I love Cornel West. "So I want to ask—you talk about the bleakness of the moment, but you don't talk about it in a bleak way. You have a hope. Where does that come from?
Lord, have mercy—I’ve got a joy and a hope and a love has been poured into me by my Mom, my Dad, Shiloh Baptist Church, the Black Panther Party, Martin King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Stokely Carmichael, James Lawson. I got a whole cloud of witness and we haven’t even gotten to Curtis Mayfield and Aretha and John Coltrane and so forth. I have a rich tradition. I come from a great people, a great people who've been dealing with bleakness for 400 years and yet still give the world so much love and joy and sense of freedom. That's my tradition.
I'll put it this way, as long as part of the life of that tradition—oh, no, as long as part of the afterlife of that tradition is at work in my life, and I walk around in style and smile, but I'm not gonna live in denial I know how ugly and bleak it is. Oh, absolutely."
https://www.thestranger.com/news/2025/09/05/80228800/an-interview-with-cornel-west-on-fascism-faith-feckless-democrats-and-hope-in-a-bleak-time
#DrCornelWest #CornelWest