African American
In reply to the discussion: (AA Group) I can't beleive Sanders supporters are defending Cornel West calling [View all]tishaLA
(14,176 posts)Back in the day--say, the mid to late 90s--West was a formidable intellectual whose books on pragmatism and prophetic thought were incisive and intellectually rich. At some point he decided he'd rather be a public intellectual--his book "Race Matters" was the beginning of this--and he stopped being as rigorous in his thought and got caught up in the trappings of his growing celebrity (ironically, I'd put MHP in the same camp, but with the caveat that West's animus toward her stems, at least in part, from the fact that she's been so much more successful at it than he).
Since then, he has terrorized colleagues (a mentor was chair of African American studies at Princeton....the stories I'e sworn not to tell) and decided that it was more valuable to pursue a recording career and write diatribes, some of which are well-directed and some of which are not.