Cornel West and Clarence Thomas
Saturday February 23, 2008
By Ellis Washington
WorldNetDaily.com
But I know that the vote of nine out of 10 black Americans for the Democratic Party or for leftist kinds of policies just is not reflective of their opinions.
~ Clarence Thomas
It goes without saying, that a profound hatred of African people ... sits at the center of American civilization.
~ Cornel West
Cornel West, professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton, is an eloquent, controversial and outspoken critic of conservatives and their philosophical ideas and ideals for America. Considered an avowed communist by his critics, West calls himself a "non-Marxist socialist."
His 1980 doctoral dissertation which he adopted into a book in 1991 was titled: "The Ethical Dimension of Marxist Thought." West calls his methods "radical historicism" and seeks to show how Marx himself theorized a pure "socialism" and how it was distorted by three of Marx's most famous interpreters: Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky and Georg Lukacs. After the collapse of the old Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, West, like many liberal intellectuals, tried in vain to clarify the non-Leninist stream of the Marxist tradition and recover its energy.
West has nursed a 20-year tirade against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Why all the hate against this quiet man? Professor West has it all – a B.A. from Harvard, a M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton. He lives in an elite, lily-white neighborhood where he makes over $300,000 per year as a professor at Princeton University. His books, largely lacking scholarly substance, are nevertheless best-sellers. His class "Introduction to African American Studies" was one of the most popular classes taught at Harvard. He is the recipient of over 20 honorary degrees.
His lucrative lecture schedule takes him to cities, colleges and political venues all over America and throughout the world where the crowds are large and the reviews are often stellar. He is the darling of liberal media, often appearing on all the major news networks and on NPR. He even does cameos in popular movies like "The Matrix Reloaded" and also recorded a rap song reading passages from his books to the rhythm of a rap beat, "Sketches of my Culture."
Yet, Thomas' prominent position on the Supreme Court makes all of Cornel West's professorial admiration from his students and colleagues at Princeton, Harvard, Yale and throughout the academy of no effect. Despite all of the applause, all of the accolades, all of the royalties from his books and rap songs, all of the notoriety from his black brothers and sisters, all appears to West like a mouth full of gravel.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas |
West cannot abide the existence of a Clarence Thomas. No, he is not going to kill Thomas physically. West's weapons are what Thomas calls "smooth-tongued lies" that for 35 years West has mastered perfectly with his MLK-esque preaching style, his striking Malcom X-Spike Lee appearance and mannerisms, and his ability to string together large words and phrases as a polemical discourse to "the powers that be." His abilities have made him like a rock star in the black community.
In 2000, West coauthored a book with Henry Louis Gates Jr. at Harvard titled, "The African-American Century." In it West sought to honor the 100 "most influential African-Americans" of the 20th century. However, controversy immediately ensued because of the risky task, particularly for two prominent scholars, of leaving out other commendable candidates. In fact, the No. 1 omission is, you guessed it, Clarence Thomas. This omission amidst tributes to Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson, Spike Lee, America's most noted black propagandist in America whom as a moviemaker I consider the black Oliver Stone, and Tiger Woods, who doesn't even consider himself "black."
Why the omission of Thomas? In a word, jealously.
Liberal intellectuals like West, despite their storied and affluent existence in the ivory towers of the Ivy League universities, deep down in their hearts are very insecure, miserable people with a very thin skin. As Ann Coulter has repeatedly remarked, "Liberals can't stand competition." Justice Clarence Thomas, a man of such towering and transcendent judicial intellect, courage and character, has all the attributes a demagogue hackneyed professor like Cornel West could never ascribe to.
For instance, Thomas has a non-racial faith in the God of the Bible. West's "god" is a racial, Afrocentric socialist who despises capitalism and the rich, unless of course you are a rich liberal – then "god" is largely irrelevant to your worldview in the first place. Thomas' self-help conservatism is a philosophy of life, hope, empowerment and liberty. West's "non-Marxist socialism" is a cynical worldview mired in envy, corruption, materialism, anger, irrelevance and ultimately genocide.
Clarence Thomas is a man's man who during his formative years willingly submitted himself under the austere and sometimes-cruel tutelage of his beloved grandfather, for he knew that the lessons he learned would add to his character development. On the other hand, in 2000 when Cornel West was finally held accountable by Harvard President Larry Summers to stop all the rap crap, missing classes to campaign for Ed Bradley, trips to Hollywood to be in movies, and to start producing real, trenchant scholarship, West, like a spoiled, bratty little boy, got mad, cried racism to the press and fled to Princeton where he teaches today.
Some critics have argued that West despises Thomas because he is a Republican, because he didn't credit the civil rights movement for his success; that Thomas benefited from affirmative action by being admitted to Holy Cross and later Yale Law School, yet in his opinions has been against affirmative action. But I think it is deeper than that.
Cornel West
|
Lani Guinier, Clinton's failed nominee to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and now Harvard Law professor has remarked that Thomas calls for the need to "authenticate the blackness of public figures." In a collection of articles collected by Princeton's Toni Morrison, "Race-ing Justice, Engendering Power," West uses words to criticize Thomas as lacking "mature black identity."
Like the notion of black authenticity, it identifies particular qualities in the black community by which black leaders must be judged. West never defines these qualities, but demands that they be based on "black self-love," "black dignity and decency" and "black self-respect" – presumably qualities West believes Thomas lacks.
To his credit, West includes self-reliance advocate Booker T. Washington and Republican-leaning writer Zora Neale Hurston in the top 100, which indicate to me that ideology alone were insufficient to justify omission. However, I believe they were permitted to West's Hall of Fame for two sarcastic reasons: 1) they are long dead, and 2) they are non-threatening to West's fragile, liberal worldview mandating black victimhood.
Finally, in my reading West's oeuvre and listening to his exciting but vacuous speeches that many of my people reflexively fawn over so utterly, I am reminded of a quote from George Orwell's classic "1984" regarding a mysterious, sinister and ubiquitous figure named "Goldstein." Orwell writes:
... [A]lthough Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were, in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him.
Who is "Goldstein" today? Goldstein is the embodiment of contemporary liberalism that has so utterly poisoned and perverted the public schools, the academy, the churches, economics, law, politics, business, medicine, the media, society and culture. Professor Cornel West is Big Brother's Minister of Propaganda.
Related special offers:
Clarence Thomas' "My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir"
"Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America"
"Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson"
Ellis Washington, former editor at The Michigan Law Review and law clerk at The Rutherford Institute, is a graduate of John Marshall Law School and a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. He has written over a dozen law review articles and several books, including "The Inseparability of Law and Morality: 
The Constitution, Natural Law and the Rule of Law" (2002), "Beyond the Veil: 
Essays in the Dialectical Style of Socrates". See his law review article "Reply to Judge Richard Posner." Washington's latest book is "The Nuremberg Trials: Last Tragedy of the Holocaust."
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
|
