I like most young African American scholars grew up admiring
Cornel West and his scholarly aptitude and his unrelenting commitment to stand
in the face of the Ivory Tower and boldly and openly criticize it. Therefore, the public lambasting of arguably one
of the GREATEST academicians in our lifetime is a tad bit disheartening. While I do agree some of his public criticism
of the President has come off as petty and small and his self-anointment of
himself in the vain of Dr. King and Jesus Christ is a bit modern day “preacherish"
to me. However, I do think his lifetime
social and academic deposits specifically warrant him a level of respect and far exceed any withdrawals he can make at this point.
Has Dr. West lost a step academically maybe, but so have
Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. What I
mean by this is we all hit a point where we are not what we used to be and intellectuals are no different, but to
have your intellectual credentials questioned simply because you choose to be
unafraid in your questioning or critique of the President is small in my
opinion. Furthermore, there has only
been one person to date with the feat of walking on water and to openly criticize
the President when the larger African American
community feels we are in the mist of it happening again (walking on water that is) takes courage. But again going against the collective grain
is never popular nor is it easy ask any African-American Republican.
Is Dr. West bitter as Dr. Dyson attest maybe, but age,
vitality and the consciousness of one’s own mortality and awareness regarding
all of the things you did or did not do has a way of making us all a little
testy. Is he searching for the limelight that he once
use to own exclusively due to his academic credentials, maybe so, but so is Al
Sharpton relative to his space and countless others. In my own personal space I was called a
whipper snapper and grass hopper when I challenged an elder.
If there is any light that can be shined down upon this
situation it is that the African-American is by no means a homogenious
community. Two, we all don’t think President
Obama is Little Baby Jesus and are afraid to be critical of him even though
it may get shrouded in pettiness. Three
and probably most important to me is there are African-American men in our
community who have academic merit. We are not all limited in our aspirations and for some their aspiration extends to be public intellectuals. Four
and the one that I hope my pistol packing, driveby shooting, beef having young
brothers see is that there can be beef where no one dies a physical death or add to the prison population.
That’s My Truth and I am sticking to it…
I AM
Dr. Irvin PeDro Cohen
