Living and Loving Out Loud -- Cornel West (& 2 other books)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

An autobiography. The man has had an amazing life. He's incredibly well read. He's a track star in high school in Sacramento, and gets to have Jesse Owens to dinner at his house. His Christian faith is always a positive influence. His parents are educated and encouraging. They get his IQ tested (which comes out at 168) and they figure they must engage his mind so he stops beating up other kids and getting in trouble (such as refusing to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance as a small child, because he knows America is not a fair society).


In contrast, I am also reading "Black Boy" by Richard Wright. He was born in 1908 in Mississippi. His relatives are constantly beating him up for asking uncomfortable questions("How come if my grandma is white, she ain't white?"), telling the truth and refusing to lie. He gets in a knife fight, rolling on the kitchen floor, with his highly religious Seventh Day Adventist Aunt Addie. Eventually the super religious Aunt and Grandma give up on him and declare him "dead to Christ". He is a drunk at the age of six, due to lack of supervision.


The contrast between the childhoods of Richard Wright and Cornel West is stunning to me.


Cornel West's blossoming (because he's in CA) is related to another book I got which I saw discussed on Lawrence O'Donnell's show:
The Warmth of Other Suns By Isabel Wilkerson.

This book is about the great Black Migration of six million people out of the Deep South to the North and West. Cornel West has relatives in Tulsa and other places, but goes to high school in Sacramento. The Warmth of Other Suns talks about people who came out of Monroe, Louisiana, like Huey Newton and Bill Russell, who went to California, as well as non-famous people.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. More comments on further reading of Cornel West.

Cornel West's book looks like an exercise in self-congratulation.

Maybe he's justifying his success by the white man's standards of Ivy League schools, since he went to Harvard and teaches at Princeton.

He can't keep it in his pants, but says he was "in love", when we learn next to nothing about these women.

:shrug: