The US Black Movement Hits a Snag

 In this time of Donald Trump, following the 8 years of Barak Obama, Blacks in the United States have been struggling to come to terms with the gross turn of public policy leadership. Cornel West,[i] in an article published yesterday in The Guardian, has attacked Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes for The Atlantic as a neo-liberal Black writer whose pessimism in his latest book[ii] only reinforces White Supremacy. It is possible that, if you are a White Canadian, you have never heard of either of the two. However, they are major figures in the Black world.

 So far, the tremors have had perhaps little reverberation in Canada or Quebec, but they are significant in the United States and deserve our attention for what they could mean for the future of Black lives everywhere in the struggle against White Supremacy and justice for Blacks, Women and Indigenous peoples. Coates argues that White Supremacy is a founding principle upon which the United States is built from the very beginning and that it is unlikely that the Race issue will go away. Nor will the issues that turn upon Race, issues such as grinding poverty, exclusion, lack of housing, education etc. Cornel argues that the issues are complex including analysis of the economy, militarism and a host of other factors and that we must maintain our conviction that resistance is worth the effort.

I am not an expert in Race analysis. But I have read widely and to see someone of the stature of Cornel West take on an icon of the interpretation of Black life in the United States such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, leaves me breathless. The debate must continue; other voices must be heard. 

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[i] He has taught at Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Union Theological Seminary.

[ii] We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.