i've had a mixed response to cornel west over the years. there were great essays in race matters, and he could actually do some interesting philosophy and history of philosophy, as in the american evasion of philosophy. and he had his inspirational pastoral mode, as in the at-times incandescent prophesy deliverance! i've never heard a better speaker at a philosophy conference. however, i'd say i've lost the faith. the blowup with lawrence summers indicated rather bloated egos in both men. but this stuff with obama has gotten really strange. 

Focusing on Obama and race, West said: “I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men . . . It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation.”

(i hear west from time to time on tavis smiley, and i have to say this 'my brother' thing is getting old; it begins to sound to me like 'comrade': it could express something inspiring if it wasn't autonomic.) this is incoherent, to begin with. a fear of being a white man with black skin is definitely not the same thing as fearing free black men. now, there are good reasons for progressive people to be disappointed with obama, among other things on race: west brought up incarceration rates, which we should all worry about. but to frame it in such a personal psychological way, as a black man's fear of free black men, just seems gratuitous, and bizarrely personal. 

During the 2008 campaign, West said, he traveled to 65 campaign events for the presidential candidate. But West complains that he was not given inauguration tickets for his brother and mother and that Obama did not return his phone calls.

ok one has to suppose that when west says bo is afraid of free black men, he means himself, this fear being expressed by not coughing up the tickets for the fam. what i want to add is that that lawrence summers was a or the key economic policy guy for the first two years; this makes you wonder about west's comment about obama being 'a puppet of wall street.' again, not that there might not be a point, it's just that this really looks like it is polluted by egomania, a series of perceived personal slights. i just want to point out that - though i don't know what, if anything, west is ingesting - he certainly has looked stoned every time i've seen him in the last few years. maybe that's my fear of a free black man.