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Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America
'Cornel West is one of the most authentic, brilliant, prophetic, and healing voices in America today' --Marian Wright Edelman
Nine of America's most influential artists, scholars, and public figures-Maya Angelou, Bill Bradley, Harry Belafonte, Patricia Williams, Wynton Marsalis, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, James Washington, James Forbes, and Haki Madhubuti-talk with Cornel West about their political awareness, art and politics, and the possibility of hope among African-Americans today.
Nine of America's most influential artists, scholars, and public figures-Maya Angelou, Bill Bradley, Harry Belafonte, Patricia Williams, Wynton Marsalis, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, James Washington, James Forbes, and Haki Madhubuti-talk with Cornel West about their political awareness, art and politics, and the possibility of hope among African-Americans today.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
About the author
Cornel West
137 books1,232 followersCornel Ronald West is an American scholar and public intellectual. Formerly at Harvard University, West is currently a professor of Religion at Princeton. West says his intellectual contributions draw from such diverse traditions as the African American Baptist Church, Marxism, pragmatism, transcendentalism, and Anton Chekhov.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 9, 2024
WEST CONVERSES WITH NINE PUBLIC FIGURES ABOUT ‘HOPE,’ AND MORE
Professor Cornel West wrote in the Preface to this 1997 book, “A specter of despair haunts late twentieth-century America. The quality of our lives and the integrity of our souls are in jeopardy… This bleak portrait is accentuated in black America. The fragile black middle class… fights a white backlash. The devastated black working class fears further underemployment or unemployment. And the besieged black poor struggle to survive… black America sits on the brink of collective disaster. Yet most of our fellow citizens deny this black despair, downplay this black rage, and blind themselves to the omens in our midst… This book is a kind of wake-up call to each of us. The country is in deep trouble. We need a moral prophetic minority of all colors who muster the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, and the courage to fight for social justice. Such courage rests on a deep democratic vision of a better world … and a blood-drenched hope that sustains us. This hope is not the same as optimism… Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair.”
Editor Shawn Sealey explains in the Introduction, “the Obsidian Society [is] a not-for-profit foundation that intends to work toward the improvement of the African-American condition… When I approached Dr. Cornel West in the fall of 1993 with my idea for the Obsidian Society, he generously agreed to help build it… His acceptance of the idea… produced the book you hold in your hands. It was my suggestion … that he and I produce a book in which we explored, with several notable Americans, the idea of hope in black America and how it could be restored and sustained.” (Pg. xv-xvi)
Harry Belafonte states, “I’ve always believed that the culture of a people is the soul of a people. It expresses their highest hopes and aspirations. And in that hope, and in that aspiration, there is a political statement. So that if someone is overtly political or artistically great and speaks to the human condition in a way that illuminates and inspires, I see that also as a political consequence or a political act.” (Pg. 16)
Bill Bradley says, “the fact is that there are sixteen million more white Americans in poverty than there are African Americans in poverty… So if you pull back your racial lens and look at the facts, you have to do something if you’re going to get everybody moving to a higher ground and let us all be able to move into the twenty-first century.” (Pg. 52)
Charlayne Hunter-Gault observes, “I think that the mass media emphasize and exacerbate the negative… in spite of the magnification of the negative and aberrational… I think that there’s still a critical mass of young people out there who do give us hope…. The kids who are being portrayed on television as predators are not the kids who are coming to see Cornel West lecture on a college campus or in a black community. Those are the kids who give us hope.” (Pg. 66)
In the conversation with Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. and Rev. Dr. James A. Washington [JW], West [CW] observes, “We’ve got increasing suicide rates. Rat of suicide among young black men and women between 18 and 24 has quadrupled in the last sixteen years. Unprecedented. Black folk always killed themselves less than any other group in America, even though they often had more reason to so do than other groups. No longer the case.” JW: “I wonder if in the days when you had black schools, black churches, black teachers, and when you even had commerce in the wider culture… there was at least some consistency and also some capacity to provide a societal context that was in resonance with what had been taught. So maybe the crisis today is an indication that breaking out of the ghetto introduced a second semester of life… that requires the more advanced degree of making a case for how the world is.” (Pg. 92-93)
West continues, “When you think of the institutions that the foremothers and forefathers organized and sustained, and then when you look at professional black people today and ask what institutions they have created and sustained, it’s a joke… in the past they bonded together against the odds. Which meant courage and love… They had more joy…” (Pg. 98)
Wynton Marsalis observes in his dialogue, “even in the era of segregation, the musician was always a little different class. Because if you’re a trumpet player, and you see people playing something you can’t play, the color of their skin becomes secondary to what they’re playing, and you couldn’t segregate the airwaves.” (Pg. 117) Later, he adds, “I talk to students all the time. They say, ‘Our music.’ I have to say, ‘Son, you don’t have any music. There are people sixty years old putting out these things and determining what you’re going to like. You didn’t make that. There ain’t no teenagers doing this. You’re all not determined enough, and you’ve a victim of it.” (Pg. 128)
Patricia Willliams [PW] says in her dialogue, “You can be as cynical as you like about the police and black communities. However, it’s blacks who are most conservative and want the police there. Blacks really want good police protection.” CW: “They’re some 90% of the victims of criminal behavior and need protection.” PW: "But these may indeed be the same people in the same bodies who are most distrustful of the police.” (Pg. 145)
Haki Madhubuti suggests, “Two things are missing today. One is community, whether it’s in terms of family, extended family, or church. And the other thing that’s missing is a movement. See, we all came out of the movement. And this movement nurtured us, this movement took care of us. We had surrogate mothers and fathers. We were all involved in a mass movement, we were involved in a struggle… and so whether it was CORE, or SNCC, we were involved… Now, one of the reasons we really moved toward these institutions is because we felt that when you talk about people who are serious about their own development, it has to be institutionally based. And the only institution in the black community that had any kind of serious independence was the church.” (Pg. 176)
West tells Maya Angelou [MA], “when I think of hope, I think of courage, and I think what has kept black people hoping, the best of our tradition is hoping, has been both a certain courage to be and a courage to tell the truth about America.” MA: “We’ve got the courage to be on the one hand, and we’ve got the courage to tell the truth about America in relation not just to white supremacy but to other forms of evil.” (Pg. 190) Later, she adds, “In 154 B.C., this black man [Terentius Afer], not born white or free or with any chance of ever achieving citizenship in the Rome of his day, said this incredible statement: ‘I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.’ That is so incredible! If you can internalize the least portion of that, you can never be the same.” (Pg. 193)
This book will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.
Professor Cornel West wrote in the Preface to this 1997 book, “A specter of despair haunts late twentieth-century America. The quality of our lives and the integrity of our souls are in jeopardy… This bleak portrait is accentuated in black America. The fragile black middle class… fights a white backlash. The devastated black working class fears further underemployment or unemployment. And the besieged black poor struggle to survive… black America sits on the brink of collective disaster. Yet most of our fellow citizens deny this black despair, downplay this black rage, and blind themselves to the omens in our midst… This book is a kind of wake-up call to each of us. The country is in deep trouble. We need a moral prophetic minority of all colors who muster the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, and the courage to fight for social justice. Such courage rests on a deep democratic vision of a better world … and a blood-drenched hope that sustains us. This hope is not the same as optimism… Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair.”
Editor Shawn Sealey explains in the Introduction, “the Obsidian Society [is] a not-for-profit foundation that intends to work toward the improvement of the African-American condition… When I approached Dr. Cornel West in the fall of 1993 with my idea for the Obsidian Society, he generously agreed to help build it… His acceptance of the idea… produced the book you hold in your hands. It was my suggestion … that he and I produce a book in which we explored, with several notable Americans, the idea of hope in black America and how it could be restored and sustained.” (Pg. xv-xvi)
Harry Belafonte states, “I’ve always believed that the culture of a people is the soul of a people. It expresses their highest hopes and aspirations. And in that hope, and in that aspiration, there is a political statement. So that if someone is overtly political or artistically great and speaks to the human condition in a way that illuminates and inspires, I see that also as a political consequence or a political act.” (Pg. 16)
Bill Bradley says, “the fact is that there are sixteen million more white Americans in poverty than there are African Americans in poverty… So if you pull back your racial lens and look at the facts, you have to do something if you’re going to get everybody moving to a higher ground and let us all be able to move into the twenty-first century.” (Pg. 52)
Charlayne Hunter-Gault observes, “I think that the mass media emphasize and exacerbate the negative… in spite of the magnification of the negative and aberrational… I think that there’s still a critical mass of young people out there who do give us hope…. The kids who are being portrayed on television as predators are not the kids who are coming to see Cornel West lecture on a college campus or in a black community. Those are the kids who give us hope.” (Pg. 66)
In the conversation with Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. and Rev. Dr. James A. Washington [JW], West [CW] observes, “We’ve got increasing suicide rates. Rat of suicide among young black men and women between 18 and 24 has quadrupled in the last sixteen years. Unprecedented. Black folk always killed themselves less than any other group in America, even though they often had more reason to so do than other groups. No longer the case.” JW: “I wonder if in the days when you had black schools, black churches, black teachers, and when you even had commerce in the wider culture… there was at least some consistency and also some capacity to provide a societal context that was in resonance with what had been taught. So maybe the crisis today is an indication that breaking out of the ghetto introduced a second semester of life… that requires the more advanced degree of making a case for how the world is.” (Pg. 92-93)
West continues, “When you think of the institutions that the foremothers and forefathers organized and sustained, and then when you look at professional black people today and ask what institutions they have created and sustained, it’s a joke… in the past they bonded together against the odds. Which meant courage and love… They had more joy…” (Pg. 98)
Wynton Marsalis observes in his dialogue, “even in the era of segregation, the musician was always a little different class. Because if you’re a trumpet player, and you see people playing something you can’t play, the color of their skin becomes secondary to what they’re playing, and you couldn’t segregate the airwaves.” (Pg. 117) Later, he adds, “I talk to students all the time. They say, ‘Our music.’ I have to say, ‘Son, you don’t have any music. There are people sixty years old putting out these things and determining what you’re going to like. You didn’t make that. There ain’t no teenagers doing this. You’re all not determined enough, and you’ve a victim of it.” (Pg. 128)
Patricia Willliams [PW] says in her dialogue, “You can be as cynical as you like about the police and black communities. However, it’s blacks who are most conservative and want the police there. Blacks really want good police protection.” CW: “They’re some 90% of the victims of criminal behavior and need protection.” PW: "But these may indeed be the same people in the same bodies who are most distrustful of the police.” (Pg. 145)
Haki Madhubuti suggests, “Two things are missing today. One is community, whether it’s in terms of family, extended family, or church. And the other thing that’s missing is a movement. See, we all came out of the movement. And this movement nurtured us, this movement took care of us. We had surrogate mothers and fathers. We were all involved in a mass movement, we were involved in a struggle… and so whether it was CORE, or SNCC, we were involved… Now, one of the reasons we really moved toward these institutions is because we felt that when you talk about people who are serious about their own development, it has to be institutionally based. And the only institution in the black community that had any kind of serious independence was the church.” (Pg. 176)
West tells Maya Angelou [MA], “when I think of hope, I think of courage, and I think what has kept black people hoping, the best of our tradition is hoping, has been both a certain courage to be and a courage to tell the truth about America.” MA: “We’ve got the courage to be on the one hand, and we’ve got the courage to tell the truth about America in relation not just to white supremacy but to other forms of evil.” (Pg. 190) Later, she adds, “In 154 B.C., this black man [Terentius Afer], not born white or free or with any chance of ever achieving citizenship in the Rome of his day, said this incredible statement: ‘I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.’ That is so incredible! If you can internalize the least portion of that, you can never be the same.” (Pg. 193)
This book will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.
December 22, 2010
Pretty dated. West doesn't offer much to the conversations outside of his predictable analysis of hope and spirituality in the Black community. Not the best of his work, or a good entry for those who are curious about what makes his career as a public intellectual so stunning. There were glimmers of hope that came out some of the conversations when West allowed folks to just speak. Haki Madhubuti (founder of Third World Press) did a great job illustrating the necessity of autonomous institution building. His testimony illustrated the importance of accepting help from, being inspired by, and continuing to sustain the community one is committed to change.
August 2, 2014
This is an excellent book from an outstanding philosopher. My big regret over this book is that I have a personally signed copy that fell in a mud puddle, damaging the book and ruining the book-sleeve.
Currently Reading
December 21, 2009Still reading...but so far this book is blowing my mind!!!
November 28, 2011
As with everything by West, this book was insightful, but I only wished it could have had more witten word by him.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews