As we have learned in the past weeks, when Student Life fails to cover an event – any event – racism, bigotry, slanted journalism and foul play are clearly the causes. I want to stress that word, “clearly,” as the original letter-writer did when she exposed Student Life’s clear, apparent and self-evident racism and moral bankruptitudeosity (you will understand that word if you were present for Cornel West’s lecture last week) following the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration’s reporting debacle. A host of other progressively minded students have come forward to challenge the coverage of every single event that has occurred since. I would like to take the argument even further. We also have an inalienable right to have the news reported exactly how we want to hear it. If news writers at Student Life fail to meet any individual’s taste, it’s because the editors are all small-minded bigots. I guess I’ll have to report what you censored, StudLife.

Cornel West’s lecture last week was exciting; the professor is a first-rate orator. I was captivated by his voice, his pace, his made-up words, and his humanitarian message of equality and personal growth. Brother West is a man after my own heart. What Student Life, and in fact, everyone in attendance seemed to miss was West’s repeated assertation that free-market capitalism is the cause of most of the problems that plague people of color. That wasn’t just an off-handed remark; it was his message. Capitalism doesn’t care about black people.

That’s strange coming from a professor whose annual income from his tenured professorship and the lecture circuit has been estimated as high as $900,000. Did anyone notice Brother West’s fancy Italian shoes and gold cufflinks? I’m reminded of Michael Eric Dyson’s line, “We profit while we prophet.”

West criticized Americans who wait for Bill O’Reilly to tell them what to believe. Did West perform a different function in his lecture? I’m unqualified to make that judgment, having read neither of their books. All I know is that O’Reilly went to Harvard once, and West once taught there. But I did observe that no one even tried to throw West a hardball question or to challenge him in any way. West was really preaching to the choir. Aren’t there any black capitalists at Wash. U.? Black business school students? Any black students who have read Mises? I know that there are some bourgeois blacks at Wash. U. I’ve seen you. I can’t afford your BMWs and Gucci sunglasses. Didn’t you care to defend your lifestyle to Mr. West?

While he proudly displayed his socialism, absent from West’s critique of our decadent lifestyle was any mention of economic ideas that would actually improve the lives of people of color, such as home ownership or capital investments in the third world. It’s amazing that someone who calls himself a public intellectual can blame Africa’s economic stagnation on capitalism while ignoring the gains in individual people’s standards of living that the motivation for profits has brought to the former Soviet Union, Japan, India, Ireland, Brazil, Poland and others. The newspaper reported that West “emphasized the role of questioning” during his lecture. How come no one questioned West?

Steven is a junior in Arts & Sciences.

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.