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Author: Cornel West
Quotes of Author: Cornel West
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  1. Cornel West _ Race Matters

    Racial reasoning conceals these presuppositions behind a deceptive cloak of racial consensus-yet racial reasoning is seductive because it invokes an undeniable history of racial abuse and racial struggle.
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  2. Cornel West _ Democracy Matters: Winning the

    The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.
    book-quoteoppressionworld-historyblues

  3. Cornel West _ Race Matters: With a New

    None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.
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  4. Cornel West _ Black Prophetic Fire

    There are hundreds of political prisoners right now in America's jails who were so taken by Malcolm {X's} spirit that they became warriors and the powers that be understood them as warriors. They knew that a lot of these other middle-class {black} leaders were not warriors; they were professionals; they were careerists. But these warriors had callings, and they have paid an incalculable and immeasurable price in those cells.
    book-quoteracismleadershippolitical-philosophy

  5. Cornel West _ Race Matters

    To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status. And, even more pointedly, to be humble is to revel in the accomplishments or potentials of others -- especially those with whom one identifies and to whom one is linked organically.
    book-quotehumility

  6. Cornel West _ Race Matters

    Yet the enslavement of Africans-over 20 percent of the population-served as the linchpin of American democracy; that is, the much-heralded stability and continuity of American democracy was predicated upon black oppression and degradation. Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-they would be only Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. What made America distinctly American for them was not simply the presence of unprecedented opportunities, but the struggle for seizing these opportunities in a new land in which black slavery and racial caste served as the floor upon which white class, ethnic, and gender struggles could be diffused and diverted. In other words, white poverty could be ignored and whites' paranoia of each other could be overlooked primarily owing to the distinctive American feature: the basic racial divide of black and white peoples. From 1776 to 1964… this racial divide would serve as a basic presupposition for the expansive functioning of American democracy, even as the concentration of wealth and power remained in the hands of a Few well-to-do white men.
    book-quoteslaverywhite-supremacyracism-in-america

  7. Cornel West _ Democracy Matters: Winning the

    To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ - is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom.
    book-quotelovespiritualityfreedom

  8. Cornel West _ Race Matters

    King never confined himself to being solely the leader of black America-even though the white press attempted to do so.
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  9. Cornel West _ Race Matters

    This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience."
    book-quoteconsumerismcapitalist-market

  10. Cornel West _ The Rich and the Rest of Us: A

    The Poverty Tour provided the opportunity to meet many people who had been living paycheck to paycheck even before the economic downturn. To so quickly slide from the great middle into the underworld of the poor validated our suspicions that perhaps these citizens never really were bona fide, middle class Americans. Indeed, some economists assert that the middle class evaporated decades ago.
    book-quotepovertyrace

  11. Cornel West _ Race Matters

    Where there is no vital community to hold up precious ethical and religious ideals, there can be no coming to a moral commitment-only personal accomplishment is applauded.
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  12. Cornel West _ Race Matters

    Without some redistribution of wealth and power, downward mobility and debilitating poverty will continue to drive people into desperate channels. And without principled opposition to xenophobias from above below, these desperate channels will produce a cold-hearted and mean-spirited America no longer worth fighting for or living in.
    book-quotexenophobiablack-jewish-relationsmobility
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