Brother West

by Cornel West

  I have kept this lecture pace for over three decades. And if I die on the road, I shall do so with a smile on my face.

  Back in the ’90s, I was especially involved in the relationships between blacks and Jews, the groups I called “the most unique and fascinating people of modern times.” That these once close allies had experienced such bitter estrangement in recent years hurt my heart. If I could do something to foster a respectful dialogue between Jews and blacks, I was down.

  I was especially grateful that such a dialogue emerged between Michael Lerner and me. Michael is a man I love, someone who has taught me a great deal. He comes out of the ’60s Free Speech Movement and Students for a Democratic Society at Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in philosophy. He also has a Ph. D. in psychology. He also became an ordained rabbi. As a progressive intellectual, he has courage and vision. We’d encountered each other back in the ’80s when Michael invited me to write for Tikkun, a Jewish left-wing magazine that invited non-Jewish contributors like Christopher Lasch and Harvey Cox.

  On an intellectual and spiritual level, I always felt a bond with Michael, despite the differences between us. I remember the day we were arguing out on the street in front of the National Black Summit. Michael was picketing the NAACP event because the Honorable Louis Farrakhan had been invited to the conference. The New York Times snapped a photograph of us barking at each other. It was also caught on film and shown on CNN. Michael was saying that such an alleged anti-Semite like the minister should have been excluded. I was defending my dear brother by arguing that, first of all, Farrakhan’s remarks had been twisted out of context, and that, even more significantly, his deep love and service for his people more than justified his presence. He bravely stood up against white supremacy at a time in our history when to do so required courage and character. I pointed to Winston Churchill, that much-lauded figure in world history, and said his stand against Hitler has us forgiving him for having been pro-Mussolini, pro-Imperialist, and a subscriber to the notion that blacks are subhuman. If we can forgive Churchill’s disagreeable views, why can’t we also forgive the disagreeable views of Farrakhan while celebrating his contribution to the cause of black freedom?

  In any event, Michael had his arguments and I had mine. We saw that, despite our differences, our dialogue was rich. We defined ourselves in radically different ways. Michael’s a progressive Zionist, a nationalist. I’m not a nationalist on any level, not for any political entity, religion, or race. Dr. King, one of my heroes, was an American nationalist and a patriot. In that regard, I disagree with him. I am not first and foremost a patriot. America is not great because it is a nation chosen by God. It is great because people chose to fight for justice to make America more free and democratic. God does not wink at America and close divine eyes to other nations. My position is that all countries are subservient to the cross—which is to say, subservient to Jesus Christ’s mandate that we are to serve the least among us.

  Michael and I coauthored Jews & Blacks: Let the Healing Begin and also took our show on the road, giving joint appearances across the country for over a year. I loved the black Christian– white Jewish connection because of my view of Christianity as an extension of prophetic Judaism. I see the Old Testament/New Testament narratives as part of a continuum. In prophetic Judaism, as in Amos and Isaiah, justice is already universal. As a Jewish brother, Jesus is confirming this concept. Hillel, a contemporary of Jesus, is already on board the love train. But now Jesus is going even further—he’s riding this train into enemy territory. He’s telling us to actually love our enemies, a radical notion for which he’s labeled insane.

  Some said Michael and I were insane to take our discussion public. We didn’t care. We thought it was a potent idea and we pursued it with passion. We encouraged audience participation and, for the most part, were able to provoke spirited interchanges. As you might imagine, we couldn’t avoid a couple of speed bumps.

  Michael and I were in Oakland at Marcus Books when the members of the Nation of Islam turned up at the event. The vibe was tense. At first, the discussion went reasonably well. Then Michael said the words.

  “Louis Farrakhan is a dog.”

  Farrakhan’s supporters responded in kind, yelling, “You’re a dog!”

  It went downhill from there. I had to protect Michael from the brothers. I got them to back off and I got Michael to let me say, “Rabbi, I’m not sure you want to go around calling someone’s spiritual leader and my dear brother a dog.” He tried to interrupt, but I wouldn’t let him.

  “You start calling the minister a dog, these brothers start calling you a dog, and soon we’re looking at clenched fists and pointed pistols. Soon we’ve wiped out civility and excited pure rage. All because of the use of a three-letter word. The challenge here is to disagree with a degree of respect.”

  My words did only limited good. The word “dog” continued to be thrown around, but at least everyone got to vent. No punches were thrown.

  Later on the tour, we were at Howard University in D.C. The subject of my friend Minister Farrakhan came up again. The very mention of the man’s name triggered Michael, who turned on the questioner.

  “If you had read more books about the history of anti-Semitism,” Michael told the man challenging him, “you wouldn’t ask such an inane question.”

  “That’s the kind of arrogance that trumps any kind of conversation,” I said to Michael. “Many black people associate that kind of arrogance with Jewish brothers and sisters who claim to be concerned about them. That’s the stereotype. We’re on tour trying to shatter the stereotype that, ironically, you’re reinforcing here. So I want to stop and just let everyone know that you, my dear brother Rabbi Lerner, are one of the chief critiques of that stereotype. But like all of us, sometimes we fall into the muddy waters that we’re trying to avoid. I do it. Now the rabbi has done it. But it can all be undone with a little understanding and compassion on everyone’s part.”

  Michael gave me a smile, backed off, and let it go.

  The tour went on. For all the goodwill that it engendered, though, my relationship with the good rabbi was tested when I had to cancel my keynote address at Michael’s annual conference. Mom had suffered a heart attack and the family rushed to her side. She’d be in the hospital for six weeks and would eventually recover. Today she’s in remarkably good health. But after the initial prognosis, her condition was critical. I cancelled everything and flew to Sacramento. Michael was sympathetic, but also eager that I attend. When I made it clear that nothing could keep me from being with Mom, Michael then insisted that I give my speech on a videotape and send it to Washington.

  “Sorry, Michael,” I said, “I can’t even think about anything except being a loving presence for my mother.”

  My refusal put a strain on my friendship with Michael. No matter, I love the good rabbi and always will. I forgive but never forget such moments. The other thing I’ll never forget is the introduction Michael gave me to the most brilliant and compassionate literary agent in the world, my dear sister Gloria Loomis.

  THE SAME YEAR—1995—THAT Rabbi Lerner and I began our black/ Jewish dialogue, I was viciously attacked by Brother Leon Wieseltier, a prominent Jewish intellectual, in the pages of The New Republic, a neo-liberal journal with a distinguished history in American letters. Wieseltier called my books “almost completely worthless.” It was nonetheless shocking to learn that, in a lengthy and meanspirited critique, a respected member of the intelligentsia set out to destroy my reputation. Of course I knew about the hand-to-hand combat that characterizes much of the behavior among prominent critics. You try and destroy me … well, I’ll come back and destroy you. Such vitriolic exchanges go on forever. Intellectual mud wrestling attracts a crowd, at least among a small circle of readers. There is, of course, a different way to understand the phenomenon. The rabbinical tradition of challenging text is a noble one. A vigorous back-and-forth on a high and respectful level is often illuminating. Socratic questioning—an
d challenging—is at the very heart of my being. But Wieseltier had no interest in questioning or challenging. He was intent on demonstrating that my life’s work was a farce and that I was a fraud. He was, in fact, not only dishonoring the tradition of honest exchange but corrupting it with ruthless character assassination.

  One of the reasons I am so deeply grateful to my family tradition is because, in the church of my elders, encouragement is the key. A little girl gets up to sing and the congregation, even before hearing the first note, shouts out, “Go on! Sing, baby, sing!” A young boy gets up to preach and the congregation is right there with him, assuaging his trepidation with shouts of praise. That’s how I was raised.

  You grow up, of course, and find yourself crossing from one culture to another. That’s a beautiful thing. I bring my culture into your life, you bring yours into mine. We learn and share. Yet the hypercompetitive culture of warring critics never set well with me. I couldn’t play the game and even today find myself uncomfortable in a setting where the aim is to destroy rather than learn. It is disheartening but also true that, of all my colleagues, only two professors defended me against Wieseltier’s ugly assault in print: my dear brothers Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Richard Rorty. From the hundreds of other academicians who had told me how much they respected my scholarship—a deafening silence.

  Another such moment came years later when I was asked by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York to speak at Sidney Hook Reconsidered: A Centennial Celebration. Hook was one of the grand intellectual figures of our time and perhaps the most prominent student of John Dewey. I had studied Hook as a young man. I had lectured and written about him on several occasions. I knew his work intimately. In fact, I had written a wellreceived book on American pragmatism with an entire chapter devoted to Hook. The man had had a profound influence on me. I was honored to be part of this celebration and excited to attend the conference That’s when the stuff hit the fan.

  Three neo-conservative New York Jewish intellectuals said that if I spoke, they’d boycott—and they did. Art critic Hilton Kramer, essayist Irving Kristol, and historian Gertrude Himmelfarb were no-shows, all because of me! A fourth, historian John Patrick Diggins, who is not Jewish, also said he was withdrawing. He even said this to the New York Times in a page-one article: “In order to comment on Sidney Hook, one would have to read at least twenty of his books. Cornel West is such a celebrity intellectual, I don’t think he’ll have time for it.” Well, the truth is that I had read all of Hook’s books—and more than once. When the Times contacted me to comment, all I could say was that “I have learned much from the art criticism of Kramer, the fine historiography of Himmelfarb, the intellectual history of Diggins and some of the essays of Kristol. I just see through their nonsense.’’

  Diggins, good man that he is, changed his mind and decided to attend. In introducing me, though, he said that he understood the point of those invitees who had refused to attend because of me. What point? That, as an author of highly regarded works on pragmatism, I was still unqualified? Undeterred, I ventured forth and gave my lecture. Afterwards, Hook’s son came up to thank me for my insights. That was gratifying. So was the positive response of those in the lecture hall. Even more satisfying was that, at Princeton, I was warmly welcomed by Gertrude Himmelfarb’s niece, my dear sister Professor Martha Himmelfarb, chairman of the Department of Religion, as a colleague and fellow scholar, a gesture that meant a great deal to me. And of course I wouldn’t be the person I am without the support of many loving Jewish brothers in the academy like Hilary Putnam, Israel Scheffler, Paul Benacerraf, Robert Nozick, Sheldon Wolin, and Stanley Cavell, just to name a few. Unfortunately, though, that initial Hook conference is remembered more for the controversy surrounding it than the contributions of those who attended.

  ANOTHER SIGNIFICANT RELATIONSHIP WAS STRAINED when I refused to support Bill Clinton for his second term. Back in 1992, I traveled the country speaking for him. I liked the man, and saw him as open-minded to new and progressive ideas. Naturally I was gratified when Clinton invited me to the White House and spoke highly of my books. But my outrage at his welfare bill—and the unconscionable crime bill—kept me from supporting him. In my view, Clinton was using the poor as a political football to win the 1996 election against Bob Dole. This bill, deeply damaging to the disenfranchised, was the president’s way of stealing thunder from the Republican Right. This was a bill so heartless that even Ronald Reagan would have refused to sign it. Reagan had concerns about job training; he also had concerns about what would happen to impoverished children after the time limits for support ran out. Clinton ignored these concerns. He ignored what would happen if the supportive networks for those in need were abandoned.

  I was also sickened when I saw that at the signing ceremony Clinton had a black woman standing right next to him. He needed the symbol of the “Welfare Queen” to approve his action. Without that symbol, the president couldn’t justify signing a major piece of legislation that denied the most vulnerable members of our society: poor children. The historical subtext, of course, is that black women were the only females forced to work the fields during 244 years of slavery. When slavery was over, they were moved into white households to help raise white children. Yet they symbolize lazy people in America?

  Clinton’s approach to the nation’s poor echoed Rudolph Giuliani’s approach to New York City’s poor. Giuliani proudly pointed to the deodorized and sanitized Times Square. No more homeless, no more funk, no more guys running up to your car to clean your windshield for change. But what happened to the squeegee folk?

  For all Giuliani cared, they could have been dumped into the Hudson River. They could have been deported to Jersey City and Newark, falling into lives of crime and committing felonies left and right. But that didn’t matter as long as our bourgeois tourism trade prospered. As long as the visitors from Sydney or Tokyo feel safe in the city, who cares about the squeegee folk?

  The squeegee folk, the impoverished folks in the ghetto, people without means or hope—those who, as Ray Charles said, “Ain’t got nothing yet”—these were the human souls that Clinton’s welfare bill coldly and cruelly neglected.

  The cultural equivalent of the elimination of the squeegee folk was the eradication of the arts program in inner-city schools. It was Carol Proctor who introduced me to my dear sister Natalie Lieberman, a compassionate and generous New Yorker, who founded the Learning Through Art Program to speak to this void. When I was asked to serve on the board of the Guggenheim Museum, I agreed with the stipulation that their foundation contribute to Mrs. Lieberman’s program. Ironically, it was during this period when poor people were under fierce assault that the Guggenheim gave its first exhibition of African art. I was honored to support the show and write the introduction to the catalogue. And I was also delighted to provide the Black Radical Congress—the major leftist black organization in this period to defend poor people— with $10,000 as the seed money for its founding.

  Meanwhile, Clinton, despite his concrete neglect of poor people, was reelected. I spoke at the inauguration for his second term and was invited back to the White House to discuss a range of issues. The president joked about my non-support and was good-natured about the fact that I had been highly critical of what I considered his abandonment of the poor. We could still talk to each other, still learn from each other, still remain friends. But none of that diminished my conviction that, on one of the most critical issues of our time, Bill Clinton blew it—and blew it bad.

  LOSS

  IN THIS MEMOIR, I MUST mark the loss of my dear, dear friend James Melvin Washington. I must declare my love for this man and everything that he represents. I must publicly mourn my precious brother. In another era and in a far different context, W.H. Auden mourned the death of the Irish poet W.B. Yeats with these lines:

  In the deserts of the heart

  Let the healing fountains start,

  In the prison of his days

  Teach the free man
how to praise.

  Jim Washington taught us all how to praise. Perhaps his most enduring legacy is his monumental Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans. Jim left us with our people’s most beautiful praise. In the introduction to the book, he writes, “African-American prayers, a literary genre and a religious social practice, assume that God is just and loving, and that the human dilemma is that we cannot always experience and see God’s justice and love. We pray for faith to trust God’s ultimate disclosure. Thus prayer as act and utterance teaches the believer to exercise what Adrienne Rich calls ‘revolutionary patience.’ But the literary history of African-American prayers suggests that, besides anticipating God’s ultimate self-disclosure in the history of the oppressed, we are the trustees of a spiritual legacy paid for with the blood, sweat, tears, and dreams of a noble, even if not triumphant, people. The culture, grammar, and promise of the African-American prayer tradition are in our hands. Only time will tell whether or not their faith in us was worth the price they paid.”

  He includes this prayer from 1902 by Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman:

  Oh, God, when days were dark indeed

  When we were fast in Slavery’s chain

  Thou then our parents’ prayers did heed

  And helped us freedom to obtain

  And this “Pagan Prayer” by Countee Cullen, written in 1925:

  Not for myself I make this prayer

  But for this race of mine

  That stretches forth from shadowed places

  Dark hands for bread and wine.

  For me, my heart is pagan made,

  My feet are never still