Cornel West.

`I have a deep, existential confidence in the rightness of radical democracy.'

At forty-three, Cornel West is a professor of Afro-American Studies and Religion at Harvard University, a noted theologian, a prominent democratic socialist, and a prime mover in efforts to renew the dialogue between blacks and Jews.

A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, he grew up in Sacramento and was influenced both by the black church and the Black Panthers. His books, including Race Matters, published in 1993, have become best-sellers, and his appearances on college campuses across the country draw crowds that often number in the thousands.

We recently spoke about his beliefs, his activism, and his faith in the prospect of "radical amazement."

Q: In a time when so many of the ideals and causes that you have advocated are under assault--directly from the right and indirectly from those on the left who advocate compromise and bipartisanship--you remain remarkably optimistic. How do you keep the faith in the face of disappointments and setbacks?

Cornel West: You have to draw a distinction between hope and optimism. Vaclav Havel put it well when he said "optimism" is the belief that things are going to turn out as you would like, as opposed to "hope," which is when you are thoroughly convinced something is moral and right and just and therefore you fight regardless of the consequences. In that sense, I'm full of hope but in no way optimistic.

Q: What is it that underpins your hope? What is it that makes you carry on, regardless?

West: People who are still out there, fighting against the darkness and thunder. For me, that's a form of bearing witness, and, of course, intellectuals try to reflect critically on the witness that they bear. There are always hundreds and hundreds, thousands and thousands, millions and millions of folk around the world who are cutting against the grain. That's the kind of movement and motion that we hope, somewhere down the line, will lead to the higher-level organizing and mobilizing necessary to transform these societies that are shot through with so many institutional forms of evil.

Q: Growing up, you encountered some of these institutional forms of racism. To what extent were your political views shaped by experiences in your youth?

West: There was a time in my childhood when I was angry. I behaved badly. I was in trouble in school. But then I had some wonderful teachers, and I became a Christian, which really started to turn me around. I was able to rechannel a lot of that rage. I was attracted by the black Baptist theology and the idea of Jesus as a figure who expressed love and caring. It taught me from a very early age--eight or nine--to see each person's humanity.

Then, in 1963, I saw Martin King speak, which reinforced a lot of what I was thinking and feeling. I made contact with the Black Panthers, and I was influenced by them, in particular by their courage and by their ideas about socialist internationalism. I read Malcolm X. I read Michael Harrington. I became a democratic socialist when I was still very young.

Q: Several years ago you spoke in Memphis at a ceremony marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. One of the concerns I recall you expressing at the time was that contemporary progressives no longer seemed to be reaching out to people of faith as they did in King's time. Do progressives need to do more to connect with Americans on a spiritual level?

West: We just have to confront certain facts: 94 percent of the American people believe in God, 72 percent believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, 39 percent believe they spoke to God on personal terms at least twice last week. Those are the empirical facts.

If we're going to be able to address people where they are, we have to be honest with ourselves and them, but we also have to acknowledge where people are. That is a crucial starting point--a place to begin and not to end.

Now, America is a conservative country in so many ways. It's deeply racist, it refuses to interrogate corporate power, it's deeply homophobic, it's deeply patriarchal.

So institutional religion is generally conservative-that's true anywhere, and it's true in the United States as well. But there's also a prophetic wing among these religious traditions.

It's the responsibility of progressives to respect folk-and to respect them is to take them seriously, not to trash them. And by taking them seriously, you bring your critique to bear, but you also recognize that there are some elements in who people are and where they are that you can build on.

It's what we used to call "eminent critique," in terms of trying to push people, in light of where they are, to get them to see differently, but also to get them to see that there are certain resources within their own tradition that they can build on.

That was part of the genius of Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many others: Miles Horton, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dorothy Day, and a whole host of others. All of them were imperfect--Dorothy Day had problems with abortion, King may have had problems with homophobia, and so forth--but still there is so much we can learn from these figures. And I think the secular left has to take that seriously--without giving up their secularity, which they have a right to.

Q: It seems at this point that the secular left is uncomfortable with the left tradition within communities of faith. Outside of the African-American community, there appears to be a sense that there is something weak, perhaps even distasteful, about a faith-based progressivism. Why?

West: The leftist tradition in the modern West has been deeply secular. Therefore, persons of religious belief, persons of religious sensibility, feel as if they are childish, feel as if they are primitive, feel as if they are behind. The badge of refinement and sophistication is one of secular sensibility.

One finds this also among artists and bohemian communities, and it's understandable because there's been a certain historical trajectory that has led to this. At the same time, we have to realize that the roots of this are in a particularly historical moment--when Marx himself was writing, he couldn't get a member of the Lutheran clergy to join the German Social Democratic party, and so he, understandably, said, "Look, there's no possibility of religion being a progressive force if that's the case."

But we have to recognize other historical traditions, as well. We've got a black tradition, we've got Nat Turner, we've got Frederick Douglass, we've got Sojourner Truth, we've got Martin King, we've got Garvey--all of them deeply religious folks.

Q: Let's talk about the Million Man March, which you supported. A year after the march, can you see a lingering impact?

West: It's hard to measure the impact. On the one hand, you had 1.7 million black men who voted in the 1996 election and who didn't vote in 1992. The Million Man March probably contributed in a significant way to that.

Similarly so, on a qualitative level, there's a different kind of spirit among a lot of the brothers on the ground, on the street, in terms of a sense of possibility. That cuts across ideology and politics, so it is hard to specify for progressives, but any time you have a sense of possibility among a group like black men, who are very, very much a part of the class of subordinate peoples, you have some raw material for movement and momentum.

At the same time, the march generated a hell of a discussion, a hell of a debate in black America about whence the rise of black people, whence the struggle against white supremacy, and that's very important. There were also serious reflections on, and interrogations of, Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam--with a lot of different voices, most of those voices full of insights, a few of the voices full of knock-down convincing arguments. And they go from the secular left to the religious progressives to folks who are noncommittal but are deeply concerned about black suffering.

The discussion that's followed the march has been rather open-ended, and in some ways symptomatic and reflective of very, very deep levels of confusion in the black community. And, of course, it has highlighted the profound crisis in black leadership.

Q: Do you believe that Minister Farrakhan has used the opportunities presented by the Million Man March's success as effectively and responsibly as he could have?

West: I think that after the march. he was a bit bewildered as to what to do. I think he felt cornered in a way, and he went international. And in going international, he got in a lot of trouble--both based on misunderstandings and on certain mistakes. Some of the important things that he has done have been lost in the discussion of the mistakes.

People have downplayed what he said at the recent convention in St. Louis, as well as what he said at the United Nations when they had the one-year-anniversary Day of Atonement event. At the convention in St. Louis, he held up Mother Jones magazine, and told all the black folk to buy it because of its critique of corporate power--something he had not talked about before. He read from Harper's, from Lewis Lapham, who is of course a kind of an aristocratic radical, the best of the patrician radical tradition in America and very insightful in his own way.

To have Minister Louis Farrakhan putting forward calls for redistribution of the wealth, focusing on corporate power, and talking about building coalitions of poor people across lines of race was hardly reported in the radical press. But it was heard by 20,000 black folk in the dome in St. Louis, and that was important.

Similarly so, his critique of the imperial policies of the United States was important.

But, as always, those important messages are interwoven with a whole host of other things that are a part of the black-nationalist tradition in general and the Nation of Islam in particular his struggles with patriarchy, his struggles with homophobia, his struggles with anti-Semitic elements in his rhetoric.

I see significant movement in Minister Louis Farrakhan, but many still think it's just manipulative.

Q: You mentioned the increase in African-American voter turnout in 1996. Without the African-American vote, Clinton's margin over Dole would have been extremely narrow, Democrats would have lost several more Senate seats, and the party's modest gains in the House would not have been possible. Yet the signals from the Clinton Administration in the aftermath of the election gave no indication that the President or the Democratic Party had any intention of responding to the concerns of African Americans. Is there any reasonable hope that this higher level of electoral contribution to the Democratic Party from the African-American community will be rewarded?

West: Well, that's what's so very sad, because I don't think so. I was hoping that the Democrats would take over the House, so that we would have Charles Rangel in charge of the Ways and Means Committee, Bill Clay over at Education and Economic Opportunity, John Conyers running Judiciary, Ron Dellums at Armed Services. That's what I was looking for.

Again the black vote was decisive and yet we gain very, very little with Clinton moving toward the right. I think he's going to move continually toward the right.

So I would hope that the Congressional Black Caucus at the national level, black elected officials at the state and local levels, and black citizens would think very seriously about some kind of realignment with progressives. That's very, very amorphous at this time. But I think that the Democratic Party is reaching the point of sheer bankruptcy when it comes to actually contributing in a substantive way to black freedom-let alone the freedom of working people and poor people.

Q: Did you vote for Bill Clinton?

West: No, there was no way with respect that I could pull the lever for Bill Clinton. No way. I respect myself too much. His signing of the welfare bill was really the straw that broke the camel's back, but I'd already seen him moving toward the right. You just can't play games with people's lives like that.

Q: When you talk about a realignment of African-American voters into a coalition with progressives, and I assume Hispanics and poor and working-class whites, do you see that taking the form of an effort to take over the Democratic Party, or do you see it taking place outside the party in some new political grouping?

West: It's hard to say. I'm a member of Democratic Socialists of America, and we have people who work inside the Democratic Party. We also have members who work with the New Party and members who don't. I'm a member of the New Party, and I work proudly with Joel Rogers and Daniel Cantor and Josh Cohen and others.

I would like to see serious party formations. The New Party is one example of a vehicle to do this. The Labor Party is another good example.

I think the revitalized labor movement on the one hand, what's left of the black-freedom movement in organized form, and of course the feminist and womanist groups, the anti-homophobia groups, and the ecological groups all have to be a part of these party formations. So, for me, you've got the New Party, you've got the Labor Party, you've got the Green Party, then you have pre-party formations linked to these other social-based groups.

Somewhere down the line, I would like to see a coming together under a large progressive umbrella of the sort that Joel Rogers has been talking about. If we're organized enough, have enough resources, and can respect each other enough to wrestle with our disagreements, that kind of realignment into a multiracial progressive organization or party is what I think we need.

I just don't see a lot of potential in the Democratic Party.

Q: The challenge for a new grouping of this sort lies in convincing people who are Democrats--and African-American voters are the most loyal Democrats--to break from what they have always seen as the vehicle for their political activism. In light of the failures of past efforts to form new parties, how would this grouping that you're talking about accomplish the task?

West: I think that part of it is a question of leadership. I mean, my God, with the escalating income inequality, with the stagnating and declining wages, with the civic infrastructures in such decay, if we had the right leadership that could actually project a vision and an understanding of what's going on, we'd have a chance.

My hunch is that it is, more than likely, going to be progressive black leadership that will do that. I do not believe progressive white leadership is going to be able to be both rooted in that large black social base and then also creating bridges across lines of race and gender and sexual orientation.

So I think that what we really need is a high-quality progressive black leadership that is multi-racial in strategy, that is deeply, deeply progressive--which is to say radically democratic--but is trusted enough by folk in the black community that they would be willing to make that move outside the Democratic Party.

Q: Jesse Jackson attempted to achieve something along these lines within the Democratic Party back in 1988.

West: It's a different moment; 1988 was a different moment than today. Jesse's always had progressive tendencies, but he's also wanted to be a player in the big game, the main game in town. All leaders have their own insights and blindnesses, virtues and vices. All of us do as human beings.

Jesse, to me, played a very important role, but it was shot through with contradictions. And I think the next wave of leadership has to learn from his grand and very courageous example. Q: So you're looking for someone new. Do you see anyone around the country who might be prepared to assume the leadership role you've outlined here?

West: Not one individual, and I tend not to focus just on one person. But I do see a number of progressives, activists, elected officials around the country--folks who are not that well known, but represent the tendency that I'm talking about. That, to me, is what's most important.

Q: Where does an intellectual figure, someone like yourself, fit into these reformulations?

West: In one sense, Noam Chomsky's right: You speak the truth, expose lies, and bear witness. Which is to say that you try to be part of a conversation where you represent a radical democratic perspective, but also one that is very much improvisational and experimental. You must be able to move from a variety of different contexts--so you don't just get locked into one group or one party and become unable to empathize with those in different parties on the left--to be able to see what it takes to bring them together.

That means, as well, that you have to generate certain kinds of trust, even with people who radically disagree with you.

I see my own self as a freedom fighter who happens to be in a professional, managerial class in a capitalist society that's called the academy. You understand that as one context, and you speak the truth, and expose the lies, and bear witness in that context--the same way you do in the church on Sunday, and in the trade-union hall on Monday, and in some dialogue with some businessman on Tuesday. You move from one context to another, you move back and forth, but the people who you're talking with always must know that what's coming at them is this radical democratic perspective.

Right now, we're at such an embryonic stage in terms of broadening the public conversation in relation to corporate power, in relation to just how deep the legacy of white supremacy actually still is in America, let alone male supremacy and homophobia and so on, that you just try to keep pressing the point. That means you continually travel, you continually interact with new folk, and you also try to relate to people on a personal level and a human level. I think one of the problems on the left is that we tend to get so caught up at times in our own ideology and our own analysis and jargon that we don't actually relate to people as human beings who we know are catching hell but who have a very different language, a very different tradition.

In America, of course, persons who are able to laugh at themselves, persons who are able to take certain risks and be vulnerable, do tend to gain a bit more attention, because we tend to be very suspicious of the self-righteous. And rightly so, that's a good democratic impulse.

Q: You are still a young man, forty-three years old. Do you imagine that, in your lifetime, the world will more closely resemble the vision you have argued and campaigned for?

West: Well, presently, it doesn't look good. The dominant forces tend to be precisely those that make it difficult to create the democratic countervailing forces against the globalization of capital, against subordination of workers, against the xenophobias, against the tribal hatreds, and so forth. So it doesn't look good at all.

But, on the other hand, there's always unpredictability.

Human history depends on how hard we work, on how much we are willing to sacrifice. Abraham Joshua Heschel talked about "radical amazement" in human history: We can be amazed by our effort if we continually stay at it on the ground. If we stay at it, we can look up every now and then and say, "Oh, my God, this motion that we're generating might be creating some movement." And as long as you have motion there's a possibility of creating some heterogeneous progressive social movement and, boom, we're back into a sixties-like situation in terms of things beginning to melt a bit--in sharp contrast to our icy moment right now.

But I don't really look long term. When I look at the suffering and pain of working people, indigenous peoples on reservations, when I look at these things, I think, you can't but give your all. You have no choice, because you know that what you're doing is right. In that sense, I have a deep, existential confidence in the rightness of radical democracy. I will try to actualize it to the best of my ability But there's no rational certainty, there's no historical inevitability to the causes that we promote.

Q: Just an element of hope?

West: Exactly. An element of hope--based on struggle.