Cornel West - professor of Afro-American Studies and Religion at Harvard University - Interview

Progressive, The, Jan, 1997 by John Nichols

In America, of course, persons who are able to laugh at themselves, persons who are able to take certain risks and be vulnerable, do tend to gain a bit more attention, because we tend to be very suspicious of the self-righteous. And rightly so, that's a good democratic impulse.

Q: You are still a young man, forty-three years old. Do you imagine that, in your lifetime, the world will more closely resemble the vision you have argued and campaigned for?

West: Well, presently, it doesn't look good. The dominant forces tend to be precisely those that make it difficult to create the democratic countervailing forces against the globalization of capital, against subordination of workers, against the xenophobias, against the tribal hatreds, and so forth. So it doesn't look good at all.

But, on the other hand, there's always unpredictability.

Human history depends on how hard we work, on how much we are willing to sacrifice. Abraham Joshua Heschel talked about "radical amazement" in human history: We can be amazed by our effort if we continually stay at it on the ground. If we stay at it, we can look up every now and then and say, "Oh, my God, this motion that we're generating might be creating some movement." And as long as you have motion there's a possibility of creating some heterogeneous progressive social movement and, boom, we're back into a sixties-like situation in terms of things beginning to melt a bit--in sharp contrast to our icy moment right now.

But I don't really look long term. When I look at the suffering and pain of working people, indigenous peoples on reservations, when I look at these things, I think, you can't but give your all. You have no choice, because you know that what you're doing is right. In that sense, I have a deep, existential confidence in the rightness of radical democracy. I will try to actualize it to the best of my ability But there's no rational certainty, there's no historical inevitability to the causes that we promote.

Q: Just an element of hope?

West: Exactly. An element of hope--based on struggle.