Cornel West- Obama a black puppet

[Islandman]

Princeton’s West takes shot at Obama

May 18, 2011

WASHINGTON — Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and leading black intellectual, is harshly criticizing President Obama, a candidate he once supported but now calls “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.’’

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,’’ West said. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white . . . When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening.’’

The White House did not have an immediate comment. West did not respond to messages left at his office.

Republicans have questioned Obama’s origins — to the point where he felt compelled to release his long-form birth certificate to prove he was born in Hawaii — but West also uses Obama’s past to draw into question the president’s racial bearings.

“Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive,’’ West said. “He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.’’

West is a professor at Princeton’s Center for African American Studies and the author of “Race Matters.’’ He left the Harvard faculty in 2002 amid quarrels with its president at the time, Lawrence Summers.

West also recounts personal slights by Obama — that his phone calls didn’t get returned, and that he couldn’t get a ticket with his mother and brother to the inauguration.

It is not the first time West has raised questions about Obama. Last year, in an interview with NPR, he said he wished the president were more “Martin Luther King-like.’’

[TDowl]

I wonder if Cornel was President, what would he do different?

[Islandman]

Its one thing to have some issues with his policies but what I don't like is that he seems getting personal. Clearly his thinks Obama has not given him what he thinks is his due recognition. I always have a problem with black people start preaching about who is an authentic black person and who is not.

I remember once when West was on a Tavis Smiley forum, someone asked him why he wouldn't leave the Ivy League for a few years and work at a historically black college. He gave one long answer about black colleges can't deal with a free and independent brother like him, ray ray ray. Clearly he sees himself as the ultimate black intellectual.

[Rockman]

West is okay,when Obama won the election(well deserved)the man on the streets in Iraq said all US presidents are the same,to date he has not been proven wrong as Obama's foreign policies mirror that of his predecessors.
Where is the evidence his race makes him unique policy-wise?
West's sentiments are echoed by others,and I am not sure Obama can refute them.
The Israel/Palestine issue is perceived along racial lines,your experience as a minority allows to identify with the Palistinian cause,not reflected..
I think it would be prudent to wait until Obama gets a second term before..

He should continue to ignore them.

[Sir X]

Obama forgein policy is different from his predecessors , those that expect him to untangle 40 years of irrational americam forgein policy with a stroke of a pen are misguided and the same on the domestic front.

Obama declared America was on the side of the people , not the governments when the Muslim democratic spring came about , contrast that with the tone of the republicans and some democarts who decried him for betraying Mubarak for what they claimed was a 40 year ally.

President Obama is a very perceptive and calculated man .He gave good reasons why it would be wise for america to be on the side of the people or give the perception as such , because as we all know America is on Americas side.To the point considering the anti american feeling in the middle east, the cost of maintaining the status quo, its cheaper to delegate human rights responsibility in a global collective sense.

Calling out Israel after dealing with Osama and in the crust of this democratic spring can only be seen as calculated the dye has been cast.America has declared to the middle east (Israel) it has to deal in a different atmosphere of real human rights , where Americas policy will be human rights and democracy for all in the region and Israel cannot be an exception (the palestininian issue).A tone Israel did not want to change , it seems the tables have turned on Israel.Israel would be more comfortable with the status quo and I know they hope and pray democracy(arab/muslim) spring fails in Egypt.It is far from over its a process.


It keeps everyone in check and America can lead from the hypocritical role of human rights , in reality is all about monetary gain.Think about it a free country bombarded with american commercilisation will gravitate to buy and be american.

[myYout]

mi respect di intellect, but him nah nuh manners. A which black man inna bull buck an duppy conqueror country ah nuh puppet to di pale system (which evah part innah di worl yuh live dem hab di hangle trait). ah waan him name one himself included. Di ongle way black man get some decent rights yah suh yuh haffi intimate wid men, den dem wi defen yuh to di max, dem fullup ah legal rights. Him fi cool kah dem jus love run dem mout, dem coulden come out an character assassinate a pale chief like dat, dem wouldah park him innah one ah dem institution. Wi always bring dung wi own, das why dem always use divide an conqueror fi get wi out.

[Sir X]

Personally I am surprised and dissapointed in West , "black puppet" to what ? the shitstem ? So is everyone , tell him to watch the inside job.

[myYout]

jus like suh

[Islandman]

Good post X.

It seems like people expected Obama to really change everything in a couple of years. If he even attempted to do that he would lose 40+ states in 2012. Hell, the man is getting major heat simply for saying that his position is that Israel/Palestinian talks should use 1967 borders as a starting point!

I tend to agree that Netanyahu in particular is quite happy to let the current stalemate continue until he has effectively occupied the whole West Bank, but I also believe the Palistinian leadership have a major decision to make.

For them to survive and have any chance for an independent state, thier leadership simply MUST accept that Israel has a right to exist. I understand they were treated extremely unfairly when Israel was created post-WW2 but there is no going back to a pre-Israel world.

Maybe they should negotiate for some kind of reparations as a substitute, but I just cannot see the point of even having peace talks with Israel if they refuse to even accept that they should exist.

[Gamma]

dem nuh really know yet who is obama and what he is capable of ..... he is a very methodical and calculating man .... to make big moves like that...the pieces have already been set.

[Islandman]

A Lesson for Cornel West

Derrick Jackson, Boston Globe

IT WAS not enough for Cornel West to ridicule the first African-American president as a “black mascot.’’ The loquacious professor also fired his blunderbuss at Michelle Obama. In the process, he splattered a generation of black people freeing itself from narrow identities and stereotypes.

Tweet 3 people Tweeted this.ShareThis .The Princeton African-American studies professor belittled the First Lady’s causes of child obesity and assisting military families, by scornfully asking on the website Truthdig: “Why doesn’t she visit a prison? Why doesn’t she spend some time in the hood?’’

The down-with-the-people professor clearly has spent too much time in the ivory tower to see the many ways to be “in the hood.’’ It escapes him that 42 percent of African-American women are now obese, putting them on the leading edge of a crisis that is shortening the lifespan of US citizens.

West’s dismissal of Ms. Obama’s work with military families is even more peculiar. In a nation 13 percent black, African-Americans comprise 20 percent of the active-duty Army. More than a third of Army women are black. Retired Brigadier General Wilma Vaught, president of the national foundation that recognizes women’s military service, said Michelle Obama “is following in the footsteps of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s World War II fame.’’

The backstory for West’s attack is that he supported the Obama campaign hoping for a progressive White House but has since felt politically betrayed and personally snubbed. While criticizing Obama’s policies is fair game, it is despairing to see an Ivy League professor of rare privilege himself succumb to a jealous attempt to humiliate fellow achievers.

West’s attempt to claw the Obamas down into his crab barrel of authenticity contradicts his own writings. In 2007, he wrote how remarkable it was that descendants of slaves “now excel in the broad range of American life.’’ West complained that we spend too much time debating the woes of black people to “discuss the factors that led to the successes of millions of African-Americans,’’ and that we should ponder more optimistically why “a country so flawed in its founding nonetheless produces such an accomplished population?’’

Those accomplishments are growing, both domestically and globally. But West would prefer to launch missives that by extension would block the vision of today’s generation of African-Americans. Their accomplishments are not restricted to any specific “hood,’’ but to the world stage. For example, my two adult sons speak fluent German. One of my teenage goddaughters speaks fluent Japanese; another has written musical compositions performed by adults. The daughter of one of my mentors, an editor who co-founded the nation’s largest black journalist organization, speaks fluent Mandarin and taught English as a second language in China.

It has not occurred to any of us that these unscripted lives, young lives unimagined by ancestors in shackles, make them any less black. W.E.B. DuBois once said a black person just wants to be “both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.’’ West has no business spitting out racial curses that serve to close those doors of opportunity.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.

[Tilla]

I have lost all respect for Cornell West. I now consider him one of those intellectual fools.