you know i grew up in life thinking you could control your circumstance determine your reality, context and experiences control the incursions of others, the effects, their costs and charges their infiltrations. etc etc. onto your life.
i have learned bitterly, that life is not so
you cant control who comes to your neighborhood, next door
you cant control their behavior, which is the core of the matter...you
are also realizing that you cant control the people you encounter.
everyone aint like you,
everyone did not grow up in a home, some not even in a barn or a yard. the coarse. crass and ghetto are everywhere present
you cant even take for granted that your dreams and aims will be met
with like mindedness with those you went to school or completed doctoral
degrees some ideas are dreams to big for the brain they maintain
the very people you need to build with to carry your empire, are
content to just sweep the roads, what are you talking about owning the
building, and these people, irony of all ironies, are the same one who
have to bless and benedict you to make the bid for ownership. so rightly
the question becomes among the slaves, who is you looking like a black
just like me, and a woman to boot, coming here ringing my ears with
these white men plans and visions. who is you as he lits a match and the
other douses with gasoline..
that gauntlet. none of that is in your control
but fuckers who aint did shit, aint never thought of shit, will tell you about moving forward, getting your own
it is so easy and effortless here for people so quickly to tell you
what you can not do. talking to a man on a building rental and he wanted
to tell me some smack. i had to tell him your only concern is that I
pay you your money and keep the peace of the neighborhood. the runt will
never find a tenant to say the latter. and that is the the thing,
navigating with people who dont even have neither your oar or rudders
"This
is the last thing I'ma say on this for a while, but I reread Dyson's
rumination on writing and listened to his interview with Root. I wrote
two books the year before last and sold around 30,000 copies. I have two
new books coming out next year with Scribner. I write a lot. Mainly
because I'm a terrible person when I don't. But writing a lot does not,
and has never, equaled meaningful loving black cultural production.
Dyson's dig at West for not writing his own books in the last part of
his career is a smack in the face to the idea of collaboration that so
many folks who I respect push forward, and it's disrespectful to the
hundreds of black professors in the country, like my mother who spent
her entire career almost loving and teaching the fuck out of black kids
at Jackson State University.
My mother published one book in the
80's. It was her dissertation. And I read that shit when it came out
like it was Sweet Valley High. It smelled like new saw dust. Mama was
proud. And I was proud. And I took that little hard red book to school
to show my friends. But I was much more proud at the smaller pieces she
wrote about poverty in my state, and way more proud of the work she did
with her students. She didn't just launch her students or hook them up.
She worked tediously with them on every part of their lives. She loved
them and encouraged them to take love, commitment, black politics,
seriously.
My mama never wrote another book. Maybe she will.
Maybe she won't. But she created meaningful black cultural production
and worked hard at creating and sustaining loving relationships with her
colleagues and students. Making this some sort of contest about who has
the most books, or writes the most words, or who has the most
debilitating writer's block, is about the silliest shit I could ever
imagine launching at anyone black, much less someone like Cornel West,
or my mother.
It's some dumb man-shit that when probed means
nothing except the person writing it is terribly insecure and hiding
what they're really mad about. Think of the incredible black scholars
like who create incredible black cultural production without writing
books. Think of artists like Ellison who wrote a masterpiece and didn't
really feel great about anything he wrote after. Toni Cade Bambara is
one of the reason I think and feel. Is she a mental midget because she
doesn't have tens of books? Think about Cornel West who challenged so
many of us with his philosophical books and Race Matters, who continues,
in different ways, to teach and probe.
In the rush to diss this
black man, Professor Dyson dissed a huge part of our black tradition.
And he dissed my mama, someone who would have some choice words for him
if he ever stepped to her with that brittle-ass critique. Im thankful
for the work of Dyson. I'm thankful for the work of West. Honestly, Im
more thankful for some of the people they have taught who have
profoundly impacted my life and the life of my students.
My mama
was committed to the work. She is committed to the work. And the work
has to begin and end with loving commitment to justice and searing
honest imagination. That work must take multiple forms. It simply must.
Black death is countered by textured black love, and acceptance of our
aint-shitness, and acceptance or our majesty, and multiple funky forms
of creation. Those forms of creation need not be written. My mama, your
mama, and most mama's I've heard of, taught us that. And I know we heard
them when they said it. It wasn't written. We can be better ..."
--------------
Ádìsá Ájámú
"There
is an African proverb that states: When elephants fight only the grass
gets hurt. It speaks to the notion that when important people battle
over small stakes most often they are
not the ones who feel the pain. I am neither hurt nor saddened by
Michael Eric Dyson 10,000 word self absorbed screed, The Ghost of Cornel
West, even though it contains truths that are both a window — into Dr.
West's ego starvation—and an mirror—for the author own ego hunger. Nor
is it misplaced. There is a history of these kinds of battle royales in
our community and in others.
White intellectuals—here I'm thinking the "New York Intellectuals" like
Irving Howe, Mary McCarthy, Trilling, Dwight MacDonald, Daniel Bell
etc.—have long history of intellectual disputation as blood sport and
though they always spoke for white folks, white was and has always been
the synonym for human in the alabaster imagination.
What this
falling out underscores, what it reveals is what many of us already
kinda know: That public intellectualism is really just performance art
that nods towards activism and is only tangentially interested in people
and social justice. Let me be clear here: For me, there is a difference
between a thinker whose work and idea gathers public attention from the
sheer force of their intellect which shows up in the form of them and
their ideas at work and a "public intellectual" someone whose primary
notoriety comes from the sheer force of their public persona.
Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Stokely
Carmichael, for example, were thinkers (intellectuals is you will) who
became public because of the power of their ideas in demonstrated
practice. They represented a quality of thought in practice. What we
seem to have increasingly is really smart, very well trained television
personalities, who speak on issues of the time but very often follow the
light rather than bringing illumination.
We should be clear
that the conflation of academic with intellectual is relatively recent
historical phenomenon. Historically, intellectuals existed largely
outside of predatory sprawl of academia. For Black folks most of our
intellectuals had very little connection with academy, most of the 19th
century nationalist, most of the intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance
(Although Alain Leroy Locke was certainly an architect) as well as most
of those affiliated with the Harlem History Club were in the words of
Ellis Thorpe, " scholars without portfolio."
What we are seeing
here in the Dyson piece is a battle over new plantation real estate. I
still think the definitive piece on the Black Intellectual phenomenon
was penned by Adolph Reed Jr's in a 1994 Village Voice piece, "What Are
The Drums Saying Booker?"
What should have people who love Drs
Dyson and West or their ideas appalled is not their lovers quarrel, but
that at a time in which Black life is placed increasingly in peril, a
strong mind saw fit to expend ten thousand words on playing the dozens,
and not on police terrorism, the increase in white racial animus, the
chronic intra-community violence or mass incarceration. That tells you
everything you need to know about elephants fighting and why the grass
always gets hurt.
I have never really understood exactly what a ‘liberal’
is, since I have heard ‘liberals’ express every conceivable opinion on
every conceivable subject. As far as I can tell, you have the extreme
right, who are fascist racist capitalist dogs like Ronald Reagan, who
come right out and let you know where they’re coming from. And on the
opposite end, you have the left, who are supposed to be committed to
justice, equality, and human rights. And somewhere between those two
points is the liberal.
As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary.
Liberals’ constant attacks on Cornel West—one of the most important
leaders in the US anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and economic, social,
and environmental justice movements of today—serve as a reminder as to
just how accurate Assata was in her assessment, made almost three
decades ago. The Democratic commentariat seem to take pleasure in
heaping scorn on the principled iconoclast, never failing to include as a
header image on their articles a photo of the professor scowling, in a
cheap attempt to portray the amiable, peace-seeking public intellectual
as angry and impetuous.
In the latest of such shameless attacks, MSNBC
analyst and avowed Obama defender Michael Eric Dyson published a
9,600-word article excoriating Dr. West, or, rather, “The Ghost of Cornel West.”Instead of attacking white supremacy,
the Georgetown University professor invested a great deal of time and
energy in carrying out a public attack on a leading voice in today’s
civil rights struggle.
Misrepresenting Obama
In a parenthetical statement in the essay, Dyson recalls a private
discussion he had with Obama in the White House. Later on, he writes
that, “Throughout his presidency I have offered what I consider
principled support and sustained criticism of Obama,” and states he has
“expressed love for Obama and criticized him for not always loving us
back.” A quick look at the White House visitor records helps paint a picture of this cozy relationship.
Dyson’s affection for Obama certainly shines through the work; even
the scantest of criticisms is hard to come by. In perhaps the most
ludicrous, topsy-turvy moment in the extended work, Dyson claims “Obama
talks right … but veers left public policy,” whereas “West, on the other
hand, talks left but thinks right.” In the real world, the exact
contrary is true: Obama talks center-right and veers decidedly right on
policy. Obama is and has always been a conservative. The Obama the Conservative project meticulously detailed his right-wing policies for years.
The evidence overwhelmingly shows that Cornel West is absolutely correct in his insistence
that Obama “posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We
ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency.” This
presidency is also built upon the expansion of murderous imperialism in the Middle East, upon the adoption of neoliberal trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (often described as “NAFTA on steroids”), upon the mass deportation and inhumane and illegal internment of millions of Latin@ immigrants and refugees, upon the privatization of prisons, upon the McCarthyist crackdown on whistleblowers, and more.
According to Dyson, West “derides” Obama as a “neoliberal opportunist.” This is not derision. This is an objective fact. Obama is a neoliberal through and through. He has made it his singular mission to pass the TPP and gut regulatory and labor laws, using secretive, anti-democratic methods in order to do so.
The Democratic Party in Europe would be a far-right
party. It’s pro-war, it’s anti-union, it’s anti-civil liberties. I mean,
Obama’s assault on civil liberties is worse than Bush. It’s an enemy of
the press. It’s used the Espionage Act to shut down whistle-blowers,
which are the lifeblood of a free press. It has assassinated American
citizens. I mean, at what point do you say enough?
Obama’s actions are what matter, not his rhetoric. Dyson concedes
this, averring that it “is a sad truth that most politicians are serial
rhetorical lovers and promiscuous ideological mates.” And, yet, Dyson
dabbles mostly in rhetoric, utterly failing to engage in these serious
political concerns.
In the overture to the protracted piece, Dyson claims he is “just as
critical of the president as” West, yet proof of such an assertion is
certainly hard to come by—and he spends the next several thousand words
detailing why exactly the opposite is true.
Defending Corporate Civil Rights Figures
While shielding Obama from West’s criticisms, Dyson elevates
corporate civil rights figures Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, among
others. The two men’s names appear constantly (Sharpton 16 times and
Jackson eight).
Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford
describes Al Sharpton as “a crook who is always for sale,” with
strident “amorality and infinite capacity for corruption.” Sharpton,
Ford says, is a “celebrity locked in the embrace of the rich and
powerful.”
Sharpton’s ostensible civil rights organization the National Action
Network is sponsored by the world’s largest corporations, including
Walmart, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, AT&T, Verizon, and more. He clearly
seeks real, systemic change and justice with those kinds of progressive
backers.
Jackson is a reactionary pro-imperialist proponent of “black capitalism” who destroyed the Rainbow Coalition,
co-opting its legacy as an internationalist, multi-cultural
revolutionary organization created by the socialist Black Panthers and
turning it into a neoliberal nationalist “coalition.”
Young black Americans recognize that Sharpton and Jackson are not
fighters for liberation. When the two reactionary public figures tried
to exploit the Black Lives Matter uprisings in Ferguson and elsewhere,
they were booed off stage.
Cornel West, however, unlike these corrupt corporate celebrities, has
been at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement, getting arrested at demonstrations, constantly attending and speaking at rallies, tirelessly working from the bottom up, in true grassroots fashion.
Dyson essentially writes off the import of these actions as mere
“highly staged and camera-ready gestures.” In Dyson’s view, West
“hungers for the studio, and conspicuously so.” It is implied that his
civil disobedience is part of a façade for attention. Dyson even admits
he, at least for a time, entertained the preposterous notion that West
is motivated to do so because he is “consumed with jealousy of Obama”
and firmly maintains that “West’s deep loathing of Obama draws on some
profoundly personal energy that is ultimately irrational.” In a
similarly superficial moment, Dyson speculates that West may “hate”
Obama because he was unable to get a ticket to the president’s
inauguration.
For starters, the idea that West loathes Obama is incredibly
misguided. West is the polar opposite of a hate-filled person; he
constantly speaks of love, and firmly opposes Obama’s reactionary policies, not his being. In a 2014 interview on Democracy Now, West in fact remarked of Obama, “when I say when I love the brother, it means we have to tell the truth about him.”
The fact that West does not hold any kind of deep hatred of Obama
aside, this is the kind of puerile argument liberals regularly construct
to defend their untenable positions. They personalize critiques of
political figures, turning political argumentation into apolitical
beauty pageants that are fueled on “irrational personal energy,” not
substantive material concerns about existing systems of oppression.
Ignoring the Political for the Personal
Dyson makes no serious critiques of West’s actual political
positions. His entire essay reads primarily as a very long-winded ad
hominem (which is all the more ironic considering Dyson accuses West of
“biting our ears with personal attacks”). Dyson focuses almost entirely
on how West speaks and presents himself, but largely glosses over West’s
political criticisms of society.
He harshly writes “West is a scold, a curmudgeonly and bitter critic
who has grown long in the tooth but sharp in the tongue when lashing
one-time colleagues and allies,” yet fails to enunciate why this is
purportedly the case. He furthermore claims West has become “an
unintentional caricature of his identity” and accuses the scholar of
“delusion and exegetical corruption.”
Borrowing from what one might hear in a high school breakup scene in a
John Hughes film, Dyson pillories West for being “crushed that Obama
had ideologically cheated on him”—as if it were a petty thing to be
frustrated at a president who campaigned on promises of progressive
“change” but turned out to be just another neoliberal warmonger.
Much of the article is devoted to dissecting West’s characterization
of himself as a prophet, which one gets the impression is overstated.
Dyson also writes extensively about “West’s diminished scholarly output”
and what he feels to be a “paucity of serious and fresh intellectual
work,” then proceeding to conflate these criticisms with West’s activism
and criticisms of the status quo, implying the latter are equally “vain
and unimaginative.” In a problematic selective reading of West’s work,
Dyson accuses the professor of propagating a “conservative view of
ghetto culture as deeply pathological, and as the chief source of the
problems that beset African Americans.” Again, however, he does not
spend a single sentence acknowledging West’s politics. No mention
whatsoever is made of West’s work on Marxism, nor is his involvement
with the Democratic Socialists of America ever brought up.
Absent from the essay—in spite of its prolixity—is any attempt to
engage with, let alone refute, West’s critiques of Obama and the US
political establishment. Dyson does raise warranted concerns about gaps
in West’s scholarship, noting, for instance, that the professor failed
to clearly define what exactly makes a person a prophet, yet, to a large
extent, Dyson avoids the political. He illustrates the liberal tendency
to emphasize that the personal is political to such a degree that the
non-personal, systemic political is ignored.
Dyson even goes so far as to write off West’s critiques of Obama as “a species of antipathy that no political difference could ever explain.”
Instead of engaging in the political, Dyson reduces it to a mere
“shrill and manic dispute.” He classifies West’s denunciation of Obama
as the sign of “the loss of a brilliant black mind,” as if criticizing a
president who won an election thanks to the financial backing of some
of the world’s most powerful banks and corporations were only something a
“maniac” would do.
In a bout of full liberalism, Dyson concludes the essay averring that
West’s problem ultimately lies with his own self, not with any
politician or political system. This is the kind of vacuous political
perspective that dominates the intelligentsia today.
The fact of the matter is West’s heated criticisms of Obama are the
logical result of a morally consistent human being seeing the
horrors for which the Obama administration has been responsible. The
problem does not lie with West’s admittedly provocative denunciations of
Obama, but rather with the fact that more self-identifying progressives
are not standing up for their values and opposing their government’s
obscene crimes.
Siding with Larry Summers, the ‘Toxic Colonialist’
In his criticisms of West, it should be pointed out that Dyson
favorably cites neoliberal economist Lawrence Summers, former Chief
Economist at the World Bank and President of Harvard University, a
figure who has occupied many important positions in the Clinton and
Obama administrations and has a long history frequenting the corporate
elevator and revolving doors between powerful economic and political
institutions, including hedge funds like D. E. Shaw & Co. Summers, who has come under attack for blatant misogyny, is the kind of liberal who helped former Soviet countries privatize their economies—leading to enormous increases in poverty—and oversaw the deregulation of the US financial system.
Summers, on whose authority Dyson relies without trepidation, signed
an internal World Bank memo in 1991 that called for Western countries to
dump toxic waste in the Global South, because, in his view, from a
capitalist economics perspective, the value of the lives of people in
Africa, Asia, and more is less than the value of the lives of people in
North America and Europe. Summers’ defense of “toxic colonialism”
was of little importance to liberals like Obama himself, who relied on
the former World Bank economist as the White House United States
National Economic Council and the principle economic decision-maker
during the Great Recession.
The ultimate irony lies in the sharp contrast between Summers’ belief
that (presumably white) Western lives are more valuable than black and
brown ones in the so-called Third World and Cornel West’s antithetical
adamant insistence that all lives are equal.
In his condemnation of killer drone strikes, West often implores
listeners to consider whether they truly do consider all lives to be
equal, whether they truly care about the young Pakistani children killed
in Obama’s drone program—which Amnesty International has accused of war crimes.
Whitewashing MLK
As is common among the liberal intelligentsia, Dyson also exploits
the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. in order to defend and lionize the
war criminal (according to Amnesty International) Obama.
The irony is that many of the criticisms Dyson levies against West
were equally true for MLK—a “prophetic” leader who, like West, was not a
“moderate” toer of the party line, but was rather a radical, a relentless critic
of not just racism but also of imperialism and capitalism, someone who
alienated many supposed allies in his indefatigable and intersectional
quest for justice.
Dyson predictably whitewashes MLK’s radical legacy, claiming the
civil rights icon “was arguably more beneficial to the folk he loved
when he swayed power with his influence and vision”—that is to say, when
he worked within the system and did not step on the toes of the
powerful.
Throwing Progressive Leaders Under the Bus
Do West’s claims of prophethood go overboard? Yes. Does Dyson
exaggerate these claims? Also yes. Is Cornel West immune from criticism?
Absolutely not. He is not perfect. And I concur with Dyson; he is not a
prophet.
Yet, by siding with a criminal presidential administration over one
of the leading purveyors of justice in the world today, figures like
Michael Eric Dyson demonstrate, once again, how politically and morally
bankrupt liberalism is.
The MSNBC analyst’s essay “The Ghost of Cornel West” exemplifies what
is precisely the problem with liberals. They will side (and gleefully,
at that) with neoliberal leaders who consider the lives of people in the
Global South less valuable than those of Westerners, who wage genocidal wars,
and who destroy economies with structural adjustment programs and
odious debt, over radical justice-seekers because, in their myopic,
ahistorical, and frankly ignorant view, it is “arguably more beneficial”
to do so.
Liberals should be much more concerned about the innumerable ghosts
of the victims of their leader’s policies than they are about the ghost
of one of his most strident critics.
Cornel West is a hero—absolutely, unequivocally a hero. And he is one
of the few heroes the Left has today. Unfortunately, that has never
stopped liberals from throwing them under the bus."
"As a sportswriter I am very sensitive to the use and misuse of boxing
metaphors. Few analogies are either more powerful or more universally
understood than comparing a public figure to an iconic fighter. Dr.
Michael Eric Dyson, in a panoramic, painfully personal, deeply
researched 10,000-word excoriation of Dr. Cornel West, published in The New Republic,
has compared the 61-year-old professor to Mike Tyson. He describes West
as someone who once "tore through opponents with startling menace and
ferocity," but who has since devolved into a "faint echo of himself," an
ear-biting sideshow, more interested in celebrity than serious academic
and political work.
With all respect to Dyson, who wrote the intro to my book Game Over
and has been a friend to me on numerous occasions, this is in my view
the wrong choice of championship pugilists. West is not Mike Tyson: he's
Muhammad Ali. Not the Muhammad Ali of ESPN hagiographies or Hollywood
films starring Will Smith. But the real Muhammad Ali: effortlessly
provocative, undeniably narcissistic, and unquestionably brilliant. The
deeply hurtful quotes that West has aimed at Dyson (he has "prostituted
himself intellectually") and Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry ("she is a liar
and a fraud") are 21st-century iterations of Ali's regrettable, and for
many unforgivable, questioning of the blackness of the great Joe
Frazier, comparing the proud fighter to an ugly gorilla, all in the name
of hyping up fights and throwing Frazier off of his game.
These
comments are vicious, and as someone who has benefited from the kindness
offered me by both Dyson and Dr. Harris-Perry, they anger my blood. The
restraint that Dyson has shown over the last several years as West has
thrown out his assorted rabbit-punches should be acknowledged. But the
sight of Dyson escalating what was a one-sided series of verbal taunts
into a written treatise, and marshaling his intellectual powers toward a
polarizing 10,000-word New Republic essay is to see nothing
less—I suppose based upon your perspective—than the academic version of
either George Foreman punching himself out in Zaire or "Smokin' Joe"
sending the champ to the canvas of Madison Square Garden. (I am well
aware that in this metaphor, I'm the white sportswriter getting some
copy out of the spectacle of two heavyweights throwing hands. Hopefully,
I'll be more Bob Lipsyte than Jimmy Cannon.)
The timing of the
essay is also very disorienting. We are at a moment when a new movement
is attempting to confront an epidemic level of police violence. Dyson
and West have in word and deed both been important voices in this
movement. As the challenges of sustaining this struggle grow with every
police killing, it is an odd moment for a public figure like Dyson to
write so particular, so personal, and so granular an attack against West
over his lack of scholarship, his love of celebrity, and his at times
highly intimate racialized attacks against President Obama.
The
piece begins with Dyson's thesis that Cornel West's animus for the
president is rooted in a love betrayed. West "hates" President Obama and
uses such personal invective in his political critiques because he once
loved him and feels wronged, both personally snubbed and politically
ignored. It is difficult to escape the idea that this thesis mirrors
Dyson's perspective toward West. His anger is so intense toward Cornel
West because his onetime mentor—someone with whom he would attend Anita
Baker concerts in the 1980s for no reason other than to swoon—has
branded him a sellout for not joining him in denunciation of the Obama
administration. Dyson defends himself against these charges, writing
that he has never relinquished his criticisms of President Obama but has
also never relinquished either his love for the man or his respect for
the accomplishment of becoming the first black president of a country
founded on principles of white supremacy. He believes he has been
principled and is demonstrably hurt that West has translated his
political approach through the ugliest possible lens. There has been no
give, no charity, in West's public analysis of Dyson's political
tactics, and now Dyson is ready to return in kind. In honor of the
boxing metaphors used by Dyson, several of his blows hit their mark, and
Dyson is, frankly, too good a writer to not make this piece leave a
bruise. West has exposed his chin through his acquisition of celebrity
and absence of scholarship, and Dyson never forgoes taking a roundhouse
punch, even when just a jab will do.
But there are several holes
in Dyson's piece that are glaring. To read the article, one would think
that West's anger toward Obama is solely rooted in snubbed invitations
and unanswered phone calls. This ignores a series of key political
criticisms that West has been raising for years.
Cornel West
believes in Palestinian liberation. He believes in amnesty for
undocumented immigrants. He believes that the bankers responsible for
the 2008 crisis should be brought to justice. He believes that
capitalism is a driving engine of much of the injustice in our world. He
believes that Obama's drone program is an act of state-sanctioned
murder. One can choose to agree or disagree with these points, but one
cannot ignore that West has been relentless in his efforts to place them
in the political discourse. The word "Palestine" or "Palestinian" does
not once make its way into Dyson's piece. Neither does "Wall Street" or
"immigration." The word "drones" only comes up in a quote attributed to
West. We can debate how sincere West's commitments are to these issues
or whether they are a cover for his hurt feelings and heartbreak that
Dyson posits is at the root of all the discord. But they should be
reckoned with. Does a "black politics" going forward need to have
something to say about corporate power, Israeli occupation, immigration,
and drone warfare? That's the unspoken debate in this article, made all
the more glaring because Dyson is sympathetic—and far closer to West
than President Obama—on many of these questions.
Dyson says
repeatedly that he is a critic of Obama but loves the man, while
disagreeing with much of his "neoliberal" policy. Yet he also goes out
of his way to write,
Obama believes the blessed
should care for the unfortunate, a hallmark of his My Brother's Keeper
initiative. West and Obama both advocate intervention for our most
vulnerable citizens, but while West focuses on combating market forces
that ‘edge out nonmarket values—love, care, service to others—handed
down by preceding generations,' Obama, as [Jonathan] Alter contends, is
more practical, offering Pell grants; stimulus money that saved the jobs
of hundreds of thousands of black state and local workers; the Fair
Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity of sentences for
powdered and crack cocaine; the extension of the Earned Income Tax
Credit, which kept millions of working poor blacks from sliding into
poverty; and the extension of unemployment insurance and food stamps,
which helped millions of blacks.
One cannot read this
as anything but an endorsement—and a very selective telling—of
President Obama's political agenda. One could also well ask how the
hyper-militarization of our cities, the record number of deportations,
the closing of public schools, and the "drill and kill" public-education
testing regimen can be translated as the "blessed caring for the
unfortunate."
Then there is the specter of the Black Lives Matter
movement, which hangs over every syllable in this piece. Aside from one
dismissive mention of West's getting arrested in Ferguson during a
staged act of civil disobedience, it is not discussed explicitly. But,
at least for this reader, it was impossible to divorce this major
article coming out at a moment when the movement is publicly facing a
series of questions: namely, whether it "should be moving in a more radical or conciliatory direction."
It has to be noted that Dyson's initial public critique against West came not with this article but last week at the National Action Network's 16th annual convention, where he said,
Stop
thinking that your way is the only way. It may be a great way, it may
be a powerful way that works for you, but one size don't fit all. So be
honest and humble in genuine terms—not the public performance of
humility masquerading a huge ego. No amount of hair can cover that.
NAN
is of course the organization of Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton has also
been, as Dyson mentions, a repeated target of West. Sharpton is
currently in a battle against young activists—sometimes a literal battle—over
the microphone of this movement. A new generation of leadership, less
tied to the Obama administration, wants to be recognized as the leading
organizational and political power against police brutality, but
Sharpton is not going down easy. As he said to young activists in February,
"It's the disconnect that is the strategy to break the movement. And
they play on your ego. ‘Oh, you young and hip, you're full of fire.
You're the new face.' All the stuff that they know will titillate your
ears. That's what a pimp says to a ho."
Sharpton
is cracking down on those who would challenge his authority. In other
words, while Dyson has been given ample provocation to strike back at
West, there is also a political battle thrumming beneath the surface
that we would be naïve to ignore. Dyson says that West's fatal flaw lies
in seeing that his way is the only way. It is true that no one has all
the answers but we can't settle the questions unless we depersonalize
and get at the substance of the divisions: reform vs. revolt; working
inside vs. working outside the corridors of power; and so many other
"old" debates that have taken on, to use a much-abused phrase, the
fierce urgency of now.
Cornel West is no Mike Tyson, and it has to
be said that even in the land of metaphor, comparing West to a
convicted rapist is difficult to read. But in comparing him to Ali,
let's also remember that the Champ had two careers: one where he was
simply too quick to touch, and one, after he returned to the ring in
1970, where he was slower but still fighting with his gloves down and
possessing a new strategy: one where he chose to take punch after punch
after punch to the chin, until he either fell down or his opponent tired
from exhaustion. Ali paid a dear price for this strategy, but it was
devastatingly effective. West has chosen over the last several years to
take numerous punches from his political opponents. I don't believe any
have punched quite as hard as Dyson. But with this 10,000-word
escalation that increases the personal heat while brushing over the
political differences, Dyson may have done exactly what West was
tempting him to do. The tragedy is that there are so many others who
should be higher on everyone's list of those who need to be prodded,
need to be provoked… and need to be knocked the hell out."
" began reading Michael Eric Dyson’s lengthy essay for the New Republic, “The Ghost of Dr. Cornel West,”
with some trepidation. By the time I finished it, I was sickened.
Framed as an impartial assessment of West’s so-called steep decline as a
scholar, public intellectual, thought leader and writer, Dyson
backdoors into a scathing critique of his former friend that felt as
bruising as a series of sucker punches delivered with increasingly
gleeful frequency and viciousness.
The timing of the essay is jarring in this moment, particularly
since it appears in the New Republic, which, until very recently, has
been written primarily from a white, so-called liberal point of
view. African Americans are being gunned down in record numbers
by police officers and vigilantes in cities across the country, and we
are living in a cultural, political and revolutionary moment of
intensified black rage. This being the case, it hardly seems the time or
place for rehashed Ivy League drama between two well-respected and
accomplished African-American professors.
Perhaps Dyson’s move shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The river of
bad blood between the two men has ebbed and flowed along the banks of
President Barack Obama’s two terms in the White House, occasionally
crashing ashore on cable networks for the world to witness. Through it
all, I’ve still closely followed both of their careers with admiration
and respect. The staccato boom bap of Dyson’s words, at times punctuated
with a controlled gush of alliteration as if he’s masterfully riding a
beat; and the powerful Baptist-preacher thunder of West’s voice, eyes
ablaze with righteous fury, his Afro a subversion of the Ivy Leagues he
favored throughout most of his career.
Meeting West remains unchecked on my bucket list, but I had the honor of meeting Dyson when we both participated in a diversity and inclusion event
at Alcorn State University a couple of years ago. He is as brilliant
and fearless in person as one would expect, laying waste to the
deep-Southern-fried religiosity preferred by “sexual rednecks”—those
black people whose contemptuous intolerance for gender queerness
mirrors the bigotry of racist, Southern whites—with a signature fluidity
that seems to come as naturally to him as breathing.
Though Dyson’s work has always impressed me and continues to do so, it is West, with his unwavering stances against
poverty, police brutality, political tokenism, imperialism and global
terrorism perpetuated by the United States, who represents the beating
heart of global black liberation. As a rarely seen video
of West being schooled by Sista Souljah will attest, he has not always
been this way, but since his consciousness has been awakened, he’s
remained consistent.
I’m not a scholar—I’m just a writer for myself and others—but
I know this to be true: While Dyson was probably working on the second
or third draft of his West essay last week, the man himself was marching
and speaking against police brutality in New York City’s Union Square.
West told the excited crowd, “Don’t be confused by some black faces
in high places. For seven years there’s been our black and brown
brothers and sisters shot down by the police. Black president, black
attorney general, black Cabinet secretary of homeland [security] and not
one policeman sent to jail ... something just ain’t right.”
As the old folks used to say, “Stop him when he’s lying.”
I won’t delve too deeply into Dyson’s essay here because it’s really
something to be read and digested on one’s own. However, several things
stood out to me as hypocritical within a piece that felt intensely
personal and vindictive.
Writing that West should accept his role as a “public intellectual,
social gadfly or merely a paid pest,” Dyson also calls him a vain,
unimaginative, bitter, self-anointed prophet. Interestingly enough,
Dyson said that he would never call himself a prophet, but the lie
detector test determined that was a lie.
In 2010, sitting across from West, he used the term “prophet” to encompass the thinkers gathered at the table discussing
what President Obama owed to black America: “Black agendas are about
America. When America is made best, black people stand up and articulate
our visions, our dreams, our aspirations, our sentiments. We love Mr.
Obama; we recognize him as president. We must have prophets who tell the
truth and that’s what we’re doing here today.”
Interesting.
It becomes clear that his change of heart happened around the same
time that West expanded his anger at Obama to include those he felt sold
out for a seat at the political table.
“In his anger toward me,” Dyson writes, “I was forced, for the first
time, to entertain seriously the wild accusations levied against him.”
Dyson also mentions his razor-sharp takedown on
Obama’s tepid racial politics and lack of loyalty at the 2010 “We
Count! The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda” conference in Chicago,
as if that proves his willingness to critique the president for his lack
of loyalty and commitment to black America. But in the New
Republic piece, he criticizes West for becoming angry that Obama made
promises to him that he didn’t keep:
Long before their ideological schism,
however, West believed himself personally betrayed by Obama because of
his (supposed) disinterest after the election. It is a sad truth that
most politicians are serial rhetorical lovers and promiscuous
ideological mates, leaving behind scores of briefly valued surrogates
and supporters. West should have understood that Obama had had similar
trysts with many others. But West felt spurned and was embittered.
This condescending reading of West’s issues with Obama is reductive
and disingenuous. West is angry because Obama did backbends for the GOP;
folded on authentic universal health care, specifically the public
option; bailed out Wall Street; and is complicit in the droning of
children. His critique of Obama's evocation of Martin Luther King Jr. is
valid when his global policy runs counter to what King fought for—in
action, if not always in rhetoric.
Dyson accuses West of being in the throes of “emotional catharsis”
after beginning his piece slyly framing his former mentor as “a woman
scorned.” This is typically an old misogynist hat trick to discredit the
legitimacy of female viewpoints, and I was surprised to see Dyson pull
it out in his essay—particularly because West is clearly not the one in
his feelings here.
Let’s be clear: What Dyson did in the New Republic was not
scholarship; it was a hit piece wrapped in scholarly words. He sliced
West up, took out his insides and returned them in such a haphazard way
that those familiar with West’s quest for justice, peace and love by
fire would no longer recognize the man he presented to us. It took close
to 10,000 words for Dyson to call West a delusional, self-aggrandizing,
washed-up has-been who has overstayed his welcome in academia. Well, if
academia doesn’t want him, the people living, working and dying outside
of it sure do. I’d much rather West put aside his “esoteric” erudition
and “make it plain.”
I’d rather he make it plain about President Obama’s being a “Rockefeller Republican” in blackface. I’d rather he make it plain about the
United States’ being complicit in the droning and murder of innocent people in Palestine and Yemen. I’d rather he make it plain about the issues facing our “dear brothers and
sisters,” instead of propping up a gender-exclusive initiative like My
Brother’s Keeper to prove that President Obama cares about black people.
There is more than one way to be a “public intellectual” that does not
revolve around the academy, and it is elitist to suggest otherwise. In
doing so, Dyson displays the very same arrogance he attributes to West
by exhibiting a “callous disregard for plural visions of truth.”
There is no doubt that West has left himself open for retaliation
from his former friends. Dyson has been publicly derided by West as
being easily seduced by access to power,
and he has every right to defend himself. Still, he shouldn’t disguise a
festering vendetta as an aboveboard scholarly pursuit.
There will be a moment of reckoning when President Obama leaves
office. White feminists will become the new media darlings in
preparation for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, and Obama will no
longer be the site of exploration where many black people grapple with
what real black political power looks like situated within a white
supremacist structure. During that moment, identity politics and
neoliberal agendas won't be able to masquerade as collective
advancement, and we will climb out of this rabbit hole where progressive
blackness seems to be defined by proximity to the African-American man
in the White House.
And when that day comes, I’d be willing to place a bet that Cornel
West will still be standing in his truth: scholar, activist and lover of
black people, even when too many of us didn’t love him back."
-------------------------
Black and Smart
"I feel like this has been a year filled with fights. The shooting of
Michael Brown, Jr., the #Black Lives Matters campaign, the choking death
of Eric Garner, the shooting of Tamir Rice, Tony Terrell Robinson, and
Walter Scott all have been causes worth fight for. I have been in
meetings with Black community leaders, my county District Attorney,
grieving mothers, and religious leaders. Some of these meetings have
been very difficult and involved “fights.” But they were all worth
fighting over and fighting for.
Now we find ourselves in the midst of a “fight” between two well-paid
public intellectuals over who is more “down” for the people. Who is a
sell-out; who is a charlatan; who is keeping it real; who is a big
phony. All I can say is, “Who cares?” When real people’s lives are at
stake I really don’t have time to be in “water gun” fights. There are
plenty of things I am willing to fight over:
I will fight over Black children’s education – This is
the fight I have devoted my life to. I will fight with school people,
policy makers, legislators, so-called reformers, pundits, and anyone
whose ideas about education denigrate and harm Black children’s
educational life chances.
I will fight over legislative policies that harm poor people
– The lives of poor people are hard enough without elected officials
doing things that make them harder. Taking away basic services like food
stamps or the ability to take care of their children makes me mad
enough to fight.
I will fight for raising the minimum wage – Everyone
knows that making less than $15 an hour makes it virtually impossible to
live in a decent home and take care of one’s family. It makes sense for
me not to support places that pay less than a decent wage.
I will fight for maintaining peace –It sounds like an
oxymoron but I think war is a barbaric and senseless way to operate in a
world filled with weapons that can annihilate us all. Thus, I am
willing to fight to avoid the crazy fighting that nation’s engage in. I will fight for my students – I have dedicated my
entire professional life to teaching, advising, and researching. And, I
realize that students regularly need an advocate for them. I sometimes
take the advisee no one else will but I realize the reward in getting a
bright, young scholar is actually mine.
I will fight to maintain the dignity of women, especially Black women
– Every message we receive about the worth of Black women is negative.
What we see on TV, the movies, print ads, or the Internet (especially
via social media) all tells us that Black women are some lesser form of
humanity. Having been raised by and supported by incredible women, I am
compelled to fight for Black women.
I will fight for immigrants and displaced peoples –
Recently we saw the horrific death of North Africans desperate to get to
Europe drowning from packed boats that unscrupulous traffickers preying
upon the oppressed and disenfranchised exploit. Similarly, people
crossing the US southern border are worth fighting for. Unaccompanied
minors should not be arrested, detained, and shipped back to unsafe situations. I will fight for missing Nigerian girls –Do you remember the more than 200 Nigerian girls who were abducted by Boko Haram? I do, and they are worth fighting for.
I will fight for prison reform – Our nation
incarcerates 2.3 million people. This is inhumane and uncivilized. I am
willing to do what I can to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline and
work for treatment programs for substance addicts and diversion programs
for first offenders.
I will fight for the cultural integrity of all peoples—The
ability to speak one’s language, practice one’s customs, and see
oneself reflected in school curriculum and text is something everyone
should enjoy.
There are a whole host of things I am willing to fight for but some
things are just not worth my time or energy. I will not life one finger
in defense of the various “housewives” of whatever city. I will not
invest one penny on behalf of the gaggle of Kardashians. I would be just
as happy to forget that Justin Bieber even exists. And I don’t care
that two Black men who have made plenty of money pontificating about all
manner of things are in some kind of blood feud. I have had occasion to
speak with each of them over my career and I actually “like” each for
some of the work they have done. But, the idea of choosing “sides” and
supporting one rant over the other while our children are dying in the
streets and metaphorically dying in our classrooms is antithetical to
the values that matter most to me. For me, Black lives matter, but two
highly paid “intellectuals’” lives don’t matter more. Grow the “heck” up
guys!"
Stay Black & Smart!
====-------------
Glen Ford Seeking Hillary’s Favor: Dyson Attacks Cornel West
"Michael Eric Dyson has never produced even a few words of substantive
critique of President Obama’s wars, his “Grand Bargain” with the GOP, or
his role in the economic collapse of Black America. Instead, Dyson has
written a hit-piece on Dr. Cornel West. “The true purpose of his
elongated smear of Dr. West is to demonstrate to Hillary Clinton’s camp
that Dyson remains a loyal Democratic Party operative who is available
for service to the new regime.”
“Dyson has resorted to icon assassination because West’s
highly visible critique of Obama’s domestic and foreign policy is an
embarrassment to the administration.”
As the clock unwinds on the nation’s first Black presidency, much of
the Black political class is scrambling to rewrite the history of their
own behavior over the past six or seven years. Suddenly, all of them
claim to have been “constructive critics” of the Obama administration,
despite the absence of any public record of such criticism when it might
have made a difference. In 21 months, the First Black President will
leave office having overseen a federal retrenchment more brutal than
under Ronald Reagan, a “bipartisan” austerity regime forged in 2010 as
Obama pursued his long-sought “Grand Bargain” with the GOP.
Before even taking office, back in early January, 2009, Obama had
loudly proclaimed his intentions to plunge directly into austerity mode,
once the banks had been rescued from insolvency, by putting all
entitlement programs “on the table”
for chopping, including Social Security. He spent his first two years
in office, when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, creating a
model for austerity through his hand-picked Deficit Reduction
Commission, which recommended $4 trillion in cuts – virtually the same
as demanded by the Republicans. When the GOP won control of the House in
2010, Obama bragged
that he had already reduced domestic discretionary spending to “its
lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president. That level of
spending is lower than it was under the last three administrations, and
it will be lower than it was under Ronald Reagan."
In 2011, Obama outdid George W. Bush in unilateral war making,
claiming the War Powers Act did not apply to the US/NATO bombing
campaign against Libya because no Americans were killed and, therefore,
no war – or even “hostilities” – had existed. A new era of proliferating
“humanitarian” and proxy wars was inaugurated under the man who ran as a
peace candidate in 2008.
“Dyson thinks this is an auspicious time to unleash a
bloated, mean-spirited and politically flatulent assault on a Black
public intellectual who risked his ‘icon’ status by breaking with Obama
early in the president’s first term.”
Black America has plummeted to such economic depths under Obama’s
watch that there is no possibility of ever reaching economic parity with
whites absent a social revolution, the beginnings of which we may be
witnessing in the growing mobilization against brutal police enforcement
of the oppressive social order.
It is no wonder that so many members of the Black political class,
especially those that style themselves as “progressives,” are now
anxious to revise their Obama-era political histories to put a false
distance between themselves and the outgoing administration. Which is
why I found it curious that Georgetown University professor and preacher
Michael Eric Dyson thinks this is an auspicious time to unleash a
bloated, mean-spirited and politically flatulent assault on Dr. Cornel
West, a Black public intellectual who risked his “icon” status by
breaking with Obama early in the president’s first term, when the
center-right nature of his corporation-serving administration became
manifest.
Dyson is clearly haunted by “The Ghost of Cornel West,” as The New Republic
article is titled. In Georgia, the older country folks used to say that
when a “haint” (a ghost) got on top of you in your sleep, you became
temporarily paralyzed – a condition sometimes called “being rode by a
witch.” Dyson’s obsession with West seems to have paralyzed those parts
of his brain that process political facts and issues. In almost 10,000
words, Dyson makes no reference to any substantive political issues that
divide he and West, and offers only the slimmest assessment of Obama’s
stance on the burning issues of the day. Given such a dirth of actual
political analysis of either the Obama presidency or Cornel West’s
critique of that presidency, the article is a soaring testament to
Dyson’s enormous capacity for bloviation.
But, of course, there is method to Dyson’s meanness. The true purpose
of his elongated smear of Dr. West is to demonstrate to Hillary
Clinton’s camp that Dyson remains a loyal Democratic Party operative who
is available for service to the new regime. Having observed how hugely
Al Sharpton prospered as President Obama’s pit bull against Black
dissent, Dyson offers unto Caesarius Hillarius (“We came, we saw, he
died,” as she said of Gaddafi) the iconic head of the nation’s best
known Black dissident.
“The article is a soaring testament to Dyson’s enormous capacity for bloviation.”
Dyson’s article is as dishonest as it is long and draining. Dyson is
not mad at West because the Union Theological Seminary professor has
supposedly turned out a “paucity of serious and fresh intellectual work”
over the last several years. He was not driven to write a hit piece
because his former “friend” is “not quite up to the high scholarly
standard West set for himself long ago.” Dyson has resorted to icon
assassination because West’s highly visible critique of Obama’s domestic
and foreign policy is an embarrassment to the administration, to the
Democratic Party as an institution, and to the sycophantic Black
Misleadership Class that has been more loyal to Obama than to Black
people as a group. Mostly, Dyson is mad because Dr. West called him out,
personally. Dyson wrote:
“It was during an appearance with Tavis Smiley on Democracy Now,
shortly after Obama’s reelection. ‘I love Brother Mike Dyson,’ West
said. ‘But we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale.
Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister
Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama
pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after
Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want
to tell those kinds of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and
working people. And it’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the
Obama administration in that way, given the kind of critical background
that all of them have had at some point.’”
Dyson attempts to draw the reader into a discussion of the definition
of a “prophet,” and who is, or is not, one. But that’s just a
long-winded way of asserting that West has no right to criticize Dyson,
Harris, Sharpton and the other Black-notables-for-hire. Dyson attempts
to turn the “access” tables on West, noting that West was known to hang
with celebrities like Warren Beatty, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Johnny Cochran,
Snoop Dogg and Mexican beauty Salma Hayek. As if Warren Beatty has ever
maintained a “Kill List,” Sean Combs has plans to bomb Africa, and
Snoop Dogg is actively engaged in turning the U.S. government over to
Wall Street.
“Dyson not only sells himself, he tries to defame Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a sell-out, access-monger, too.”
Dyson claims West lives by a double standard. Attempting sarcasm,
Dyson writes: “West offers himself a benefit that he refuses to extend
to others: He can go to the White House without becoming a presidential
apologist or losing his prophetic cool. He can spend an evening with the
president, the first of many such evenings, without selling his soul.”
Well, apparently, West can. And, just as clearly, after 19 or more visits to the White House,
Dyson cannot. He not only sells himself, he tries to defame Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. as a sell-out, access-monger, too. Without shame, honor,
or a logical leg to stand on, Dyson writes:
“King was arguably more beneficial to the folk he loved when he
swayed power with his influence and vision. When West begrudges Sharpton
his closeness to Obama, he ignores the fact that King had similar
access.” Dyson continues, “Sharpton and Jackson moved in the opposite
prophetic direction of King. While King kissed the periphery with
courageous vigor after enjoying his role as a central prophet, Jackson,
and especially Sharpton, started on the periphery before coming into
their own on the inside. Jackson’s transition was smoothed by the gulf
left by King’s assassination, and while forging alliances with other
outsiders on the black left, he easily adapted to the role of the
inside-outsider who identified with the downcast while making his way to
the heart of the Democratic Party.”
Dr. King and other members of the so-called “Big Six” organizations
enjoyed some access to Lyndon Johnson’s White House because of the power
of the movements they led. Dr. King did not become influential because
he got invitations to the White House; he got invited to the White House
because he was influential among millions of Black people. MLK made the
principled, and possibly fatal, decision to break with Lyndon Johnson’s
White House on April 4, 1967, with his “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence”
speech. He effectively severed ties with an administration that had, at
times, been an ally in the civil rights struggle. Singling out the U.S.
as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, today,” Dr. King
said:
“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or
energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like
Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic
destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war
as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”
Obscenely, Michael Eric Dyson attempts to depict Dr. King as of his
own ilk of boot-licking, access-begging, job-seeking, misleaders in his
attack on Cornel West, who made his own break with Obama’s wars at home
and abroad, early on.
“MLK made the principled, and possibly fatal, decision to break with Lyndon Johnson’s White House.”
Dyson has for years peppered his talks with references to his nonexistent substantive critiques of Obama, and does the same in The New Republic.
“No matter how vehemently I disagree with Obama, I respect him as a man
wrestling with an incredibly difficult opportunity to shape history,”
he writes. “Throughout his presidency I have offered what I consider
principled support and sustained criticism of Obama, a posture that
didn’t mirror West’s black-or-white views—nor satisfy the Obama
administration’s expectation of unqualified support.” Yet, there is no
evidence of “sustained criticism,” in his current attack-piece or
anywhere – only sustained opportunism. The only paragraph in the entire
9,600-word piece with any substantive statement on Obama policies, is a
boilerplate pitch straight from the White House:
“Obama believes the blessed should care for the unfortunate, a
hallmark of his My Brother’s Keeper initiative. West and Obama both
advocate intervention for our most vulnerable citizens, but while West
focuses on combating market forces that ‘edge out nonmarket values—love,
care, service to others—handed down by preceding generations,’ Obama,
as Alter contends, is more practical, offering Pell grants; stimulus
money that saved the jobs of hundreds of thousands of black state and
local workers; the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the
disparity of sentences for powdered and crack cocaine; the extension of
the Earned Income Tax Credit, which kept millions of working poor blacks
from sliding into poverty; and the extension of unemployment insurance
and food stamps, which helped millions of blacks.”
In my own two debates with Dyson on Democracy Now! in January, 2008, and September, 2012,
I found it best to ignore the bulk of his “wall of words.” The torrent
of syllables is mostly show, much of it pure nonsense designed to dazzle
churchgoers. In cold print, Dyson is revealed as a rank careerist in
the army of personal upward mobility.
Dr. West has nothing to worry about from such quarters. But, Dyson’s bosses will kill you."
"The
escalating deaths and sufferings in Black and poor America and the
marvelous new militancy in our Ferguson moment should compel us to focus
on what really matters: The life and
death issues of police murders, poverty, mass incarceration, drones, TPP
(unjust trade policies), vast surveillance, decrepit schools,
unemployment, Wall Street power, Israeli occupation of Palestinians,
Dalit resistance in India, and ecological catastrophe.
Character assassination is the refuge of those who hide and conceal
these issues in order to rationalize their own allegiance to the status
quo. I am neither a saint nor prophet, but I am a Jesus-loving free
Black man in a Great Tradition who intends to be faithful unto death in
telling the truth and bearing witness to justice. I am not beholden to
any administration, political party, TV channel or financial sponsor
because loving suffering and struggling peoples is my point of
reference. Deep integrity must trump cheap popularity. Nothing will stop
or distract my work and witness, even as I learn from others and try
not to hurt others.
But to pursue truth and justice is to live
dangerously. In the spirit of John Coltrane’s LOVE SUPREME, let us focus
on what really matters: the issues, policies, and realities that affect
precious everyday people catching hell and how we can resist the lies
and crimes of the status quo!"
sometime you ask yourself, 'did this shit really happen to me?
who knows?
Should we call for a tribunal? Can we even? and i just think of the secretary Sherry who showed me the letter telling me, "in all the years working there she never saw a letter of recommendation written in that way or format"
my ladylord help me from sinking further from the first drown
Ask me about it.
Ask me about her
In a timing I will write the whole story
How I was selected after a three month application process to be the National Representative for Agricultural Economics as a field on DC Capitol Hill. And only once selected did they insist on speaking to my academic advisor, who with the greatest treachery and subterfuge imaginable, blew that to smithereen with sarin gas -- a letter ...
Want to know the heartbreaking thing of this in its sequence and prolonged torture.
For years, I never knew what happened. YEARS> my heart breaks thinking about it now.
It took me like two years to open my mouth to broach the subject. I did so to the secretary, She showed me the letter. She shared her own views and because it was so different she never forgot it.
This is from 1998 or so? I found out about two years later.
It is now 2015, I am now finding out the magnitude of that event, How i was blackballed back then to now. and How only now am I seeing the wake of career destruction it was...still lasting.
I think of the people who i passed by who hadnt a clue: Fred Poston who tried to help me out but these people did not know what was going on with me as Likewise, I was lost...only now, after my reputation got mangled in the machinery of white supremacy, racism and jealousy. my lady lord. Help ME. I feel I could fall down into another petrification and paralysis
------------
"All of this has left Dyson wondering if West was ever happy for
anyone’s success—Obama’s or otherwise. On a personal note, Dyson’s has
made a name for himself under the mentorship of West.
But with each success Dyson mounted, he says, there seemed to be a simmering passive-aggressiveness from West."
I read that on the dyson west fiasco and I am brought/taken to Sandra
Batie's door...is it that her treachery of me when I stood set to take
the first time ever newly created position
as Representative for my field in Agricultural Economics at no where
less than the DC Capitol as if The Head of National Lobby for the field
of study...
Is it that she
could not envision someone she trained her junior taking up the height
of such a position? that it was just personal jealousy and envy, worse
yet from a black hen???WOW"
"just like Baties recommendation of me:
"Dyson
recalled a time earlier in his career when a weekly Philadelphia
newspaper was doing a cover story on him and he asked if West would
contribute to the story, which was bound to have critical momentum. He
was hoping for words of encouragement and positivity from a peer, but
what he got was backhanded compliments and criticism."
similarly,
it was when I was already chosen for the post, had sailed through all
the previous guardrails and gates, that they insisted speaking to my
"advisor" that sandra batie came in and blew that to smithereens. i
swear every time i write it now I seethe, cause only now am i seeing in
hindsight the magnitude of the thing. you know things happen and you
feel you are big and capable enough to transcend it, only for you to
have journeyed along to find that untrue. well. yeah. that. here i am.
and i map it all back to that.
then
what is worse I had family members tells me that it was what i did
wrong, or my inability in social relations. their dumb and unexposed,
having no clue of these type games, chess or empire challenges. sigh.
"“Oh,
‘Dyson’s a rhetorical genius,’ West said, ‘but has tilts of
self-interest and aggrandizement,’” Dyson recalled. “This is my
recommender. This is my reference writer. [West said] Dyson is a genius
and he goes on, rhetorical, but sometimes you want him to, say, ‘Put a
period on it.’” "i understand so much more now, but at such a high cost and so much loss that i wonder if it can ever be regained.
"“Is
this jealousy? Is this extended resentment? Feeling that your day has
passed, that your moment is gone? That your life no longer shines as
bright and you don’t see yourself as an elder statesman that’s able to
embrace the coming of others?” Dyson said. “These things have been
developing longer than Obama and his presidency.”"
---------------- {how do you tell people: "I was so brilliant and on an ever rise to stardom that they tripped me, knocked the ladder, blew up the building and sarin gassed the state and my field.
so here i am who would believe you. but it is there. and i did not even know it but reading dyson on west, mirrors for me the exact same.
i was dyson. sandra batie was west. but she was not as kind as west. she did not bad talk and malign me when you erode and destroy the pinnacle, what else can follow?
what was at stake was akin to me being the first black president of the us I was going to be the first ever national representative of the field of agricultural economics. something that did not exist before. and located at DC Capitol Hill the Building of Representatives. And not only all of that, I was a black woman.
how was sandra batie abiding that? she did nt
I am so tired to realize what I survived, just with my breath to tell the story, nothing else. I am tired and broken.
understand this is a new revelation..to realize i was blackballed, it was my sister masego who just told me that days ago. and to now realize my dearth started a lot longer and long before i was even aware: 1998 or so? and it is like I even did not recognize at the time the magnitude of the mountain i was climbing. i cringe. and i was doing it alone. no help. no support. no recommendations. just blindly. but i had the goods, the gall and the confidence of wherewithal. it was for people to stop me not give me permission.
But i learned something else recently...that when you moving through like that, you are to have an army, that forwards before you, left and right flank and a strong rare that blocks and protects your progress. I never had that. only those looking on, not knowing what they were looking at, its phenom, nor the attacks silent, just the downfall.
i am stunned.
i have been here the whole time and even i am stunned!}
-----------------
for those of you who think you are walking through the world free and unimpeded. for those who think white supremacy and racism doesnt exist' and have its many ever growing tentacles all over imperceptible
for such ignorance. i forgive you cause i now realize, you were never on the road to greatness, so they neednt bother
i am floored
-------------------
a few weeks or months ago there was an article that focused on working class students who dare to navigate graduate school and terminal degrees in american academe. it outlined the fissures and the blindspots. when I read that article I saw myself. when you are working class, no matter how much money your dad had, how many cars you had since you were sixteen, your sheep skin coat and white leather cowboy boots at highschool or the wads of cash your father delivered to you when he visited you at college so your college boyfriend can tell you about it a decade later. none of that...you still working class if your landscape, experience and journey is new in your clan, among your kin and kith. I am the only one in my family to have a phd from the US System. And I dont think there is another phd from anywhere in my family, upon anyone. but i am still the scourge cause they have no idea of these type realities and dynamics
again, i am learning this day on April 20th, the extent to which all these parts played in my career assassination as designated and enacted solely by sandra batie
God the Head
Women the Body
Earth the Womb
The One Cosmic
Wombmen
Josephine Phillips : "Ok, so I just caught up on this thread. I really wish not to add too much more but say with some admiration Maven Huggins my philosophy, views, ideology are a bit more aligned with yours because of my life on a larger scale in the Western hemisphere. As an Educator and Analyst, Mother also Sister (to the truest sense of the word, lol) I think the message was well delivered and taken with respect. Study to show your self approved! Too much, lol! btw, Susan B Anthony as "mother of the --then-- Feminist movement" work came after many African American Women were barred and shut down because of colour. Thecla the Prophetess, Ruth the Law giver, Esther, Deborah...So many more given their Godly Gifts with class and distinction by God, not man too much.."
Maven Huggins: " ^^^ you just wrote something big and profound there. it is like carbon that has to be made into a diamond.
Something about GOD, WOMEN..and the misnomer feminism, the hidden role of Black and Godly women, long before we found labels to fling around!
pretty soon we will be understanding that god is a woman as is earth...all wombs just as the cosmos. giving birth to all and everything/ and anything less and else beyond that is just corruption.
Last night I spent about two hours dissecting, deciphering and deconstructing Dyson's Ghost West article. This morning I woke up with a rally that these men need to stop the work they have been doing and what made them celebrities and put themselves to the task of fixing themselves as Black Males, as representatives of Black Malehood. The becoming of the black manhood we wish to see, engage, love, build empires and=== and make babies with. And in so doing, lead the charge of our journey back through the desert, back through the passages that brought us to this precipice of ongoing destruction...so that no man ever writes this testimony again:
"Because I’ve never been an advocate of psychotherapy as a path to self-
understanding. . . . I’ve avoided such therapy because I worry about
how it might exacerbate narcissistic tendencies. . . . 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.:" Cornell West
That quote in the Ghost article is what sets this candle and flame on fire.
The Buddha Always Listens
Here were my thoughts in process, without edit or integration on the Ghost article
-----------------
"three paragraphs in. and i stop to repost.
this article promises to be a study in the universality of mind prisons.
for all of us!
"love turned to hatred" insularity perspectives on who people think they are, perspectives on who and how people see others the attempt to subjugate others to our will and need assumptions and arrogance from occupying a square and thinking it the universe or universal.
just three paragraphs.
and oh yeah.
black men of power, positions, parlays and their dynamics
woo sah!"
"you
also pick up in the early half of this article...how 'brothers'? god
people, good people, reciprocates...look out and prepare a place for
each other, respectively, so they can climb their career ladders. you
dont make it without friends and supporters, diehards. literally
preparing a table for you!
"the evolution of ego, the emergence of an icon..."
"for
this revelation...and take it to the universal, even though it be
rare...it shows you that when they apply it to women it is an attempt to
malign and deride her of power, rather than the truth of all human
dealings
"Long before their ideological schism,
however, West believed himself personally betrayed by Obama because of
his (supposed) disinterest after the election. It is a sad truth that
most politicians are serial rhetorical lovers and promiscuous
ideological mates, leaving behind scores of briefly valued surrogates
and supporters. West should have understood that Obama had had similar
trysts with many others. But West felt spurned and was embittered.""
"this
paragraph more than any other previous paints and displays dyson's star
and competence. in a funny sneaky, unannounced way, but still screaming
and apparent.
"West has never given us detailed comparative analyses of prophets in Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, or Zoroastrianism, nor has he distinguished between major and
minor prophets. He hasn’t explored the differences between social and
political prophecy; examined the fruitful connections between the
biblical gift of prophecy and its cultural determinants; or linked his
understanding of prophecy to secular expressions of the prophetic urge
found in New Left radicalism, for example, which led to Jack Newfield’s
notable analysis of the movement in A Prophetic Minority. (To be fair,
Newfield didn’t spend a great deal of time exploring prophecy either;
but then he didn’t fancy himself a prophet like West, nor did he
viciously lambast those who fall short of his expectations or
standards.)"
It shows how dyson is just another west, in a different path, timeline or trajectory...something"
"by
the time I get to cornel west';s video to obama, I am struck to realize
I am reading some serious tragic drama between black men, amongst a
clan of black men, and i wonder what is the prize, the goal and more
importantly, i realize someone else needs
to step in and deconstruct, decompose and delineate this thing, and I
am not sure that person is not a very astute woman. Toni Morrison
perhaps. I would love to do an interrogation of her views of this
article"
"this article is amusing it
is about west being/getting twisted /spurned, lost and unproductive in
his bitter critique of obama...a vortex in which he gets lost presumably
But
the amusement is that dyson is himself reading west, in this article,
in a most erudite fashion . and seemingly without the disrespect or the
venom, but make no mistake, it aint a walk in the park at the esplanade
or carousel. west is getting cleaned.
and here it is. the next line and paragraph:
"As an ordained minister and professor,..." the authority
this is the dozens amidst black male titan elite academics plain talk punto pronto"
"WHAT IS AT STAKE FOR THESE PEOPLE? cause it just cant be fame"
"please lord tell me this is not crab in a barrel syndrome??!@@"
"West’s aggressions brought me great sorrow. In his anger toward me I
was forced, for the first time, to entertain seriously the wild
accusations levied against him: that he was consumed with jealousy of
Obama, that he simply couldn’t abide the rise of a figure who eclipsed
most other black personalities for the time being and who, for many,
even competed with King for recognition as the “greatest black man in
American history.” I still don’t buy
those theories, but I do think West’s deep loathing of Obama draws on
some profoundly personal energy that is ultimately irrational—it’s a
species of antipathy that no political difference could ever explain. It
is sad to think that West aimed at me because my criticism failed to
comport with his shrill and manic dispute with the president; our lost
friendship is the collateral damage of his war on Obama." "i am sorry. There is a deep undertow to this article. starting with the first lines and hearkening to the scorned woman, and now this line
"
In truth, West is a scold, a curmudgeonly and bitter critic who has
grown long in the tooth but sharp in the tongue when lashing one-time
colleagues and allies."
it is a deliberate attempt to paint west as a woman now
you may ask, how and why is that part of a critique? how is that
negative?. It validates this in fact as a very harsh 'reading' of the
worse and least kind
it says a lot. it is not by accident also by the same self professed man who was walking the line to bring equality in the church by ordaining women as deacons smh
wow. you gotta read like you in the winterforest with the dead people"
" continued put down. putting one in their place. cutting them to size
"And
although I strongly disagree with Wieseltier’s views of West’s early
works, it would be fitting for West to downsize his ambition and accept
his role as a public intellectual, social gadfly, or merely a paid pest""
"see...read
from the top where i mentioned that there is a competition between
these academic men, for what prize I do not know...and so here dyson
confirms it
"The irony is that, as highly charged as his criticism has become, West is, in some ways, not that different from Obama.""
"just what i assessed:
"stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class""
"see, I was reading without the benefit of knowledge.
this right here. is the reason for all the undertow, which really aint undertow
"West’s attacks on me were a bleak forfeiture of 30 years of friendship;"
West aint the only one spurned, scorned or hurting here this article is deeper than deep
a real grown ass black woman need to fix her gaze here. the first one is gone, that would have been Maya, The only one else in line has to be Toni Morrison my word!
"!West’s
attacks on me were a bleak forfeiture of 30 years of friendship; it was
the repudiation of fond collegiality and intellectual companionship, of
political camaraderie and joined social struggle. I was a mentee and,
according to West, who was kind enough to write a blurb for one of my
books, “a rare kind of genius with organic links to our beloved street
brothers and sisters."
The constant reading and signifying here is phenomenal
":In
November 2012, West, friend and mentor, one of the three men whose name
is on my Princeton doctoral dissertation, let me have it in the
national media.""
"there
is a bigger wider larger conversation going on here though...and it
relates to black life. black political life. national black american
politics. national black american elitism, identity and alignment
It is about who stands as pharoah on that empire who is the prophet writing the philosophy... and who is the enforcer
and all in an insular small point above a pyramid
"It
was during an appearance with Tavis Smiley on Democracy Now, shortly
after Obama’s reelection. “I love Brother Mike Dyson,” West said. “But
we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is
up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others,
they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite
them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at
the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kinds
of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people. And
it’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration
in that way, given the kind of critical background that all of them have
had at some point.”" "amazing.
See i seized upon the theme of woman in this article early on but when I read this quote, I think of MadMen, for many reasons, now, another appears to me...
Like Mad Men, the title focuses on men, but that show is really about the women>
it
also now screams at me that these men are all mad., beset by a variance
of neuroses and egos, status and aspirations> and thein in the
pursuit killing themselves and their gifts and products in the process
quite instructive
"West’s
memoir offers a poignant and honest accounting of his relationship with
women, and by extension, his relationship with Obama, who was, for a
time, the object of West’s profound political affection:"" "yo. the last paragraph! smh And
I am done my exercise in reading, critiquing, deconstructing and
processing using unexpected lens. I had no idea this drama had gone on
for so long and claimed so many bodies and relationships
And
despite dyson's reading and giving west the dirty dozens, we are none
the wiser for really understanding what is going on with west
know that! one thing for sho ...we got black men on some serious ego steroids
I
personally feel free in a way that is phenomenal. I dont have to keep
trying to navigate and contend with madness, cause that is what that
shit is: Madness. These males not healthy. And what this article is
about is the same thing on the street level, just bigger halls and
mouths, platforms and impacts, but it is the same core, character and
reading.. stop messing with crazy thinking you an alchemist.
you
will just waste your time, your energy, your resources, your good will
on bad and shit that aint gonna spring back good. (and I feel like a
slave woman on a plantation speaking those last few words)
I am done. and free" "dyson is deep though spanned
training, academics and departments from philosophy, religion and now
sociology. a multidisciplinarian after my own heart" [Verneda Lights:You
hit the nail on the head: ego steroids and madness. It is a toxic
mixture, distilled in the white male supremacy Ivy League factories.
I've had the dime on this insanity for decades now, and I'm so glad I'm
free. I worked hard for that freedom too. I should note that that same
craziness is present among black women writers. Crazy.] "wow.
it is news and i am surprised to read about women writers. but I can
totally see it. the struggle for something in a system that robs you of
everything tells you you are nothing.. it is and will become a sickness
to manage or squelch"
"so the barrel has always been the plantation incarnate then> huh. interesting!"
------------------Personal Reflections on Ghost "y'all
in trinidad and the caribbean dont know nothing about this reality,
dynamic, the gauntlet , the fire and cross such experiences and the
lasting effects. There is a whole body of written work , research and
knowledge on the effects on those black academics who survived to
complete the white ivory tower. worse yet, if you were a trailblazer. my
first published article was about my passing through
"when I
applied to graduate school in 1984 and helped me to land at his alma
mater Princeton, where he had been the first black student ever to earn a
doctorate in philosophy, and where I became the second black student to
earn a doctorate in religion.""
""...and the decolonization of Third World countries..."
what countries would that be????""
"who knew. take this to the universal : not about West, but
not just women get spurned, scorned and thrown away, huh?
"Long before their ideological schism, however, West believed himself
personally betrayed by Obama because of his (supposed) disinterest after
the election. It is a sad truth that most politicians are serial
rhetorical lovers and promiscuous ideological mates, leaving behind
scores of briefly valued surrogates and supporters. West should have
understood that Obama had had similar trysts with many others. But West
felt spurned and was embittered.""
"yuhmmmmm
reading and wondering..
do i suffer from the "blame the victim syndrome" ??????"
"not polite discourse"
Makes me think and reflect on my self.
cautionary tale!!!
hm@!
i am in great company
="late in his career King, too, “began to give full vent to his rage.”
"told you. WOMEN
the ongoing woman theme : the ongoing scorned woman theme The ongoing theme of west as woman scorned
"West’s
fears of his narcissistic tendencies seem to have come true in his
fight with President Obama. Hedges also used the language of the jilted
lover in describing West, noting that he “nurses, like many others who
placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated,
and betrayed.” West admitted to Hedges in their interview that he went
“ballistic” about Obama because he had been “thoroughly misled”; or, put
differently, he was crushed that Obama had ideologically cheated on
him."
here is THE gem from the article
This here is the very and sole, soul reason we have problems with the
men, the brothers. they peep, spy and are exposed to aspects of
themselves never before encountered and it scares the shit out of them
so we get madness from them, and all other manner of shit and trauma.
this right here
"Because I’ve
never been an advocate of psychotherapy as a path to self-
understanding. . . . I’ve avoided such therapy because I worry about how
it might exacerbate narcissistic tendencies. . . . 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.:"
and the other wenches out of their
nasty bitterness will tell you you dont know how to keep a
relationship. Yeah you damn skippy, i am not a door mat or toilet to
keep my lid down so i can say, I got a man; while he runs the street,
women, men and all other vices of denial.
that article gets an award. that is the code, the key and the answer to all our troubles. right there.
West said that@!"
"I just read an article
and dyson and west just wrote us black women our freedoms
"West’s narcissism in this matter is not exemplified by his sense of
being jilted but in the way he has personalized his grief. "
dont personalize these men, their traumas, their griefs or yours in
fact, after these two quotes. all grief about these males should cease.
New Life Moon, INdeed"
" this is all so amusing too. this is just Biggy and Tupac. the brotherly war all over again
Something deeply and perturbly* wrong with us"
-----the most personal and profound =of all -- Sandra Batie, my Advisor's Treachery of MY Stardom
""All of this has left Dyson wondering if West was ever happy for
anyone’s success—Obama’s or otherwise. On a personal note, Dyson’s has
made a name for himself under the mentorship of West.
But with each success Dyson mounted, he says, there seemed to be a simmering passive-aggressiveness from West."
I read that on the dyson west fiasco and I am brought/taken to Sandra
Batie's door...is it that her treachery of me when I stood set to take
the first time ever newly created position
as Representative for my field in Agricultural Economics at no where
less than the DC Capitol as if The Head of National Lobby for the field
of study...
Is it that she
could not envision someone she trained her junior taking up the height
of such a position? that it was just personal jealousy and envy, worse
yet from a black hen???WOW"
"just like Baties recommendation of me:
"Dyson
recalled a time earlier in his career when a weekly Philadelphia
newspaper was doing a cover story on him and he asked if West would
contribute to the story, which was bound to have critical momentum. He
was hoping for words of encouragement and positivity from a peer, but
what he got was backhanded compliments and criticism."
similarly,
it was when I was already chosen for the post, had sailed through all
the previous guardrails and gates, that they insisted speaking to my
"advisor" that sandra batie came in and blew that to smithereens. i
swear every time i write it now I seethe, cause only now am i seeing in
hindsight the magnitude of the thing. you know things happen and you
feel you are big and capable enough to transcend it, only for you to
have journeyed along to find that untrue. well. yeah. that. here i am.
and i map it all back to that.
then
what is worse I had family members tells me that it was what i did
wrong, or my inability in social relations. their dumb and unexposed,
having no clue of these type games, chess or empire challenges. sigh.
"“Oh,
‘Dyson’s a rhetorical genius,’ West said, ‘but has tilts of
self-interest and aggrandizement,’” Dyson recalled. “This is my
recommender. This is my reference writer. [West said] Dyson is a genius
and he goes on, rhetorical, but sometimes you want him to, say, ‘Put a
period on it.’”"
"i understand so much more now, but at such a high cost and so much loss that i wonder if it can ever be regained.
"“Is
this jealousy? Is this extended resentment? Feeling that your day has
passed, that your moment is gone? That your life no longer shines as
bright and you don’t see yourself as an elder statesman that’s able to
embrace the coming of others?” Dyson said. “These things have been
developing longer than Obama and his presidency.”"
----------------Asides
"before the barrel there was the plantation
but therein the rub
cause that barrel held the pork innards
on the plantation.
you see. we never left. it never ended.
we just shifted to different quarters of the estate."
=--------------prophetics
PrinceShoni Wa Ha Rabada:
[THE SYSTEM WITHIN YOUR SYSTEM
It Attracts you to Attack yourselves
It Builds you to Break yourselves
It Creates you to Crush yourselves It Develops you to Destroy yourselves It Employs you to Empty yourselves It Fields you to Fight yourselves It Grants you to Grinds yourselves It Has you to Hate yourselves It Illiterate you to Illtreat yourselves It Justifies you to Jealous yourselves It Keeps you to Kill yourselves It Leads you to Leave yourselves It Minds you to Murder yourselves It Needs you to Nail yourselves It Organises you to Oppress yourselves It Plans you to Pity yourselves It Qualifies you to Question yourselves It Rights you to Rob yourselves It Shows you yo Shackle yourselves It Teaches you to Torment yourselves It understands you to Undermine yourselves It Validates you to Void yourselves It Wins you to Weaken yourselves It Xplains you to Xpose yourselves It Yes you to Yield yourselves It Zooms you to Zero yourselves.......d*U*b wise"]
"this article is on fire.
on all corners of the globe
Ernesto Mercer:
"This has got some sand. Some. Too bad it is written by a two bit
psuedointellectal, ambulance chasing, bandwagon driving, pompous
buffoon. Cornel West may have been tripping on a couple of things but
Michael Eric Dyson aint never been fit to give him a shoeshine with his
tongue. How much the New Republic pay? They paid too much.""
added dimension, shade, context, color to the titan elephant clown war dyson, west and the million black men march to what? which coon kill declared twenty years later
