I wonder if Cornell West ever has second thoughts.
At a “Poverty in America” forum held at George Washington University on January 17th, West forcefully criticized Barack Obama for taking his oath of office at his second inauguration on Martin King Jr.’s bible. See below for a clip of West’s remarks.
West was sure and authoritative, as a self appointed spokesman for the oppressed, in the name of the oppressed, and their great leader, Martin Luther King Jr.:
“You don’t play with Martin Luther King, Jr. and you don’t play with his people. By his people, I mean people of good conscience, fundamentally good people committed to peace and truth and justice, especially the Black tradition that produced it.
All of the blood, sweat and tears that went into producing a Martin Luther King, Jr. generated a brother of such high decency and dignity that you don’t use his prophetic fire for a moment of presidential pageantry without understanding the challenge he represents to all of those in power regardless of what color they are.
The righteous indignation of a Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes a moment of political calculation. And that makes my blood boil. Why? Because Martin Luther King, Jr. died…he died…for the three crimes against humanity that he was wrestling with. Jim Crow, traumatizing, terrorizing, stigmatizing Black people. Lynching, not just ‘segregation’ as the press likes to talk about.
Second: Carpet bombing in Vietnam killing innocent people, especially innocent children, those are war crimes that Martin Luther King , Jr. was willing to die for. And thirdly, was poverty of all colors, he said it is a crime against humanity for the richest nation in the world to have so many of it’s precious children of all colors living in poverty and especially on the chocolate side of the nation, and . . .
Read more: Against Cornell West / For Barack Hussein Obama: MLK’s Bible, the Inauguration and the Left