by Cornel West
PART IV
THE MATRIX
THE MOST PASSIONATE LOVE
JAMES BALDWIN SAID IT BEST in No Name in the Street. I used Brother Baldwin’s quote at the start of a book, Democracy Matters, that I’d begun writing after my marriage with Elleni had dissolved:
“To be an Afro-American … is to be in the situation, intolerably exaggerated, of all those who have ever found themselves part of a civilization which they could in no wise honorably defend—which they were compelled, indeed, endlessly to attack and condemn— and who yet spoke out of the most passionate love, hoping to make the kingdom new, to make it honorable and worthy of life.”
Writing Democracy Matters—superbly edited by Sister Emily Loose—brought me more joy than any other book I’ve done. I could literally feel the fire emanating from my pen to paper—since I’ve never owned or used a computer. We had reached the low point of the age of Reagan—the second Bush years—and I was full of righteous indignation. Most of the intellectuals, media, and politicians were duped by the “magic” of unregulated markets, militarism in the Middle East, and fewer liberties at home owing to the threat of terrorism. My blues sensibility of deep democracy led me to say we were on the brink of catastrophe—on the national and global fronts. Sadly, I was right.
Democracy Matters lays bare my project more clearly than any other book I’ve written. And my grand attempt to weave the rich legacies of Melville and Emerson through the genius of Morrison and Baldwin in the deep democratic American grain still make me smile. Despite predictable neoconservative and neoliberal attempts to trivialize the book, it sold over 100,000 copies (reaching No. 5 on the New York Times bestseller list) and continues to influence many. The underlying thesis of the book is that the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is the culmination of not only the democratic tradition in the USA but also the humanist tradition of Socrates and Jesus—Athens and Jerusalem. Needless to say, King is a Christian bluesman of the highest order! Like him, I try to be a prisoner of hope, a fanatic of fairness, and an extremist of love.
As the twentieth century, the bloodiest in human history, came to an end, I saw our market-driven, hypermaterialistic, consumption-craving culture in sorry shape. Right-wing demagogues were galvanizing their power and spreading their venom on the airwaves with ever-growing influence. For all its serious imperfections, the Clinton Era would soon look good next to the Bush Ice Age. Fear would freeze out hope. Fear would dominate American politics during the illegitimate regime of Bush the Younger. Small-minded bigotry, insensitivity to the poor, self-delusional arrogance in foreign policy, misguided overreaction to terrorist threats, a horrific war based on blatant lies, strategic miscalculations, and a frightfully xenophobic world view being perpetuated by an administration whose heartless neglect of its very own people in the face of natural disaster … the early years of the twenty-first century would challenge whatever hope we could muster. It seemed as if the dangerous dogmas of free-market fundamentalism, adventurous militarism, and myopic authoritarianism were strangling our fragile democracy at home. And abroad, I called for forging democratic identities in the Middle East. I highlighted progressive Jewish voices, such as Albert Einstein and Ahad Ha’am, and prophetic Islamic figures, like Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, who is the Muslim Gandhi.
I am in no way a mystic, since I cherish my unique individuality. Yet I do have a profound appreciation of mystery that transcends reason and fact. I acknowledge the human inadequacy of fully comprehending the unpredictable ways of life and the world. A nihilist would view time as loss, but I would also view time as gift— not only a taking but also a giving. My kind of negative capability fuses humility with a courage to endure the unknowable and the inexplicable with grace and dignity. Therefore, when I encounter overwhelming darkness, I still believe I can discern some light, even if it is at the end of the tunnel.
Even during the pervasive gloom of our nation’s political Ice Age, my understanding of negative capability enabled me to keep track of both an overwhelming mean-spiritedness and social destructiveness as well as noble and ultimately righteous struggles for justice.
Meanwhile, the bluesman’s job never changes: you keep singing the blues. From that point of view, the world really doesn’t get worse or better. It isn’t a question of optimism or pessimism. The blues are simply the blues. The blues are how humans, blessed to be conversant with the deepest parts of their soul, tell their story.
It’s a comedy, it’s a tragedy, it’s a farce, it’s a sitcom; it’s an epic, it’s a sonnet, it’s the straight-ahead twelve-bar blues.
I had the Oh-Lord-these-legal-bills-are-killing-me-blues.
I have nothing against lawyers until lawyers work their way into divorce procedures that result in increased acrimony. The bigger the arguments, the bigger the legal bills. The legal bills I had to pay during my divorce from Elleni were astronomical. Even worse, the settlement left me flat on my backside. I walked out with practically nothing except my trusty ’88 Cadillac. I’m still driving that baby today. But hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of a house and furnishings—all gone. Not to mention an alimony worthy of the salary of a rock star, not a professor.
Should I have fought the legal battle with more aggression? Do I have a right to complain about being left broke when, at the end of the day, it was my decision to walk away from possessions that might have otherwise been mine? When it comes to women, I am not a fighter. When it comes to women, it is difficult—in fact, impossible—for me not to ultimately succumb to their material demands. I wish it were otherwise.
In 1999, I met a stunningly brilliant and beautiful woman named Aytul, a Kurdish journalist who came to Harvard as a Neiman fellow. We had a love relationship that resulted in the birth of our beloved daughter, the precious Dilan Zeytun West, who was born on November 11, 2000. She is a blessing to all who know her, a child of extraordinary grace and intelligence. Good God almighty, I love that girl! Breathtaking.
Dilan means “song” in Kurdish. Zeytun means “olive” in Kurdish, Arabic, and Persian. When we named her Dilan, we realized it would be difficult for Aytul to live in Turkey, where Kurdish culture is suspect. Until recently, it was forbidden to simply pronounce a Kurdish name in Turkey. Things are changing now and hopes are high. For her part, Aytul is devoted to her people and for years has been working on the definitive contemporary history of the Kurds. She and Zeytun, the name most commonly used by my daughter, settled in Bonn, Germany. The distance is difficult, but not impossible. I call daily and fly over every six weeks. Zeytun, who speaks Turkish, English, and German fluently, is a remarkable spirit and, along with my gifted son Cliff, are two of the reasons my life is worth living.
Yet in both cases, I’ve found myself in situations where the fundamental clash between my deep commitment to be a loving father and my deep calling as an intellectual bluesman could not be resolved. The result was pain—pain for my children, pain for their mothers, pain for me. Despite this soul-wrenching pain, Cliff and Zeytun are my heart.
In talking about the sad ending of happy relationships, I quoted Eddie Kendricks, one of the two lead singers from the Temptations’ classic ’60s lineup. The other, of course, was the inimitable David Ruffin. Just as Eddie’s “Tell Her Love Has Felt the Need” was a song he sang after leaving the Temps, Ruffin’s “Walk Away from Love” was also recorded when David had left the group. The song starts:
It’s not that I don’t love you, you know how much I do
And it’s not that I’ve found someone to take the place of you
It’s just a fear that builds within me, every time you touch my hand
And a dread that shakes my body, that even I don’t understand
So I’m leaving, this time I’m playing it smart,
I’m going to walk away from love, before love breaks my heart
Oh, you’re clinging to me tighter than you ever had before, I don’t understand it
But I know it’s going to take everything I’ve got to keep wa
lking out the door
But those arms you got around me, will let me go someday
And I’d rather leave you holding on, than pushing me away …
Because I’ve never been an advocate of psychotherapy as a path to self-understanding, I’m sure I have limitations in this area. I’ve avoided such therapy because I worry about how it might exacerbate narcissistic tendencies. I have friends who argue just the opposite— that psychotherapy, done with sensitivity and an eye to serve others, may be the very thing to break the bond of self-preoccupation. I’m not certain. I’m not sure I know myself well enough to share my whole self with others. This, in part, might explain my volatile relationships with women. One might argue that because I don’t know myself, the more time I spend with a woman, the more various parts of myself emerge—parts that are, in fact, foreign to me. In short, my whole self surfaces, and it is precisely my whole self that strikes me as a stranger. To maintain a long-term and long-lasting bond with a woman may require the kind of soul-sharing or self-sharing that’s beyond my capability. I hope not.
Certain people are attracted to certain facets of us. At an early point, a particular facet might dominate. Later, a less appealing facet might raise its head and take over for a minute, an hour, or a day. We’re all multidimensional. These dimensions appear and disappear, rise and fall, please and displease, placate and irritate. How do we discuss such facets of ourselves? How do we negotiate them with our partners who have conflicting facets of their own? Or, as Brother Al Green put it, how can you mend a broken heart? How can you stop the rain from falling?
With Aytul, the rain fell on our relationship. She and the precious Zeytun settled down in Germany. It broke my heart to see them so far off. But every time I make the trip to see my blessed daughter, there was sunshine in her eyes, in her smile, in the way she showered love on her mom and dad. Back in America, I was juggling two separate legal actions. Elleni’s lawyers argued that she was entitled to big alimony as well as every last material object in my life. Meanwhile, Aytul’s lawyers were demanding that I pay her huge child support as if I had no other legal obligations to Elleni. Both sums of money resulted in a major negative cash flow.
How blue can a brother get? Let’s see.
MESSIN’ WITH
THE WRONG BROTHER
THE COLLEGE PROFESSOR AS BLUESMAN isn’t a concept easily embraced by the college president. The academic intellectual as bluesman is another notion that doesn’t go down easy with the powers that be. How about the teacher making a hip-hop record? Few university administrations would applaud such a move. As a rule, university administrations like their teachers contained. They’re comfortable with strict definitions and tight boundaries when it comes to faculty members and their public posture.
I’ve always seen it another way. I believe in specialized studies. I believe in dedicating oneself to a focused field of scholarship. I’ve done my fair share of scholarly writing. The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, a book I wrote in 1989, was such a work. Keeping Faith, from 1993, was another. But that’s never been enough for me. If I’m to address what’s wrong with the world in which I live, if I’m going to sing the blues that stirs the deepest part of my soul, I need to follow the bluesman’s lead. I have to get out there. I have to sing in front of groups of people—at schools and churches, in prisons and on the streets, on TV, on records, on iTunes and iPods—because the blues message is universal—universally true and universally healing.
The blues message is real, the blues message is pain, and the pain is real as rain. When the blues led to rhythm-and-blues and rhythm-and-blues to hip-hop, I was not put off by the changes. I saw them all as branches of the same tree. That tree has roots deep in the soil of history. I liked the idea of hanging out on those branches. Together with Mike Dailey, Derek Allen, and my brother Cliff, I wrote a hip-hop/spoken word record that, in many ways, was a teaching device. The songs were serious. They addressed our past, our future, and our present condition. The beats were as strong as the message. I loved being in the studio and working with the grooves. I saw the operation as part of the radical democratic impulse and tragicomic truth-telling that comes directly out of the blues root.
I see my role as an educator, as someone who feels both a Socratic and prophetic calling, to implement what Nietzsche called a singing paideia. I am always compelled to remember that paideia represents an unfathomable education in which self-examination and service to others produces a mature, compassionate person willing to speak, live, and sacrifice for truth.
I see hip-hop as part of a movement linked to a danceable education, teaching that can both delight and instruct. I know that I am not a rapper like KRS-One, who has been lecturing in my classes for years. I am surely not a singer any more than I am a preacher. But, in some small way, if I can help bring the social consciousness of a Curtis Mayfield or a Nina Simone to hip-hop, if I can reach one young person with a message embedded in a sound that stirs his or her soul, then I have not labored in vain. My point of reference as an educator is tied to a mighty mission: unsettling minds and motivating hearts to be forces for good.
Hip-hop is a young game. Some might ask, “Why is this old fool turning out hip-hop CDs?” My answer is that the generation of the Dramatics and the O’Jays can—and must—offer their insights to the ongoing culture. I believe it’s a continuum, not a conflict or a contradiction, but, in the language of rap, a continuous flow between one generation and another. The ’60s and ’70s of Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder are more pertinent and compelling than ever. Hook them up with what’s happening today and you have a fusion, a kind of hybrid, that looks backward and forward at the same time. It’s a beautiful thing.
I say all this to introduce a monumental conflict that I had with Harvard President Lawrence Summers just after my first hip-hop record, Sketches of My Culture, came out in 2001. Skip Gates, my dear friend and department head, told me that Summers, newly installed in his job, wanted to see me. Before our encounter, though, I knew several things about Summers, a distinguished academic who had served as chief economist of the World Bank as well as Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury.
After assuming his post as Harvard president, he had met with all department heads except Skip. He made a point of ignoring the Afro-American Studies Department. He had also been saying that he wasn’t sold on affirmative action. What’s more, I had heard of a sarcastic memo at the World Bank where Summers reportedly suggested shipping polluted materials to sub-Saharan Africa. The reasoning was that the region already suffered from overpopulation and was under-polluted.
Then there was the matter of his administration directing me to cut down my course on Afro-American studies from 700 to 400 undergraduates. When I was told Harvard did not have a room for this large a group, I refused to reject any student. My position was that if a student wanted to take this lecture class, he or she could darn well take it. I found a prophetic priest whose close-to-campus church housed a basement big enough to include everyone. The class went on and, for me and I hope for the students as well, it was a joyful and deep experience.
Before my meeting with Summers, Skip called me to his office.
“Corn,” he said, “I want to show you this letter I just wrote
Summers. It’s about you.”
“Why are you writing Summers about me, Skip?”
“Well, it seems that you’re under scrutiny.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m not giving Summers any breathing room. I laid it out as plainly as possible.”
Skip’s three-page, single-spaced letter was a spirited defense of me, listing my sixteen books, my eight coedited books, and detailing my faculty advisory roles. But why, I wondered, was a defense necessary?
At that point I was one of Harvard’s very few University Professors. In fact, William Julius Wilson and I were the first black University Professors in Harvard history. That meant that I was attached to no program or departm
ent. I could teach whatever I wanted. It also gave me the option of reducing my teaching load whenever I cared to. I hadn’t cared to. In fact, my passion for teaching had me adding rather than eliminating courses. When it came to student involvement, I was known for long office hours and easy accessibility. Given all this—and the fact that I had been granted tenure—I couldn’t understand why Summers was suddenly putting me under review.
No matter, I walked into the president’s office, ready to meet the man for the first time and hear what he had to say. From the get-go, the meeting was strange and strained. Summers seemed super-uptight. To break the ice, he told me that I was just the man to help him undermine Professor Harvey Mansfield. In describing his desire to upset Mansfield, Summers used a language that he presumed I’d find familiar.
“Help me f___ him up,” he said.
As a vehement critic of affirmative action and someone who openly criticized the growing number of black men and women at Harvard, Brother Mansfield held views diametrically opposite to mine. We had, in fact, engaged in a heated public debate attended by more than a thousand students and faculty members. At the same time, though, I had high respect for Mansfield. He was a respected scholar and world-renowned intellectual. He was a friend. There was no way in the world I would ever participate in any activity that would impute his reputation or challenge his integrity. I told Summers that, despite the intensity and even intellectual ferocity that marked my debates with Mansfield, neither he nor I had ever once used a disparaging word to describe one another. There had never been name-calling or cursing. I considered Mansfield my brother. In fact, I had recently seen him at the faculty club, where I congratulated him on his superb translation of Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic, Democracy in America, that he had translated together with his wife, Delba Winthrop.