Black Voters Beware! Cornel West Is Coming To A Town Near You-gctid57222

[Agya Yaw]

FYI - I have problems with Obama & West. Just posting as a discussion point. There are some good things in this editorial to digest, some not. -yaw

Black Star News Online - New Yorks Leading Investigative Newspaper
                           Black Voters Beware! Cornel West Is Coming To A Town Near You

Cornel West claimed President Obama "has a fear of free Black men.."

Cornel  West has engaged in the tactic of dividing the vote. West joined forces  with Ralph Nader in the 2000 election and helped to get George Bush  elected.
 By Eric L. Wattree
09-07-12

[Column: Beneath The Spin]
 
A lot of people ask me why I'm so focused on Cornel West.

The  reason is simple. I grew up with brothers like West in the hood. They  were a dime a dozen, so I know exactly what he's about - nothing.

Contrary  to popular belief, there's a wealth of both knowledge and intellect in  the Black community. Johnny Cochran came out of the hood and so did  Colin Powell, Barack and Michelle Obama, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King  Jr., and, Charlie Parker.

Langston Hughes came out of the hood and hell, so did I.

So  contrary to what's reflected in the media, a large part of this  nation's most valuable resource is lying dormant in the inner cities  across this nation, because there, you've got to be sharp just to  survive.  

What's generally reflected in the media are the dregs  of the Black community. For every 'gangsta' in the hood, there are  literally thounited snakesnds of young people struggling to get ahead. But the  problem is, far too many of us have allowed the media to define who we  are; so we no longer have respect for our own intelligence.

As a  result, many young people tend to have more confidence in the  intelligence of people like Cornel West than they have in their own  ability to think.

Many of our young people are simply taking the  media's word for the fact that Cornel West is supposed to be this  powerful intellect instead of actually assessing what West is saying,  for themselves.

The problem is they've been brainwashed into  believing that the White man's water is wetter than their own. So when  they hear the words "Harvard" and "Princeton" connected to Cornel West's  name, they simply assume that he possesses a greater ability to think  than they do. And that he can see things that they can't.

That's  nonsense and it didn't use to be like that. Brother's used to define  themselves based upon their ability to think, not by how 'fresh' their  tennis shoes look. In fact, unless they ran track, they didn't even wear  tennis shoes. Their primary goal in life was to get away from having to  wear tennis shoes.

I remember how much pride my grandparents  took in me when I went off to college. And later, when I got my degree,  they stopped debating issues with me at altogether.

It was like  all of a sudden I went from being one of the kids to becoming the head  of the family. I remember my grandmother used to say, "Well, Eric,  you're educated, so you know about all that stuff. We don't understand  it."

They didn't understand it? They understood enough to waltz  through the Great Depression while White folks were throwing themselves  out of windows, and then managed to become financially secure in a world  that threw every stumbling block before them that it could muster - and  without busting a sweat bubble.

I knew my grandmother was giving  me much too much credit, but I didn't say anything because my young ego  had me soppin' up the props. But I knew within my heart that even  though I'd gone off and gotten a degree, that she, and especially my  grandfather, could think circles around me.  

Even back then, I  understood that there was a big difference between innate intelligence  and its attendant wisdom and knowledge, as opposed to simply going out  and picking up a degree.

You see, if a ghetto kid who dropped  out of high school has an IQ of 140, and a brain surgeon has an IQ of  120, due to his education, the brain surgeon may be in possession of  more information, but he'll never be able to connect the dots as  efficiently as that high school dropout -- because the kid is smarter,  and he always will be.

Well, I had enough education to recognize  that my grandfather was naturally smarter than me, and regardless of  how much education I obtained, he always would be; in fact, he was so  smart that he had the wisdom not to humiliate me by ramming that fact  home.

Because the fact is, no institution of higher learning can confer either intelligence, knowledge, or wisdom upon any individual.

The  only thing that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or any other institution can  confer upon an individual is a receipt indicating that the individual  paid his tuition and occupied a seat where knowledge was shared. While  the receipt might also indicate that the individual was able to  regurgitated the information once or twice, it cannot certify that any  of the information was absorbed, or can be effectively manipulated.
 
So  what my grandmother failed to understand was, my degree didn't certify  that they'd taught me to out-think her. The only thing it certified was  that I had been exposed to and learned to regurgitate the thoughts of  dead White folks. It said absolutely nothing about whether or not I'd  learn to think for myself. After all, George W. Bush obtained a receipt  from Yale; and we all now have a firsthand knowledge of how little that  was worth.

Therefore, it's important that we in the Black  community learn that the very same thing is true of Cornel West, Boyce  Watkins, and many other so-called public "intellectuals." While we  should have all of the respect in the world for education, we must also  have a clear understanding of what constitutes an education.

An  education is the consumption of knowledge, regardless of whether we  consume that knowledge at Harvard, or at the corner library. Knowledge  is knowledge, and it's free. So Harvard's knowledge is no knowledgeable  than anyone else's; you just pay more for it, and it comes with public  relations support. So if you can't afford to go to college, you seek  your knowledge somewhere else.

What most of us fail to  understand is, a person cannot be educated. Each individual must educate  herself or himself. Therefore, to allow someone else to educate you is  not education at all - it's indoctrination.

Thus, while having a  string of letters behind one's name makes for an excellent calling card  and has immeasurable economic value, it says absolutely nothing about an  individual's ability to think.

Titles, robes, badges, and all of  the other accouterments of alleged knowledge and stature are society's  way of dictating who we listen to, and that's not always in our best  interest. So unless we're dealing with a highly specialized area of  knowledge --like medicine, for example-- we should never give anyone  else's ability to think priority over our own; because when we allow  someone to think for us we're also allowing them to control us.

Simply  having influence over the minds of other people is big business. It can  be worth literally millions of dollars to any person who can convince  you and others to let him control your attitudes, thinking, and  behavior. During the 2008 primaries, one preacher in the South charged  Hillary Clinton a specific dollar amount for every brain that he  controlled in his congregation.  

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have portrayed President Obama as the Bogeyman.

Can  you imagine how much money the billionaires in the Republican Party, if  they had the opportunity, would be willing to pay them, not to actually  deliver the vote, but to merely keep Black people away from the polls?

(Cornel  and Tavis plan to host town halls in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and  Virginia from September 12 to 15; all critical for the election's  outcome)

Cornel West has engaged in the tactic of dividing the  vote. West joined forces with Ralph Nader in the 2000 election and  helped to get George Bush elected.
 
But if you confront members  of the Nader/West coalition with the fact that they helped to elect  George Bush, they'll immediately begin to obfuscate and engage in  intellectual gymnastics in an attempt to avoid responsibility for the  horrific fate that they brought upon this country.

They'll say  things like, "It's not our fault that Gore lost. He just didn't fight  hard enough for a recount." But by using such arguments what they're  actually saying is, "Gore just didn't work hard enough to undo the  damage that we'd done."

But here are the facts: Gore lost the  2000 election to Bush in Florida by 537 votes, and the Nader/West  coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So don't  take my word for it, you do the math.

The bottom line is this –  Cornel West is more than partially responsible for the very poverty that  he's reportedly being paid $10,000 a speech to complain about as a  result of Gore's defeat; period, and case closed.

That's why  back in the hood we used to routinely dismiss people like Cornel West.  We recognized them as self-serving individuals who couldn't be trusted,  because they would do or say anything to get attention.

So even  if we allowed them to hang around, the minute they opened their mouths  we'd simply tell 'em to shut the hell up and that would be that.

But  back then, people like West were simply a source of irritation, under  the current circumstance, however, West's propensity for self-service  and chasing public attention is in direct conflict with what's in the  best interest of the Black community.

I have a Google Alert on  both Tavis and West. I call it the Mutt and Jethro Alert. I'm about to  add Boyce Watkins to the Google Alert as well.

One of my primary  missions in life has become getting Black people to see Tavis and West  for who and what they are: two ruthlessly self-serving and dangerous  individuals who crave public attention so desperately that they're  willing to drag the entire Black community under a bus to get it.

Think about it.

Tell  me one thing that Cornel West has said in his 30 years of public  prominence that's been either profound, or even the least bit memorable?

Let  me answer that for you-- not a damn thing. Cornel is best known for two  things - slandering the first Black President of the United States and  publicly calling his Black female colleague professor, Dr. Melissa  Harris-Perry, a liar and a fraud.

Never mind that he was grossly  disrespectful to the President of the united States, Dr. Harris-Perry,  and Black women in general; it got him public attention, and that's all  he cared about. This from a "brother" who claims ton love his people;  yet, has never taught at a school that the average Black person can even  afford to eat lunch at, in his career.

So in the hood we had a  rule of thumb regarding people like West - "Never trust a brother who's  always trying to be the coolest thing in the room, because he's putting  so much brain power into his image that there's nothing left for him to  think with.

Hood Rat Wisdom 101.


Eric@blackstarnews.com

"Speaking Truth To Empower."