Cornel West on Sharpton, Jay-Z, and the 50th Anniversary Farce on Washington—
Rev. Al Sharpton and other organizers of the March on Washington 50th anniversary commemoration are so tightly tied to “the Obama plantation,” said activist and academic Dr. Cornel West, “we won’t get to focus on the New Jim Crow; we won’t get to focus on the privatization of education; we won’t get to focus on the land grabs and the gentrification of land it the city; we won’t get to focus on working class people; and we certainly won’t get to focus on the drones and those bombs landing on innocent brothers and sisters in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, and especially the 222 innocent children who have been murdered by the U.S. government so far, and counting.”
President Obama is scheduled to speak at the August 28 event at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. West, of the Union Theological Seminary, in New York City, does not plan to attend. “If Martin [Luther King Jr.] were to show up at this march and they asked him to give a speech,” said West, “what he would say would be so subversive that those on the Obama plantation would be revealed for who they are, which is obsessed with career, obsessed with access, obsessed with status as opposed to being obsessed with the suffering of poor Black brothers and sisters.”
Speaking on Black Agenda Television, Dr. West said George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin has fueled “an overwhelming Black rage, and Brother Sharpton and the others are trying to contain it, and of course Obama and Holder are fearful of it, because Black rage is always the catalyst to Black self-determination, toward Black self-respect, and toward Black self-defense.”
Dr. West rebuked entertainment mogul Jay-Z, who said his “presence is charity” to Black people, “just like Obama’s is.”
“It’s what I call the re-niggerization of the Black professional class, where you have fear, you have a tremendous sense of being intimidated even though you have big money,” said West. “So you say to Brother Jay-Z, What are you risking? We don’t want to just see you successful, we appreciate it, we want to see you faithful to something bigger than you, and faith has to do with risking something. The only way you become de-niggerized and free is when you are willing to risk, when you’re willing to go against the grain, to show you’re not fearful, you’re not afraid. Unfortunately, Jay-Z at his worst is an example of folk who get so elevated that they don’t show courage and take a risk for something that is bigger than them.”
