, you are much closer to dealing with the catastrophic.”
    Dr. West admitted that he was at first skeptical of Mr. Obama’s politics, but upon speaking with him a few weeks after he announced his candidacy, Dr. West got on board.
    “From the beginning I was very critical and suspicious of him. Then we sat down and talked for four hours and I jumped on his bandwagon.”
    Dr. West said he had one major question for Mr. Obama: What was his relationship to the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?
    “We went through the history and what Martin meant to him — the level of sacrifice, the commitment to justice,” Dr. West said. “I talked about the difference between working intellectual politics versus being part of a social movement. He understood that. I told him my calling was socratic and prophetic, and his calling was one of governance.”
    Dr. West said he believed Mr. Obama has intimate ties with the blues people.
    “He’s got a very close connection to the peoples who produce the blues — he’s got a complicated connection, but he’s got a very close connection, too.”
    The connection alone, however, is not enough.
    “He’s got to be bold enough, courageous enough, to move forward,” said Dr. West. “But there is no strong Barack without a strong citizenry. It is up to us to help him become a Lincoln figure. There’s no Lincoln without Frederick Douglass and a host of others.”
    America needs a Lincoln figure, he said, because the world is changing, and a person who can bring folks together — to unify and inspire them to meet their challenges — is necessary.
    Along with the political and economic challenges ahead, we should ready ourselves for possible social backlashes, Dr. West said. Dialogue, he advised, is critical.
    “We have to be in conversation with them, unless they’re the Klan and they want to shoot you down. Then that’s not a moment for conversation.”
    Overall, however, electing Mr. Obama to the Oval Office is a good start, Dr. West said. Mr. Obama’s arrival will define a new sort of American Dream.
    “Barack is very interesting,” Dr. West said. “Because Barack in some ways is the highest point of the American Dream, but he is also the end of a certain American Dream. He is the highest point of the American Dream if you believe in the rags-to-riches story. But the American Dream that Martin King had tried to ensure was that all human beings, especially the poor, can live lives of decency and dignity. Even with a black face in the White House, you’re still going to have poor people. So when the poor people see that they got a black face up there and they’re still poor, that narrow American Dream is going to be shattered. If it’s just about individuals moving up, which often times that’s what the American Dream is, it’s going to come to an end.”
    So what should Americans do?
    “I hope that we will follow Martin and say, ‘You know what? That particular individual in that White House is going to be tied to other citizens who are concerned about lifting those at the bottom up, so they don’t have to end up in the White House to live lives of decency and dignity.”