Cornel West's 8 Critiques of Obama's Presidency

[DKW 86 7,419]

http://www.alternet....amas-presidency

Cornel West's 8 Most Eye-Opening Critiques of Barack Obama's Presidency

1. African Americans Have Done Worse Under Obama

"The great irony of our time is that in the age of Obama the grand black prophetic tradition is weak and feeble. Obama’s black face of the American empire has made it more difficult for black courageous and radical voices to bring critique to bear on the U.S. empire. On the empirical or lived level of black experience, black people have suffered more in this age than in the recent past. Empirical indices of infant mortality rates, mass incarceration rates, mass unemployment and dramatic declines in household wealth reveal this sad reality."

2. Leadership In The African-American Community Has Weakened

"First, there is the shift of black leadership from the voices of social movements to those of elected officials in the mainstream political system. This shift produces voices that are rarely if ever critical of this system. How could we expect the black caretakers and gatekeepers of the system to be critical of it?"

3. Upward Mobility Is The Worst In The Modern World

"Second, this neoliberal shift produces a culture of raw ambition and instant success that is seductive to most potential leaders and intellectuals, thereby incorporating them into the neoliberal regime. This culture of superficial spectacle and hyper-visible celebrities highlights the legitimacy of an unjust system that prides itself on upward mobility of the downtrodden. Yet, the truth is that we live in a country that has the least upward mobility of any other modern nation!"

4. Leaders Who Challenge the Statue Quo Are Silenced

"Third, the U.S. neoliberal regime contains a vicious repressive apparatus that targets those strong and sacrificial leaders, activists, and prophetic intellectuals who are easily discredited, delegitimated, or even assassinated, including through character assassination. Character assassination becomes systemic and chronic, and it is preferable to literal assassination because dead martyrs tend to command the attention of the sleepwalking masses and thereby elevate the threat to the status quo."

5. Mass Media Ignores Voices That Take on Issues Such as Use of Drones and War Crimes

"The central role of mass media, especially a corporate media beholden to the U.S. neoliberal regime, is to keep public discourse narrow and deodorized. By 'narrow' I mean confining the conversation to conservative Republican and neoliberal Democrats who shut out prophetic voices or radical visions. This fundamental power to define the political terrain and categories attempts to render prophetic voices invisible. The discourse is deodorized because the issues that prophetic voices highlight, such as mass incarceration, wealth inequality, and war crimes such as imperial drones murdering innocent people, are ignored."

6. Obama Doesn't Really Care About Protecting Working People

"The state of black America in the age of Obama has been one of desperation, confusion, and capitulation. The desperation is rooted in the escalating suffering on every front. The confusion arises from a conflation of symbol and substance. The capitulation rests on an obsessive need to protect the first black president against all forms of criticism. Black desperation is part of a broader desperation among poor and working people during the age of Obama. The bailout of Wall Street by the Obama administration, rather than the bailout of homeowners, hurt millions of working people."

7. First Lady Michelle Obama Legitimizes Obama's "Symbolic Status"

"Needless to say, the presence of his brilliant and charismatic wife, Michelle—a descendent of enslaved and Jim-Crowed people, unlike himself—even more deeply legitimizes his symbolic status, a status that easily substitutes for substantial achievement."

8. To Be Successful and Black, One Must Turn One's Back on the Poor

"To be a highly successful black professional or politician is too often to be well adjusted to injustice and well adapted to indifference toward poor people, including black poor people. The black prophetic tradition is fundamentally committed to the priority of poor and working people, thus pitting it against the neoliberal regime, capitalist system, and imperial policies of the U.S. government."

Toward the end of the book, West writes how modern black leadership has abandoned the traditions that have helped position it and President Obama. "What does it profit a people for a symbolic figure to gain presidential power if we turn our backs from the suffering of poor and working people, and thereby lose our souls?" he writes. "The black prophetic tradition has tried to redeem the soul of our fragile democratic experiment. Is it redeemable?"

[DKW 86 7,419]

nm

[Mims44 1,867]

OMG, could that post contain anymore pointless jargon?

tell the original author to put down his damn thesaurus at some point.

[Mims44 1,867]

added to that, I didn't mean to cast a negative light on the thought process behind the post. Just the vocabulary used within it.

[DKW 86 7,419]

Well Cornell West http://www.cornelwest.com/bio.html

Wrote most of it. And yes it can be wordy.

[WarTim 3,456]

100% correct. Best post in quite some time. Have a great Sunday all!!!

[homersapien 11,366]

Provocative (as always ). He made some good points and I agree to some degree with a lot of them.

But some of the stuff - "the U.S. neoliberal regime contains a vicious repressive apparatus that targets those strong and sacrificial leaders, activists, and prophetic intellectuals".. was wildly over-the-top and demanded some examples.

Cornelius is a hoot. Especially in an interview. I enjoy him.

Thanks for posting!

[homersapien 11,366]

OMG, could that post contain anymore pointless jargon?

tell the original author to put down his damn thesaurus at some point.

Apparently you are not familiar with the author? He's an acquired taste.

[icanthearyou 4,462]

Well, I guess I will have to be the one dissenting voice. I believe the office is too powerful for anyone to be a black president, or a white president, or any sort of president that promotes "his" group ahead of others. I think he has to be the American president.

I believe there is a very good case for arguing that Obama has not done, for working Americans, what he could/should have done but, I don't believe that case should be qualified by race.

I do not care for his critique of the "neoliberal regime". Both of his points in that regard, to me, seem to reflect our current culture, not some contrived political label.

[TexasTiger 12,831]

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/23/opinion/granderson-tavis-smiley/

[homersapien 11,366]

Well, I guess I will have to be the one dissenting voice. I believe the office is too powerful for anyone to be a black president, or a white president, or any sort of president that promotes "his" group ahead of others. I think he has to be the American president.

I believe there is a very good case for arguing that Obama has not done, for working Americans, what he could/should have done but, I don't believe that case should be qualified by race.

I do not care for his critique of the "neoliberal regime". Both of his points in that regard, to me, seem to reflect our current culture, not some contrived political label.

Yeah, I'd like to know more about what he means. I sounded to me like he was implying that neoliberals are liberals that have been absorbed into the political status quo. I am not sure that's fair as a general statement, considering they hold only the Presidency.

[homersapien 11,366]

http://edition.cnn.c...n-tavis-smiley/

Wow. Didn't know it was that bad.

That article was well written - "Welcome to the ivory tower version of black on black crime."

[AUDub 11,147]

http://edition.cnn.c...n-tavis-smiley/

Wow. Didn't know it was that bad.

That article was well written - "Welcome to the ivory tower version of black on black crime." :laugh:/>

Figures you'd like LZ Granderson. I'm a fan myself.

EDIT: STUPID iPAD

[DKW 86 7,419]

[autigeremt 6,599]

Looks like the same issues any president would have with people who didn't get what they thought they deserved.

[icanthearyou 4,462]

Looks like the same issues any president would have with people who didn't get what they thought they deserved.

Precisely.