Cornel West appeared with Poppy Harlow just ahead of Nikki Haley's announcement about the removal of the confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. He had some particularly strong words to say about white supremacy and how President Obama has dealt with issues of race.
"A niggerized black person is a black person who is afraid and scared and intimidated when it comes to putting a spotlight on white supremacy and fighting against white supremacy," West explained. "So when many of us said we have to fight against racism, what were we told? 'No, he can't deal with racism because he has other issues, political calculations. He's the president of all America, not just black America.' We know he's president of all America but white supremacy is American as cherry pie."
CORNEL WEST: You can't talk about wealth and inequality, you can't talk about education, you can't talk about massive unemployment and under employment and you can't talk about drones being dropped on people in other parts of the world without talking about white supremacy and its ways in which it operates. It doesn't have to be overt. The president is right about that.
But too many black people are niggerized. I would say the first black president has become the first niggerized black president.
CNN ANCHOR: What do you mean by that?
WEST: A niggerized black person is a black person who is afraid and scared and intimidated when it comes to putting a spotlight on white supremacy and fighting against white supremacy. So when many of us said we have to fight against racism, what were we told? 'No, he can't deal with racism because he has other issues, political calculations. He's the president of all America, not just black America.' We know he's president of all America but white supremacy is American as cherry pie.
We're talking about moral issues, spiritual issues, emotional issues. White supremacy has nothing to do with just skin pigmentation, it has to be what kind of person you want to be, what kind of nation we want to be. Democrats and Republicans play on both of those parties in terms of running away from the vicious legacy of white supremacy until it hits us hard. Thank God for Ferguson. Thank God for the young folk of all colors. Thank God for Staten Island and fighting there. Thank God in Baltimore, now the precious folk in Charleston.
President Obama also addressed race issues in his hour-long chat for Marc Maron's WTF podcast. In it, he discussed systemic racial issues as well.
President Barack Obama used the n-word during an interview released Monday to make a point that there's still plenty of room for America to combat racism.
"Racism, we are not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public," Obama said in an interview for the podcast "WTF with Marc Maron."
"That's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior."
Because I am white, and because all I can do is my small part not to be a racist or white supremacist, I'm going to shut up and not comment on West's remarks. Tell me what you think.
