No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.
Cornel WestThe capitalist culture of consumption... does not provide meaningful sustenance for large numbers of people.
Cornel WestTry to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.
Cornel WestIt's no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect and self-love.
Cornel WestLife is such a mysterious thing that you are up one day; you are down the next day. A lot of the homeless brothers and sisters who were a success ten years ago, they are now on the street. Maybe ten years later they will be a success, but the crucial question is what is the quality of their life.
Cornel WestThe problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you ended up with the downsizing; you ended up with de-industrializing. You ended up with the marginalizing of working people and working poor people even while affirmative action was taking place, and a new black middle class was expanding.
Cornel West