Three insights from Cornel West's UVA lecture

Brother West on antiracism, demonizing, and talking Christian in public

Dr. Cornel West visited UVA the other week to lecture on the idea of the university. I last saw Dr. West speak in person in 2008 at Western Washington University. Happy to report he’s still got it. It’s thrilling to listen to an intellectual giant captivate an audience for an hour straight with no notes, no “ums,” and no rambling thoughts.

Here are three things that stood out about his talk:

1. The Compelling Nature of Christian Thought
Dr. West’s worldview is that of Christian revolutionary piety. He’s a well-mixed cocktail of black activist tradition, radical politics, and a serious reading of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. He advised students to find something worth living and dying for besides money. He advised students to find rituals of lament as modeled in the Hebrew Bible. He advised students to find themselves by always remaining, in some way, connected to the traditions that came before them. His logic was at many points deeply Christian, even if students didn’t recognize it. I walked away reminded how the history of Christian thought speaks straight to the heart of human experience.

2. The Inadequacy of the Antiracist Framework
This might have gotten the loudest positive stir from the audience. Dr. West essentially rebuked the notion of antiracism as a primary posture or identity for those seeking to live and love justly. He remarked that when people say to him ‘I’m anti-racist,’ he looks at them and says, “is that all you are?” West’s point is that antiracism is a secondary posture at best, one that works in response to white supremacy or racist discrimination. It is therefore fundamentally insufficient as a posture in the world.

We must be constructively pro-something rather than simply anti-something. I’m sure there are more nuanced ways West would tease this out, but I do think the point stands. What positive construal is being offered to people on how to relate to those across lines of difference and against ways of injustice? This is the harder and more creative work needed in our time.

3. The Need for a Framework that Disagrees with Demonizing
During Q&A, a student asked Dr. West how to work for justice and how to be a “love warrior,” a phrase West uses. I was surprised to hear West adapt “the hate the sin but not the sinner” framework for his reply. West advised that central to living justly is the ability to hate injustice without hating those committing it. This refusal to demonize the other — even in the midst of serious disagreement — aligned with West’s comment about supporters of Trump (“not all are racist”), and more notably his stand in Charlottesville against the racist violence of August 12 2007. West was on the ground vehemently calling the unite the right crowd to stop and desist while also calling them “brother.”

Again, I was a bit surprised to see a framework deeply rooted in the Christian logic of enemy love to resonate in a secular university setting. There seems to be a recognition that our culture is facing tremendous challenges, fracture, and confusion. In this sort of crisis, people are looking for good answers, a way to make things better, and a sense of purpose in the chaos of a world driven by profits and productivity. West spoke to each of these needs with power and eloquence.

There are many other insights rolling around in my head (and my Notes app) from Brother West’s lecture. Admittedly, I’m attending to things from a sort of Christian and pastoral side of things. Nonetheless, Brother West was “logic on fire,” to borrow from Lloyd-Jones, and it was fascinating to see how moved a University context was by logic so clearly lit aflame by the fires of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.