July 8, 2021 • 62 mins
Dr. Cornel West, renowned professor and philosopher, and one of the greatest American orators alive speaks with Laverne about what it means to be a love warrior. “Justice is what love looks like in public just like tenderness is what love feels like in private,” is a Cornel West quote that Laverne repeats so often people mistakenly attribute it to her. In this conversation they discuss the resiliency of the Black spirit, how to hold our institutions accountable, and how to be a wounded healer instead of a joy crusher. //
Please rate, review, subscribe and share The Laverne Cox Show with everyone you know. You can find Laverne on Instagram and Twitter @LaverneCox and on Facebook at @LaverneCoxForReal. //
As always, stay in the love. //
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, our production of shand
Land Audio in partnership with My Heart Radio. What would
it be like if people were able to not just
come together with coombae y'all, but most importantly be able
to engage in struggle to preserve the possibility of treating
(00:23):
others in a humane and human way. To see, that's
that's break dance, but Terry, that's hallelloja material. It's a
brother fied make mc how I look like a boy
scout break dancing in the name of joy and hope
and justice and a deep deep love. Hello everyone, and
(00:52):
welcome to the la Verne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox,
and I have quoted Cornell west famous proclamation that justice
is what love looks like in public so many times
I have seen his words attributed to me. Justice is
what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is
(01:13):
what love feels like in private. West goes on to
say that feels like the truth to me. I discovered
Cornell West work through my college obsession with Belle Hooks.
They published a book together called Breaking Bread, Insurgent Black
Intellectual Life. Cornell West is certainly one of America's greatest orators.
(01:35):
When I started my college tour in I obsessively studied West.
West is a professor of philosopher, one of our nation's
foremost public intellectuals. Always in spirit, as we say in
the Black Church, Dr West allows that holy ghost spirit
coupled with a deep desire for justice to enter his body,
(01:56):
to take over and to speak through him. Dr Cornell
West is a philosopher, author, professor, and activists fighting for truth, love,
and racial justice. He is a familiar name in most
households as a prominent democratic intellectual and frequent guest on
The Bill Marshow, CNN, c SPAN, and Democracy Now. He
(02:17):
has written over twenty books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters,
and It's taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard, Yale, Princeton,
among others. West currently co hosts the podcast The Type
Broke with Tricia Rhoes. Please enjoy my conversation the Dr
Cornell West. Dr West, Welcome to the podcast. How are
(02:42):
you feeling today? Well, I tell you I want to
salute you and all that you own and all that
you have done and are doing. My idea, Sister, I
consider you one of the great love conductors on the
love trains. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
I love that you started with love. I was thinking
(03:02):
about how I wanted you to start the conversation. I
was thinking about how much I love you and love
your work. And I want to just take a moment
to invite the energy, the spirit of what you call
that black prophetic fire to enter this conversation. Today. When
you speak and when you write, I feel the energy
of our ancestors speaking through you. I feel that you
(03:23):
get sort of get the spirit in the in the
way that we, you know, talk about in the church.
And so I just want to invite that energy and
spirit and today as we chat for the first time.
But the beautiful thing is is that it's always already
operating inside of you. And you and I are at
the deepest level kindred spirits, because we come from a
people who have been hated for four hundred years. And
(03:45):
keep dishing out the love warriors, yes, terrorized for four
hundred years, and keep dishing out these freedom fighters traumatized
for four hundred years, of dishing out these wounded heither
and anytime I get a chance to see you, the heat,
your you, your spirit, your presence exudes and ex simplifies
(04:07):
and embodies this love warrior ship, and that to me
is always the bottom line in terms of the highest
level of what it means to be human. Absolutely absolutely,
So I did a lot of I'm reading in preparation
to prepare for our conversation today. And the way that
(04:27):
I discovered your work almost thirty years ago was through
Bell Hooks, and it was through the book that you
and Bell did together, Breaking Bread. I was rereading parts
of it last night and I this morning, I was like,
I should call Bell and tell her that I'm talking
to for the other day. So I gave her a
ring this morning and I said, would you like me
to say something to Dr West? And she said, tell
(04:49):
him I love him even though he doesn't treat me right.
You know that that's a very Bell. I'm thinking, oh, love,
she's she's so much an intellectual giant, and uh, she's
one of the love conductors to on on the love turn.
Of course she comes at it now through the Buddhist tradition,
(05:10):
you know what I mean? I know that I think
you A and me design that right, not sig, just
just just yeah. And I'm holding the most holy ghost Baptists,
and so all of us come out of the best
because the worst of that church is a patriarchy, to homophobia,
the losing sight of non binary precious folkus form. But
(05:34):
the best is still the love that pierces through even
those structures that produces the belt hooks, produces a love
Ayon cos you know what I mean, produces by the West.
One of the books that I've always been most excited
about in terms of dialogue has been that breaking read book.
Know that about it. So kind of you to mention
(05:55):
that book. You know, a few people even allude or
refer to that book even m which is a shame.
It's um It's it's thirty years old this year actually
I was published. And what you and Bell were trying
to do, you were both at Yale at the time,
and you're both trying to sort of, you know, have
this public dialogue between black men and black women. And
Bell also wanted me to to ask you about patriarchy
(06:17):
and where you are with patriarchy. I would love to
hear your thoughts now at this stage in your life
about about patriarchy, black men in patriarchy, and your relationship
to how you where you've examined your own relationship to
that in your life. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I
should add as a footnote, yes, that the the copy
(06:39):
editor to Breaking Bread is now a towering figure the
name of Imanti Perry. Oh yes, yes, yes, that Demanti
was an undergrad it. Yeah, let's say that because any
time we talk about any form of evil patriarchy, white
supremacis home of phobia, predator capitalism, repressive communist, or whatever
is a that los a side of humanity folk, that
(07:02):
one of our responses has to be trying to help
shape and mold into the best of our ability produce
folks who become forces for good against that evil. That's
what when I think of Remandy Perry as a student
and now a towering figure, I say, well, if my
(07:25):
work will speak for me, then the question of who
we help push and affirm and encourage and empower. So
anytime I think about patriarchy, one of the things I
want to say is what have I done to try
to kill it? Because patriarchy is killing other folk. I
(07:46):
don't want to be narcissistic or solipsistic. It's just about me.
If I come to turn the patriarchy, then patriarchy has
a chance of being dismantled. Now it's got to be
collectively because its systemics and institutional structure domination exactly. So,
these days, I think patriarchy is running amok. You can
(08:10):
see it in the culture. And yet we've got some
strong forces, including yourself and others and Bail and others,
who are countervailing against the patriarchy running amok. And so
anytime we talk about patriarchy, we want to understand it
as a balance of forces resistance and domination, but relative too,
(08:34):
of the structures of domination. Yeah, and when I think
about breaking bread in relationships between black men and and
black women, there's so much contempt right now. Colorism feels
like it's like ripping our our community apart. In relationships
with black men and black women, and in patriarchy, it's
tied to all of very very true. I think that
(08:57):
colorism has always been operating in such a way that
is ripping us apart. Is just an under gym crow conditions.
It couldn't operate in a broader way. Now, these days,
we've got unprecedented opportunities for significant slice of us who
(09:20):
are part of a black middle class part of a
black bourgeoisie, and we have to make sure that no
matter what our social status is, that our spirits intact,
our sensitivity with the folk catching hell is strong. And
therefore the connection between patriarchy and colorism and class and
even empire and homophobia has to always kick in. Yes,
(09:43):
the capitalism peace feels very precedent right now, particularly one
one thinks of colorism and relationship to patriarchy. And I
think the piece to where seeing black men musical artists
be such arbiters of colorism so so blatantly, you know,
That's really what I'm thinking in the the pain that
that causes, the pain and the trauma that that causes
(10:03):
for so many black women out there. And you you
obviously talk about the catastrophic, the traumatic and the lives
and the experiences of black people all the time. And
I just was there a moment for you, perhaps it
was just in the text Two Boys and and Socrates
and whatnot, where there was a trauma or where there
(10:24):
was something, you know, a moment where you had an
awakening of sources where you died. Where you always talk about,
you know, philosophy being the space where we go to
learn to die? Is that an ongoing process for you?
Was there a moment, you know, in your early scholarship
where something shifted for you around and was there something traumatic?
I guess, um relationship to all that your question is
(10:46):
so good and high quality. I wish we had four
hours rather than whatever about the time you wanta take.
But um, I mean right now, the death of my mother.
That's the major traumatic he's been in my life. The
be his catastrophe when I go back, certainly when I
got kicked out of school and no school would take
(11:07):
me because I was a young gangster. How old were
you when you were kicked out of school? I was
kicked out of school and I was seven years old.
Refused to salute the flag, and I got in the
fight with my teacher and we ended up with a
little riot the Communion Elementary School on Chocolate side of Sacramento,
and I got in very, very deep trouble. I knew
(11:29):
that this was going to be a turning point in
my life because mom was a teacher, not in the
same school, but a teacher, and Dad came home early,
you know, and got his belt out. That would be one. Uh.
When I think of Martin Luther King Jr. Being shocked
because I was trying to be a great athlete at
that time and track star. It hit me so hard
(11:53):
that I decided then that his legacy was something that
I would try to always view as a stay ended
of moral and spiritual excellence and aspire to and whatever
form of life I pursued. Those were probably the most
discernible ones beside the deeply personal ones in terms of
you know, relationships to say, I won't get into all
(12:14):
of that right now, but in the end, it's really
for me and I love to hear what you have
to say. My bus sister is uh, it's two black musicians.
It's done a halfway and John Coltrane and Saravan Carmen
McCrae and glad As Night and dramatics and whispers and thinks.
(12:35):
They're the ones who for me provide the kind of
spiritual resources, the spiritual wherewithal to withstand whatever catastrophic effects
are bombarding me. Yes, and there there have been many lately.
I want to actually read a quote of yours about
(12:57):
music that is, they're so beautiful that my brother reminded
me of when I spoke to him earlier about you.
You've said of music at its best is the grand
archaeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great
human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and
yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us beyond
(13:18):
language to the dark roots of our scream and the
celestial heights of our silence. That's some beautiful prose, doctor West.
You know, I was thinking, one of the main reasons
I wanted to have a conversation with you is that
you for over forty years, you have been a freedom fighter.
You've been a love warrior, teaching at prisons, getting arrested, protesting,
(13:42):
being canceled, you know, you know, and all of the things,
and yet you still are fighting. Yet you still show
up last year after you know, Porst George Floyd and
post Brianna Taylor and Tony McDade and just all of
what was going on in the world. And really, for me,
the trauma of repeatedly seeing black people murdered on camera
are nervous, since are made to see people be murdered
(14:04):
on camera, that is not normal. Broke I broke down,
and it was I just couldn't, you know, I couldn't
go to a protest, I couldn't speak. I had to
get myself together. How have you kept going all these
years in the fight when it's hard, when it's traumatizing,
when people are trying to cancel you, when people are
saying all kinds of crazy stuff about you, and you
(14:25):
keep speaking shoot to power? What keeps you in the fight? Dr? West? Well,
I mean one is my dear sister, and all honesty
that when I see persons like yourself and others who
have made a promise to be true to their calling
(14:46):
based on the best of a tradition that has shaped
them at the deepest spiritual and moral and intellectual level,
then I know that the cloud of witnesses that we all,
at our best want to be a part of is
always worth it. It's always something that allows us to
(15:06):
make whatever risk and take whatever costs we need in
order to keep it going, so that, no matter what
the immediate consequences are, the quality of the person of
period tubbing and either be wells by net and sojourn
at Truths and Martin Malcolm, that the quality of who
(15:27):
they are, their sincerity and their integrity is worthy of
our preservation. Manifest in our lives, regardless of whether it
looks like there will be immediate victory. And so, for example,
doing the Obama years, you know, and he had a
whole lot of loving folks who didn't treat me to lovingly.
(15:49):
And that's all right, because everybody don't love everybody equally. Now,
I can I tell you that was deeply painful for
me to watch. So during during the Obama administration, you
were very critical of the president at the time, and
there was tremendous backlash from the black intelligencia from many
people who took issue with you being critical of Obama.
(16:11):
There there was so much love for him, and the
criticism folks just were we're not able to receieve at
the time. No, it's true. I mean I thought he
was two tied to Wall Street. None of the Wall
Street gangster went to jail where so many of everyday
people were going to jail. At the time. I thought
he was too blind when he came to dropping drones
on innocent people. Those are war crimes for me, five
(16:32):
sixty three drones dropped, two thousand and so innocent people killed.
So it was hard to be critical of brother Barack
Obama because he's so borried and he's so poised. But
any president, no matter what color, you know, when he
tied to Wall Street greed like that, when they tied
the drones like that, when you're not really coming out
(16:52):
but the critique of mass incarceration and the police and
allowing the militarizing of the police take place. So you
end up with a black Lies Matter movement under a
black president, of black attorney general and a black Homeland
Security Cabinlet secretary. That's just the people themselves expressing their
own critiques. And I resonated with that critique in that regard.
(17:13):
But that doesn't mean that Barack Obama was not its
somewhere forceful good. It was just for me to milk, toast,
to centrists, to moderate and too tied to the powers
that be and not tied to the least of these enough.
That was really what it was about. If there's anything
about that period that you would do differently about around
your critique of Obama, there were many people at the
(17:36):
time who agreed with your critique but thought that that
that the language and the tone was less than than humanizing.
All these years later, do you and he regrets? So,
how do you feel today. I think that people have
people have good ground for saying some of my language
was a little bit too hyperbolic, There's no doubt about that,
(17:57):
but that's just the way I am. It really is
gang I got gangster elements even in my my fire,
and sometimes that spills over. So I could have said that,
for example, uh, he's two tips the Wall Street, but
I had reached the point where I was calling him,
you know, a black puppet of Wall Street. Well, that's
that's my language. Is hard not to be true to
(18:19):
my language, you know what I mean. It's like asking
Eddie Kendriy is not the same falsetto. It's hard to
And yet when I listened to us, said, oh, would
have me in turns before golf and and and they're
right about that. So then I'd have to come back
and I would use a different language. But that lagmage
had already taken off next to you know, it's the
internet everywhere. So in that sense, yes, I think all
(18:41):
of us ought to be able to look back and
be critical and self critical. But I certainly would not
have in anywhere attenuate the orientation of where I was going,
Because we're really talking about the plight of the least
of these under any president, no matter what color they
(19:04):
are or agenda they are. What was that like though,
in the midst of it, right in the midst of
and I've I've thought interviews that you gave at the
time when you know that Michael Eric Dyson Peace came out,
What was it like continuing to go on television, continuing
to get arrested, continuing to go to protests, continuing to
teach when there were such vitriol for me, when I've
(19:26):
had people when I felt misrepresented right publicly as a
public figure, when people are sort of misrepresenting what my
attentions are, it's so painful, and I really I have
this desire to be understood, and just it gets like,
how can I keep going on and going out there
when people are so cruel? And you kept going out
there and and it was it was bad, It was
(19:47):
really really bad. So, um, honey, what's going on? I mean,
it is different. You know, we give my dear brother
Dison coming at me, hit me below the bill. That's
a little differ within some of the right wing folks
on Fox or something. That always different when your own
people are coming for you so that does hit differently.
But you know, as a free black man and as
(20:10):
a Christian, though, I always had to have a sense
that I should never ever be surprised at any kind
of evil or paralyzed by any kind of despair. So
I could be hurt, it could be painful, I could
(20:31):
be upset, but I shouldn't be surprised, which means that
I've always got some gas in my tank to keep
going and recognized Dyson still my brother, He's still got
some positive things to say. I'm just coming at him
tooth and nail in the name of the truth. Understand,
(20:53):
you see what I mean and say it would be
true for whatever it is right wing folks, the Nazi,
same as true for you know, gangs like Trump and others,
because I know I got some gangs in me like
everybody else. So in that way, I can never conceive
of circumstances under which I would not still come out
swinging in the name of love. And I think you
(21:16):
know what one of the things that just spell Holds
myself would always say is that you see, our love
for black people is unconditional. It's not quit procool, it's
not If you love me, I will love you. I
love you because you love me. Now, when we go
into a church or a mosque or temple or community center,
(21:39):
even a nightclub, to speak that we're loving black people
because black people are worthy of being loved regardless of
what they say or do to us, and nobody can
take that away. Amen, Now, it feels like a great
(22:01):
time for a short break. We'll be right back though. Okay,
we're back. Let's keep the conversation going. One of the
(22:23):
things I really and it it keeps my own moral
and ethical compass, you know, sort of on track and
and in the right direction. Is you always talk about
the least of these. You always talk about poor and
working people and what we can and should be doing
for them. You've spoken how you were sort of encouraged
by some of the early signs of this current current administration.
(22:43):
And I you know, I'm worried because there's you know,
there's no fifteen dollar minimum wage right that we have
a able to raise them rasimum wage for poor and
working people, and that um, the way in which our
politicians are so corrupted by money and politics keeps the
the um concerns a poor and working people on the periphery.
(23:03):
What can we be doing now to hold our politicians
accountable when they're really more accountable, seem more accountable to
special interest into um, you know, big money. There is
an opportunity to shift things structurally, and I'm I'm just
so terrified that we're not going to take it for
the least of least for the people who are most vulnerable.
My Desu, you get at the heart and core of
(23:26):
what my vision and vocation has been. I bigly appreciate
that because those words in the twenty fifth chap. But Matthew,
me and the world have made it because what you
do the least these you do unto me. I think
in the present moment, on the one hand, we got
the fascist threats still operating with Trump and company in
the Republican Party that's undergone a fascist expansion. So even
(23:50):
the List Change, who has been wrong and cold and
callous and and different to working people and poor people
her whole career, ends up having a moment of integ
because you doesn't want to succumb the fastest taking over
her party. And I salute her for that moment, as
it were. But when it comes to somebody like brother Biden,
as sister Harris brother Biden. I mean, he's got blood
(24:13):
on his hands. He got four crimes against humanity, mass incarceration,
invasion and occupation of a rock, the unleashing of Wall Street,
greed with the repeal of Glass Stigel, a vicious Israeli
domination and occupation. He has been not just a supporter,
but he's been an architect and bragged about it up
(24:35):
until recently. So he can change. I believe anybody can change,
and he's his capacity to change with the relief bill
and the infrastructure bill and talking about white supremacy and
Jim Crow. I applaud that he might have been LBJ
in that regard. But also when it comes to these
issues of foreign policy, like what's happening Goza, and he
(24:56):
finally makes a decision to call for to cease fire,
and people want to give him some moral prize because
he's engaging in such courageous at you, I say, that's ridiculous.
We got to be honest about this, and it's sad
to see that. Uh, you know, we don't have forces
in the Democratic Party that are strong. And thank God
for Brother Bernie sound Us and Brother Rocanna and the
(25:18):
system of read Newman and others, and thank God for
Corey and the squad was trying to push this through,
but it's still just it's not enough. And I must say,
when it comes to our black politicians, my dear sister,
it's a sad affair. We've seen coward ladness, we've seen copictulation,
(25:40):
and it's a sad thing. And that's true, not just
in terms of the way in which palestines are being treated,
but when you get somebody like by and it stands
up and says, this is not a racist country. You said,
get off the crack pipe, brother, you can't tell the truth.
And then sister Harris echoes that. Then brother Clyde Burne
echoes that. And you know, if he said this is
(26:01):
a racist country, then they would say it's racist because
they're just echoes of the boss. And that's the last
thing we need. We need for with integrity who willed
to tell the truth, how can you even think that
America is not deeply racist and not a racist country.
That didn't mean every individual in the country's racial institution
structures deeply shot through with white supremacy, going and tell
(26:24):
the truth, don't deny it, and then highlight the countervailing
forces against it. That's the crucial thing, it seems to me.
And I would say the same thing about America being
a homophobic country, and the same thing about it being
a class this country, and it is an empire, it's
an imperial country, but that doesn't mean anybody in the
country is homophobic. Everybody in the country is sexist, but
(26:48):
it's a deeplyst sexist society. So when you get these
kind of moments of cowardliness, you said to yourself, you
had a democratic party establishment is still in milk toal form,
even though it's doing some very progressive things in other spheres,
and I do want to support those infrastructure bills and
(27:10):
other such efforts. It's, you know, just telling the truth
about that America being a racist country. What is intense
to me right now looking at the state of things
is that is they they extent to which folks, particularly
on the right, are being radicalized by social media based
book by conservative media. There's such um persistent propaganda and
(27:32):
misinformation happening in conservative media that feels almost insurmountable. Right.
We tell you you are always talking about telling the
truth and and when you know killing in conways, you
know alternative facts. You know, I think she coined in
on Meet the Press. The idea of alternative facts means
that we're talking about misinformation, We're talking about lies, mendacity
(27:53):
as as you would say. So in the face of
mendacity of lives of propaganda, people who aren't even exposed
to the truth, right, who have not developed the critical
consciousness because we don't value education. And in this country,
how can the truth even break through when our media
has done such a bad job, you know, established media
(28:16):
has done such a bad job of informing the public,
and then there's such a concerted effort in sort of
conservative media, you know, propagandies. So then how does the
truth prevailed? How can the truth come in this current moment,
in the current state of our media. Yes see, I
think historically the truth is always a flickering candle against
(28:38):
the backdrop of the night. Always think of what Frederick
Douglas and Harriet Tubman were up against in terms of
lives and crimes and mendacity and criminality, the normalizing of
hatred and greed, and white supremacy and male supremacy and
predatory capital. So in that sense, even though social media
(29:00):
is a new form of technology to facilitate lives and
crimes and mendacity in criminality. The truth is always headed
towards the cross, So we shouldn't be surprised when you
see how mighty these devilish lives are. But we have
to believe in the end that there's something that's almighty
(29:22):
or mighty year than the lies and the crimes such
that it will not suffocate and saturate the world and
history in such a way that there's no truth tellers left.
I mean, look at Soviet Union, they thought they could
just completely eliminate the truth tellers in the name of communists.
And I say this as a leftist, but you gotta
(29:43):
tell the truth. Look at South Africa, they thought they
can completely do away with the truth tellers, whatever Tina
Tusulu and and and Nelse Mandela and the other. Look
at the United States, they think they can completely do
away under McCarthy is or with Claudie Jones and and
Ben Davis and the communists trying to tell the truth,
not always right on everything, but certainly right about capitalism
(30:06):
and racism and so forth. So in that way, the
liars never completely wipe folk out. And I just want
to be part of that cloud of witnesses that keeps
alive that tradition and then pass it on to the
sister Laverne Coxes because I read it in the Google
that was said Sister labery Cock said justice is what
(30:29):
love looks like in public, and it makes me want
to break things, just like tenderness is what love feels
like in private. I sent as a video of you
I'm saying that to my boyfriend a few weeks ago,
and he was like, that's exactly right. And to have that,
to really know what love is, to know what that
tenderness feels like in private and then have a version
for what that could be in public, it's just so
(30:52):
powerful to me. It just I always think, can you
imagine what it would look like if our policies were
built in love and the truth, and that we can
love everyone right, That we could have the humanity, the
beautiful humanity of every citizen highlighted in our the way
we do public policy, the way we structure our institutions.
If that was from a place of love, that could
(31:13):
be It's beautiful, beautiful revolution. But you understand, you understand that.
So I've been blessed teaching prisons for forty one years.
And if there's an anthem of my brothers in prisons,
it would be a zoomed by the common duals. I
don't know if I know that zoo zoo. I like
to fly Oh wait, well, I like to fly away.
(31:36):
I like the fly away zoom. And the dream is
the freedom dream, and it reminds us of the great
classic of Robert Kelly book called Freedom Dream. And it's
just dream of what things would really be like if
our humanity and dignity were affirmed across race, across any
form of national identity, during the sexual orientation and so forth.
(32:00):
What would it be like if people were able to
not just come together with coombae y'all, but most importantly
be able to engage in struggle to preserve the possibility
of treating others in a humane and human way. And see,
that's that's break dance material, that's hallelloja material. It's abother fire.
(32:22):
Make MC look like a boy scout in terms of
break dance and in the name of joy and hope
and justice and a deep, deep love. Yes, when when
I think about I was talking to my brother this
morning about that black prophetic fire and traditions and hope
and and being in your blues man, of course, and
that in the blues and the catastrophe of the blues
(32:45):
is joy and there is always the joy there. And
when I, of course, whenever I think about joy, I
think about what Burnee Brown says about joy that she
in her research, she discovered their joy is the most
difficult emotion to feel. That is the most vulnerable emotion
to feel, because often when we are truly in a
space of being joyous, we are for bow joy, wait
for the other shooter drop so to allow ourselves to
(33:06):
feel joy. It is the most vulnerable of emotions. But
that is so deeply rooted in in what it means
to be black and American. There's so many people in
social media now talking about black joy and how important
me is to lean into that. Leaning into black joy
is leaning into that black prophetic fires, leaning into the
things that you know have sustained us for for centuries.
And it also is incredibly vulnerable, and vulnerability is really
(33:30):
the the source of everything that allows us to be
all that we can be. I think for vulnerability, it's
often thought of as weakness, and you know, number one
vulnerability yield for for men is to not appear weak.
And so I think that that among men that needs
to be a conversation around letting go of those those ideas,
(33:54):
like letting those ideas die so they can come to
a more more in line place. But emotion of associating
vulnerability with a willingness to be crushed, you see, they're
not the same thing. That vulnerability is a way of
allowing you to open up such that you end up
(34:16):
being stronger. So when you do have a confrontation with
Miles had had a conversation with the police and they
beat him down like a doll and he was swinging.
I'm swinging with him too. Why because there's moments in
which your strength is not going to be manifesting vulnerability.
Of strength will be manifesting the tenacity against the a
(34:38):
force of coersion. But in terms of living and in
terms of relationship, the strongest of us, whatever our intention,
wherever we are, it has to be one in which
we're willing to give in order to receive, and we're
giving in such a way that the receiving that we
have has a bottom less nets to it. That's what
(35:01):
love is. Yes, the more you give the more you receive.
The more you receive, the more you're able to give.
But you can't do that without verbability. It also means
you're wound the ball. It also means that you can
get hurt, and that is that unfortunate or whateverything about love.
It's a beautiful thing, but it means we can get hurt,
and we have to be willing to risk that hurt,
(35:24):
to be wound a ball, to really truly be vulnerable.
That's true, No, but that's that's wisdom at the deepest level.
Because you know Sappho a great poet from the Greek period,
or at least among the Greeks, where she says, the
bitter sweetness its constitutive of the love. Every love, you're
gonna get hurt. The question is how you gonna deal
(35:47):
with the hurt. Are you tied to a love such
that two k survive without that love? Which goes and
then add with the bitter sweetness, because if you think
you can love with no bitter sweet you better go
onto disney Land, stay on Main Street, drink your soda pop.
You know what I mean. You won't kill us. And
I think that's what I always have to remind myself
of it to face the pain. And we're gonna have
(36:08):
to face the pain, but it won't kill us. I
can survive. That's exactly. Vulnerability comes from the Latin as
you know, BuNos, which means wound. Yes, there is no
love without vulnerability, just like there is no intimacy without vulnerability,
which means the question becomes, what do you do with
your wounds? And with those wounds? Will you be a
(36:30):
wounded healer and joy spreader or will you be a
wounded hurter and a joy crusher? And all of us
have these poles inside of our souls. But when it
comes to Black folks, you see, we are a great
people at our best. We are world historical people at
(36:51):
our best, because we have looked unflinchingly at the most
grim and dim reality these of catastrophe in the modern
world and has kept dishing out these persons of hiden
vulnerability who look at their wounds and still want to
(37:12):
heal others rather than just go about trashing others. That's
what Martin King's about, That's what John Coltran's Love Supremes about.
That's what Whya Jackson is about. That's what the tax
is about. I'm telling you, because the thing is, people
don't understand the connection between your historical role as transgressing
(37:34):
some of these ugly homophobic and transgender sensibilities but always
situating it in the caravan and love. But the Isley
bother or the love training of any persons who are
wrestling with their wounds in such a way that they're
concerned about healing others. That's the cloud of what that
says that I'm talking about. You know, I often think
(37:56):
that it's not an accident at the first openly transmitter
of person to be on the cover of Time magazine,
to be nominated for an immediate as a black trans
woman and a black trans woman who deeply understands the
tradition of black folks in America, and and and I'm
very clear that if I've ever done anything great in
my life that it is because of the ancestors. It
(38:17):
is because of the transcestors. And I've allowed myself to
be used that I that I've allowed that. I think
it's important to know when you always say the best
of us, and I think to the but the worst
of us though, right, you know, the worst of black folks.
I think about that Sam Jackson's character and Jay and
Go and Chain, and you know, we know black folks
sold other black folks. We know that black men have
(38:38):
been horribly misogynistic towards Black women, and so there, so
there is the trauma piece. Hurt people, hurt people, right,
there's such a deep pain. So there's all these things
that we have done that we do out of pain,
out of trauma. There's the accountability piece, and there's making
amends and how do we heal the trauma? Build trauma
resilience and shame resilience, And these are huge parts of
(39:01):
my life and my work. And I know that so
much of the transphobia I've experienced in my life, and
it's been from other black people in a lot of pain.
Right that that there's a that there is historically a
legacy of literal emasculation of black men, right when black
men were lynched off in their genitalia with with cut off.
There's this this history, you know, in cinema and of
(39:23):
the literally emasculation of black men. So there's a lot
of pain I think that we are aware of and
not aware of attached to that, and that has been
often projected onto me as a black trans woman, and
how do we reconcile that pain without becoming the oppressor?
I mean, one is always recognized and a degree to
which we're all on a human continual so that we
(39:46):
never put ourselves above others even when they are morally
and spiritually wrong, because we know there's elements in them
that are in us, which means they have a capacity
to change, Which means that at the moment with the
engaging gangs activity, and we have a gangster element inside
of us, and that doesn't really all the same. It
just means we made different kinds of choices in this regard,
(40:09):
you see, so that the kind of internalized oppression that
the Great Arctic Lord talks about. Of course Belle Us
talks about this as the great theory of radical pedagogy
and education that she is. How do we attempt to
kill and murder the forms of internalized oppression inside of
us so that we are not in any way, in
our actions and perceptions reproducing it, even though we claim
(40:30):
to be progressive. And that's a human battle. That is
a human battle. And in the end, I think it's
really the arts and certain stories of great examples, because
in the end, the only thing we really have to
go on in terms of our ability to connect with
each other with the love and the tenderness. Are the examples.
(40:52):
You see what I mean. The sister Laverin Cox is
a living sermon. It ain't just what is said head,
it is what is lived. But what has lived still
a human life, you know, it's not a life that
somehow it's transcended. And and myself as a Christian because
I go back to that palsing to do name Jesus,
(41:14):
he's questioning the existence of God, my God, my God?
Why does that? For a second, He's questioned his ability
to conform to any kind of will of God. He's
got a whole host of struggles going on inside of him,
and it looks like, for a moment he's an atheist.
For a moment he's an agnostic, because why he was
the word made flash John one fourteen. It came to
(41:37):
dwell among us. A whole lot of interpretations of that, right, Christians,
that might be Jesus and other spirits for human beings.
Is like the truth made flash, the embodiment of it,
the concratization of examples. That's the key traditions that constitute
those examples coming together, and there's those traditions that we
(41:59):
try to keep alive. And that's why there's so much
spiritual warfare against young folks, especially black young folks. If
you can keep them from certain kind of loving spirits,
sacrificial spirits, courageous spirits, only presented them the successful spirits
(42:20):
who are accommodating themselves to a status quo, well adjusted
the injustice, but got big spectacle, big money, big status,
big position than the young folks no longer even have
a perception. They can't even see what greatness is. All
this is success. They can't see magnanimity, All this is prosperity.
(42:42):
They can see integrity. All they say is cupidity. Oh
I just want to be a lover of money. I
just want to be a love of status. No, keep
your money, have your status, but you better know something deep.
But what came into the flesh, Some love came in
Some justice was injected in there, some sacrifice was injected
(43:05):
in there. And now was to exemplify that example, exemplify
that kind of orientation. They got something the offer. Absolutely,
they got some thank you so much of it's so beautiful.
This it's the example. But I think I also think
we should be in therapy, and I think we should
be in therapy. I also think that we need to
be dealing with addiction. If there is addiction, you know
(43:28):
that that there's tough step programs, that there's their their ways,
that we're actively engaged in a process of healing. Yes,
I really is important to have that embodied in the
somatic work that I do in my trauma resilience. That
all of this has to be embodied to the beautiful
resource of our ancests, the beautiful resource of those examples
you you set forth. It is so incased, so important
(43:48):
that that is embodied, that we feel that in our
nervous systems. But then I think sometimes too, the trauma
is so great, the abuse is so so real, that
we have to seek seek some help too, that we
have to You know, my, my, my deeply beloved and
a heat she's a professor of psychology but also part
of addiction studies, and so she gets a chance to
(44:11):
reflect and give me deep wise insight as to how
you come to terms with different therapeutic options that can empower,
different clinical options that can empower, but even those must
have a spiritual dimension. Here we go back to Bill
Hooks again, and by spiritual, all we talk about is love, compassion, empathy,
(44:36):
wrestling with hiding vulnerability, open to intimacy, because those are
the only things that open we human beings up. And
I'll say, and is the best spirituality that it's a
sense of having a connection just and something that is
greater than us. Something a connection that can be a community,
that can be a tradition, it could be a religion.
But but the connection to something that is bigger than us.
(44:59):
Absolute know, the great rab By Abraham josh Or has
used to know another one of my soul companions, you know,
like cold Rane that he used to say, something greater
than us is asking us to do something, is making
a request and a demand of us. And that's something bigger.
(45:20):
Can be a god, but atheists can play just as
important roll. The more it could be an ideal, it
could be a tradition, it could be a commitment to
artistic vocation, all of those things, something bigger than us
is asking us to do something of help to others. Own,
(45:41):
brother d Witch, in terms of on the same love train,
you just own the judaic section of it, and I'm
on the Jesus loving section of it where he loved
Jesus too, but not the way that I do. You don't,
but but we own the same train together. The same
is true with Angela David. She dead up secondar even
though she come out of Black Church. She did, I'm
second in the atheistic wing right on. Angela loved you
(46:05):
love it. It's hard for the Black Church to ever
really leave you if you if you were raised in it.
I suspect I take a teensy break here, but I'll
be fast. That wasn't so bad, now, wasn't okay? Let's
(46:33):
get back to it. Um. One other thing you said
m recently that the language of wokeness is detrimental. You
recently said that if you stay woke, you suffer from insomnia.
I believe in being fortified. Wokeness is a moment in
our attempt to fortify ourselves to be love warriors, be
(46:53):
wounded healers, and to be freedom fighters, all three at
the same time. Can you can you expand a bit
on on that and what guess what it means to
be fortified, how we fortify ourselves as opposed to wokeness.
Because you if you watch you know conservative news, you
know or listen, they're like, no woke if killing us
anti woke sentiment that it's permeating conservative media now. So
(47:15):
I would love for you to expand on what you
mean by what we need, what it means to fortify ourselves.
I was saying kind of ingest that wokeness is a
beautiful thing because it means you shattered the sleep walking,
which means you shattered your complicity and complacency visa the
oppressive status closed. But what we want a long distance
(47:38):
runners in the struggle for love and justice. And you
can't be along distance running if you just woke every second.
That was part of got a joke in Joe been
something you know that you got to fortify yourself to
recognize when you awoke, you're seeing things you haven't seen before.
You're feeling things deeper, you're acting more courageously. But there's
(48:00):
moments in which you're gonna have to steal away, gonna
need some sleep. Brother, It's just you got to pace
yourself for the long run. We just lost one of
the greatest track athletes of all time, Lee Evans. He
was the greatest full forty and four hundred meter run
ever and he had a wokenus in terms of his discipline,
(48:21):
and when he was practicing and discipline, he was the
most woke on the track field. But he knew he's
gonna have to somehow have the whole life so that
he could be the great track person that he was
met after me year after year, and so he fortified himself.
And I think anytime we think of great athletes like Lee,
(48:43):
ever great musicians like Ben Webster or Mary Lou Williams,
they were fortified. What is fortified mean put on the whole,
whole on, put the whole. Any justice that's only justice
soon degenerates into some the less the justice. You need
(49:03):
a love to keep your justice afloat, Yes, Because if
you're only concerned about justice and you don't have a
deep love, care and concern for the folks you're fighting for,
you're gonna sell out pretty soon. You're gonna get bought
off real quick. But if you gotta deepcare, even when
you change your ideology, like Malcolm, you see, he had
(49:26):
a love that cuts so deep that it informed his
new conceptions of justice. Embracing struggles against patriarchy, embracing struggles
against any form that loses sight of the humanity and
in that sense, you know, the shift from Malcolm Little
of Malcolm X at the end, it hardly gets better
than that. Amazing. You often talk about two Boys is
(49:52):
four questions that that he has for young people. You
often mentioned that think because I think we live in
an anti intellectual era. Uh, we live in an era
where predatory capitalism, where people want to make a lot
of money and and greed. It's just it's rampant, right,
And you've said this in other ways, that people just
want to be successful but not great and and and
the money motives and the integrity piece, and so in
(50:16):
one what are your thoughts under boys is four questions
now for young people? And do you still feel it's
it's it's those questions are relevant. You know what what
do boys asked us to? You want? Should I do
you want to tell us what they are? Should I
tell us? Oh? Absolutely no? And I had a feeling
you'd like to. I appreciate you mentioned in those And
(50:36):
how shall integrity face oppression? What does honestly do in
the face of deception? What does decency do in the
face of ind so how shall courage meet brute force?
Those questions are as relevant as they can be today.
The oppression is still there all parts of the world, Europe,
(51:00):
Middle East, Asia, United States. Where is the intellectual, moral,
and spiritual integrity to tell the truth? Deception lies everywhere?
Where is the honesty to point it out and then
laid bare what the alternative is? And then you think
of the assaults and attacks micro and macro. Where is
(51:20):
the decency? Decency is a revolutionary act and an indecent society.
For me, that's what decency is. Making sure that the
Golden rule is amplified across the board. I want you
to do to poor folks in South side of Los Angeles,
(51:41):
white bossist in Appalachia, Precious trans Froke in Brazil, Palestinians
on the West Bank, Jews in Russia, Muslims in China.
Do to them what you would want to be done
to you personally and structurally. And so the vorce's questions integrity, honest, decency, courage. Oh,
(52:02):
if we had a renaissance that those we had a
more spiritual renaissance of those were on our way to revolution.
But there's a price to pay. It's trickier for black politicians,
I think right it's it was easier for Clinton and
for Biden to talk about race, and it was for
Obama because he's black, so so that the doll know
it's useful Obama. But it's harder to talk. But the
(52:23):
political calculations that black politicians have to do, that black
celebrities have to do to maintain a certain level of
no sort of being canceled, I guess, or just or
being able to continue to have a platform, continue to
be able to do some kind of work. Their choices
that have to be made. And it's and it's like,
are those choices anti are integrity? There's the incrementalism, and
(52:45):
there's a revolutionary the consequences of step telling the truth.
You have lived those, right, We've seen when you were
campaigning for Sandra's last year and and and the year before,
and all of a sudden I saw you on television again.
I saw people looking to you with reverence when you
said were not enough to put black faces in high places.
It just there was something so beautiful about it, right
that somehow the culture hits shifted and you were still,
(53:09):
you know, saying the same things and doing the same things.
But then the world kind of came around. You're able
to You're you're in the academy, and I know you
weren't tating your at Harvard, but you weren't your other
places that you're able to, you know, continue to survive
into and to take care of yourself for those folks
who want to be able to tell the truth. But
the consequences of telling the truth, right, there are real
(53:30):
life consequences that you know when you tell the truth.
And you know the way in which Sanders last year
went right before Super Tuesday, the way all the Canadas
sort of dropped out and coalesced behind Biden because Sanders
was such a threat to the status quo. It was
such for me an example of how the system is relentless.
(53:53):
Bell has called imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarch. Added that
cis normative, heteronormative, imperialist, white supremas is capitalist, patriarch is
relentle us in trying to in fortifying its own power.
And so in the face of all of that, in
the consequences of telling that, you the consequence that being
in your anyone's integrity, everyone is unable to bounce back. Yeah,
(54:14):
what would you say to that, Doc? Dr West? I
don't really think there is a definitive answer. It's only
our lives that are lived. In a response to that question,
I think about the Alonious Monk, you know, one of
the great geniuses, who went silent those last years of
his life, every day getting up looking out the window,
(54:37):
year after year. We don't know what went into that,
but he had already given the world so much, and
yet his response is going to be in the end
very different than you know the ways in which Billie
Holiday would respond. And she's gone through her own catastrophic experiences,
(54:58):
but all of them are and to have enough resilience
to give us, enough to help us in our resilience
for the next generation. You see what you've already given,
sus a Laverant is extraordinary and more to come, but
whenever comes, you pushed it to the end of what
(55:20):
you could. That's our cannosis, that's our emptying of ourselves,
are giving, our donating and sacrificing of ourselves. Right and
with me, I tried to do all that I can do.
I dropped that tomorrow night with a smile on my face.
I gave all that I could give, but it was
still not enough. It's never enough, because the world is
too overwhelmingly demon griment as many ways. But there's enough life,
(55:43):
enough love, enough justice, enough compassion to keep the cloud
of witnesses going from one generation to the next. But
that's really not a definitive and and so because history
is always open ended, you don't know, we have to
wrap up, which is I'm such a shame. And I
(56:04):
like to end the podcast with a question that comes
from my therapy, from the community resiliency model, from the
idea of both. And when I'm struggling there, what do
I use to kind of get through? What else is
true for me? What helps me to get through? I
can choose to focus on what's difficult, right, and that
what we focus on sort of magnified. But I can
choose to focus on something that is neutral or positive
(56:25):
in my life, something that helps me get through a resource.
So Dr Cornell West today, for you, what else it's
true for me? See, I believe in revolutionary piety, and
piety is remembrance, it is reverence for something bigger than
you is resistance allows you to want to serve and
(56:49):
sacrifice for what is bigger and better. What are the
sources of good in your life that have allowed you
to preserve your sanity and your dignity in your deeper
and darkest hours. And you have to have something to
pull from. Doesn't just fall down from the sky. Comes
out of your mom and your daddy, your grandparents, your friends,
(57:11):
your partners, your boyfriends, your girlfriend, your teachers, your coaches,
invisible folk, wol you've never seen, but you read that text.
It could be played though, it could be deal, it
could be dose to Avsky. It could be within the
Linn Brooks. It could be Lorderca, or it could be
pasta night. All of them can constitute your community of voices.
(57:36):
And then you got to follow the Negro national anthem.
Lift yo voys, not your echo, let the echo chamber.
Go find your voice. Lift your voice. Be of service
to others with the voice that you have given, the
vocation that God has given you, such that you can
(57:58):
allow the love inside of you to have impact on
vocal feel on love. So they think of doing things
they didn't even think they could do. They have possibilities
that they had downplayed. But you provided a certain way
of looking at the world such that they could begin
to actualize them. Why because that's what the folk did
for us. That's what's kept not just black pool going.
(58:20):
That's the best of the human spirit. Amen. Oh yeah,
as you were just talking now, I was reminded and
we started with bell hooks and yearning, bell hooks rights.
Our struggle, too, is also one of memory against forgetting.
How do we remember? And when we can remember? So
much else is true. There's so many things that can
(58:40):
get us through these catastrophic times, these lose infused times.
Thank you so much. Dr West. You're on social media.
I follow you on Instagram and we and you have
the tight Rope podcast. Where can folks find find your people?
(59:02):
Come on just Twitter and and and and Facebook and things.
But I just want to thank you from the bottom
of my heart. You are just beyond extraordinary in terms
of your mind, your heart, your soul, your willingness to love,
love and swer and you you're one of the grand
examples that I talked about very much, so very very
(59:24):
grateful Right now in this moment, I'm overwhelmed. Thank you
so much, Dr West. Thank you, Thank you the love
and respect which I can give you a hug virtually
there there's a virtual hug. Dr Cornell West. Wow, I
(59:54):
have to tell you I was so nervous. I've been
just steeped in writings and speeches and interviews for for
quite some time preparing for this, and it was just
such a beautiful experience sharing ideas and virtual space with him.
He's been such a huge influence on me and my work.
(01:00:16):
He talked about being an example and how important it
is to have those examples of how how to love
through adversity, how to love through injustice, how to love
through indecency and terrorism and trauma and shame, how to love,
how to love, how to love? How to love? Justice
(01:00:38):
is what love looks like in public, dislike tenderness is
what love feels like in private. Oh, my goodness, it
is such a beautiful thing. And I think it is
so important for us to be respectful of our elders,
even when they are imperfect, even when um we don't
agree with them, that there is respect and kindness because
(01:00:58):
the road that they of walked is a road that
we can learn from. And I love being in the
space of respect for Dr Cornell West, being in respect
of Bell Hooks. Both of them are key in my
coming to critical consciousness around issues of race, gender, and class,
(01:01:20):
and they continue to be teachers for me, and we
should be looking at their example and holding them up,
holding them up and celebrating them and giving them their
flowers while they are here. Thank you so much, Dr
Cornell West. Thank you for being a love warrior and
being a beautiful, beautiful example for us all. Thank you
(01:01:47):
for listening to the Laverne Cox Shows. Please rate reviews, subscribe,
and share with everyone you know. Join me next week
from my conversation about the challenges black women face as
they search for intimate partners and create families, especially if
they're educated. Dr Sarah Adayinka, scold, social worker and assistant
(01:02:10):
professor of sociology at Furman University, shares her latest research
with us about black women in the dating world. You
can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox
and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time,
stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a
(01:02:33):
production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, our production of shand
Land Audio in partnership with My Heart Radio. What would
it be like if people were able to not just
come together with coombae y'all, but most importantly be able
to engage in struggle to preserve the possibility of treating
(00:23):
others in a humane and human way. To see, that's
that's break dance, but Terry, that's hallelloja material. It's a
brother fied make mc how I look like a boy
scout break dancing in the name of joy and hope
and justice and a deep deep love. Hello everyone, and
(00:52):
welcome to the la Verne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox,
and I have quoted Cornell west famous proclamation that justice
is what love looks like in public so many times
I have seen his words attributed to me. Justice is
what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is
(01:13):
what love feels like in private. West goes on to
say that feels like the truth to me. I discovered
Cornell West work through my college obsession with Belle Hooks.
They published a book together called Breaking Bread, Insurgent Black
Intellectual Life. Cornell West is certainly one of America's greatest orators.
(01:35):
When I started my college tour in I obsessively studied West.
West is a professor of philosopher, one of our nation's
foremost public intellectuals. Always in spirit, as we say in
the Black Church, Dr West allows that holy ghost spirit
coupled with a deep desire for justice to enter his body,
(01:56):
to take over and to speak through him. Dr Cornell
West is a philosopher, author, professor, and activists fighting for truth, love,
and racial justice. He is a familiar name in most
households as a prominent democratic intellectual and frequent guest on
The Bill Marshow, CNN, c SPAN, and Democracy Now. He
(02:17):
has written over twenty books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters,
and It's taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard, Yale, Princeton,
among others. West currently co hosts the podcast The Type
Broke with Tricia Rhoes. Please enjoy my conversation the Dr
Cornell West. Dr West, Welcome to the podcast. How are
(02:42):
you feeling today? Well, I tell you I want to
salute you and all that you own and all that
you have done and are doing. My idea, Sister, I
consider you one of the great love conductors on the
love trains. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
I love that you started with love. I was thinking
(03:02):
about how I wanted you to start the conversation. I
was thinking about how much I love you and love
your work. And I want to just take a moment
to invite the energy, the spirit of what you call
that black prophetic fire to enter this conversation. Today. When
you speak and when you write, I feel the energy
of our ancestors speaking through you. I feel that you
(03:23):
get sort of get the spirit in the in the
way that we, you know, talk about in the church.
And so I just want to invite that energy and
spirit and today as we chat for the first time.
But the beautiful thing is is that it's always already
operating inside of you. And you and I are at
the deepest level kindred spirits, because we come from a
people who have been hated for four hundred years. And
(03:45):
keep dishing out the love warriors, yes, terrorized for four
hundred years, and keep dishing out these freedom fighters traumatized
for four hundred years, of dishing out these wounded heither
and anytime I get a chance to see you, the heat,
your you, your spirit, your presence exudes and ex simplifies
(04:07):
and embodies this love warrior ship, and that to me
is always the bottom line in terms of the highest
level of what it means to be human. Absolutely absolutely,
So I did a lot of I'm reading in preparation
to prepare for our conversation today. And the way that
(04:27):
I discovered your work almost thirty years ago was through
Bell Hooks, and it was through the book that you
and Bell did together, Breaking Bread. I was rereading parts
of it last night and I this morning, I was like,
I should call Bell and tell her that I'm talking
to for the other day. So I gave her a
ring this morning and I said, would you like me
to say something to Dr West? And she said, tell
(04:49):
him I love him even though he doesn't treat me right.
You know that that's a very Bell. I'm thinking, oh, love,
she's she's so much an intellectual giant, and uh, she's
one of the love conductors to on on the love turn.
Of course she comes at it now through the Buddhist tradition,
(05:10):
you know what I mean? I know that I think
you A and me design that right, not sig, just
just just yeah. And I'm holding the most holy ghost Baptists,
and so all of us come out of the best
because the worst of that church is a patriarchy, to homophobia,
the losing sight of non binary precious folkus form. But
(05:34):
the best is still the love that pierces through even
those structures that produces the belt hooks, produces a love
Ayon cos you know what I mean, produces by the West.
One of the books that I've always been most excited
about in terms of dialogue has been that breaking read book.
Know that about it. So kind of you to mention
(05:55):
that book. You know, a few people even allude or
refer to that book even m which is a shame.
It's um It's it's thirty years old this year actually
I was published. And what you and Bell were trying
to do, you were both at Yale at the time,
and you're both trying to sort of, you know, have
this public dialogue between black men and black women. And
Bell also wanted me to to ask you about patriarchy
(06:17):
and where you are with patriarchy. I would love to
hear your thoughts now at this stage in your life
about about patriarchy, black men in patriarchy, and your relationship
to how you where you've examined your own relationship to
that in your life. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I
should add as a footnote, yes, that the the copy
(06:39):
editor to Breaking Bread is now a towering figure the
name of Imanti Perry. Oh yes, yes, yes, that Demanti
was an undergrad it. Yeah, let's say that because any
time we talk about any form of evil patriarchy, white
supremacis home of phobia, predator capitalism, repressive communist, or whatever
is a that los a side of humanity folk, that
(07:02):
one of our responses has to be trying to help
shape and mold into the best of our ability produce
folks who become forces for good against that evil. That's
what when I think of Remandy Perry as a student
and now a towering figure, I say, well, if my
(07:25):
work will speak for me, then the question of who
we help push and affirm and encourage and empower. So
anytime I think about patriarchy, one of the things I
want to say is what have I done to try
to kill it? Because patriarchy is killing other folk. I
(07:46):
don't want to be narcissistic or solipsistic. It's just about me.
If I come to turn the patriarchy, then patriarchy has
a chance of being dismantled. Now it's got to be
collectively because its systemics and institutional structure domination exactly. So,
these days, I think patriarchy is running amok. You can
(08:10):
see it in the culture. And yet we've got some
strong forces, including yourself and others and Bail and others,
who are countervailing against the patriarchy running amok. And so
anytime we talk about patriarchy, we want to understand it
as a balance of forces resistance and domination, but relative too,
(08:34):
of the structures of domination. Yeah, and when I think
about breaking bread in relationships between black men and and
black women, there's so much contempt right now. Colorism feels
like it's like ripping our our community apart. In relationships
with black men and black women, and in patriarchy, it's
tied to all of very very true. I think that
(08:57):
colorism has always been operating in such a way that
is ripping us apart. Is just an under gym crow conditions.
It couldn't operate in a broader way. Now, these days,
we've got unprecedented opportunities for significant slice of us who
(09:20):
are part of a black middle class part of a
black bourgeoisie, and we have to make sure that no
matter what our social status is, that our spirits intact,
our sensitivity with the folk catching hell is strong. And
therefore the connection between patriarchy and colorism and class and
even empire and homophobia has to always kick in. Yes,
(09:43):
the capitalism peace feels very precedent right now, particularly one
one thinks of colorism and relationship to patriarchy. And I
think the piece to where seeing black men musical artists
be such arbiters of colorism so so blatantly, you know,
That's really what I'm thinking in the the pain that
that causes, the pain and the trauma that that causes
(10:03):
for so many black women out there. And you you
obviously talk about the catastrophic, the traumatic and the lives
and the experiences of black people all the time. And
I just was there a moment for you, perhaps it
was just in the text Two Boys and and Socrates
and whatnot, where there was a trauma or where there
(10:24):
was something, you know, a moment where you had an
awakening of sources where you died. Where you always talk about,
you know, philosophy being the space where we go to
learn to die? Is that an ongoing process for you?
Was there a moment, you know, in your early scholarship
where something shifted for you around and was there something traumatic?
I guess, um relationship to all that your question is
(10:46):
so good and high quality. I wish we had four
hours rather than whatever about the time you wanta take.
But um, I mean right now, the death of my mother.
That's the major traumatic he's been in my life. The
be his catastrophe when I go back, certainly when I
got kicked out of school and no school would take
(11:07):
me because I was a young gangster. How old were
you when you were kicked out of school? I was
kicked out of school and I was seven years old.
Refused to salute the flag, and I got in the
fight with my teacher and we ended up with a
little riot the Communion Elementary School on Chocolate side of Sacramento,
and I got in very, very deep trouble. I knew
(11:29):
that this was going to be a turning point in
my life because mom was a teacher, not in the
same school, but a teacher, and Dad came home early,
you know, and got his belt out. That would be one. Uh.
When I think of Martin Luther King Jr. Being shocked
because I was trying to be a great athlete at
that time and track star. It hit me so hard
(11:53):
that I decided then that his legacy was something that
I would try to always view as a stay ended
of moral and spiritual excellence and aspire to and whatever
form of life I pursued. Those were probably the most
discernible ones beside the deeply personal ones in terms of
you know, relationships to say, I won't get into all
(12:14):
of that right now, but in the end, it's really
for me and I love to hear what you have
to say. My bus sister is uh, it's two black musicians.
It's done a halfway and John Coltrane and Saravan Carmen
McCrae and glad As Night and dramatics and whispers and thinks.
(12:35):
They're the ones who for me provide the kind of
spiritual resources, the spiritual wherewithal to withstand whatever catastrophic effects
are bombarding me. Yes, and there there have been many lately.
I want to actually read a quote of yours about
(12:57):
music that is, they're so beautiful that my brother reminded
me of when I spoke to him earlier about you.
You've said of music at its best is the grand
archaeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great
human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and
yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us beyond
(13:18):
language to the dark roots of our scream and the
celestial heights of our silence. That's some beautiful prose, doctor West.
You know, I was thinking, one of the main reasons
I wanted to have a conversation with you is that
you for over forty years, you have been a freedom fighter.
You've been a love warrior, teaching at prisons, getting arrested, protesting,
(13:42):
being canceled, you know, you know, and all of the things,
and yet you still are fighting. Yet you still show
up last year after you know, Porst George Floyd and
post Brianna Taylor and Tony McDade and just all of
what was going on in the world. And really, for me,
the trauma of repeatedly seeing black people murdered on camera
are nervous, since are made to see people be murdered
(14:04):
on camera, that is not normal. Broke I broke down,
and it was I just couldn't, you know, I couldn't
go to a protest, I couldn't speak. I had to
get myself together. How have you kept going all these
years in the fight when it's hard, when it's traumatizing,
when people are trying to cancel you, when people are
saying all kinds of crazy stuff about you, and you
(14:25):
keep speaking shoot to power? What keeps you in the fight? Dr? West? Well,
I mean one is my dear sister, and all honesty
that when I see persons like yourself and others who
have made a promise to be true to their calling
(14:46):
based on the best of a tradition that has shaped
them at the deepest spiritual and moral and intellectual level,
then I know that the cloud of witnesses that we all,
at our best want to be a part of is
always worth it. It's always something that allows us to
(15:06):
make whatever risk and take whatever costs we need in
order to keep it going, so that, no matter what
the immediate consequences are, the quality of the person of
period tubbing and either be wells by net and sojourn
at Truths and Martin Malcolm, that the quality of who
(15:27):
they are, their sincerity and their integrity is worthy of
our preservation. Manifest in our lives, regardless of whether it
looks like there will be immediate victory. And so, for example,
doing the Obama years, you know, and he had a
whole lot of loving folks who didn't treat me to lovingly.
(15:49):
And that's all right, because everybody don't love everybody equally. Now,
I can I tell you that was deeply painful for
me to watch. So during during the Obama administration, you
were very critical of the president at the time, and
there was tremendous backlash from the black intelligencia from many
people who took issue with you being critical of Obama.
(16:11):
There there was so much love for him, and the
criticism folks just were we're not able to receieve at
the time. No, it's true. I mean I thought he
was two tied to Wall Street. None of the Wall
Street gangster went to jail where so many of everyday
people were going to jail. At the time. I thought
he was too blind when he came to dropping drones
on innocent people. Those are war crimes for me, five
(16:32):
sixty three drones dropped, two thousand and so innocent people killed.
So it was hard to be critical of brother Barack
Obama because he's so borried and he's so poised. But
any president, no matter what color, you know, when he
tied to Wall Street greed like that, when they tied
the drones like that, when you're not really coming out
(16:52):
but the critique of mass incarceration and the police and
allowing the militarizing of the police take place. So you
end up with a black Lies Matter movement under a
black president, of black attorney general and a black Homeland
Security Cabinlet secretary. That's just the people themselves expressing their
own critiques. And I resonated with that critique in that regard.
(17:13):
But that doesn't mean that Barack Obama was not its
somewhere forceful good. It was just for me to milk, toast,
to centrists, to moderate and too tied to the powers
that be and not tied to the least of these enough.
That was really what it was about. If there's anything
about that period that you would do differently about around
your critique of Obama, there were many people at the
(17:36):
time who agreed with your critique but thought that that
that the language and the tone was less than than humanizing.
All these years later, do you and he regrets? So,
how do you feel today. I think that people have
people have good ground for saying some of my language
was a little bit too hyperbolic, There's no doubt about that,
(17:57):
but that's just the way I am. It really is
gang I got gangster elements even in my my fire,
and sometimes that spills over. So I could have said that,
for example, uh, he's two tips the Wall Street, but
I had reached the point where I was calling him,
you know, a black puppet of Wall Street. Well, that's
that's my language. Is hard not to be true to
(18:19):
my language, you know what I mean. It's like asking
Eddie Kendriy is not the same falsetto. It's hard to
And yet when I listened to us, said, oh, would
have me in turns before golf and and and they're
right about that. So then I'd have to come back
and I would use a different language. But that lagmage
had already taken off next to you know, it's the
internet everywhere. So in that sense, yes, I think all
(18:41):
of us ought to be able to look back and
be critical and self critical. But I certainly would not
have in anywhere attenuate the orientation of where I was going,
Because we're really talking about the plight of the least
of these under any president, no matter what color they
(19:04):
are or agenda they are. What was that like though,
in the midst of it, right in the midst of
and I've I've thought interviews that you gave at the
time when you know that Michael Eric Dyson Peace came out,
What was it like continuing to go on television, continuing
to get arrested, continuing to go to protests, continuing to
teach when there were such vitriol for me, when I've
(19:26):
had people when I felt misrepresented right publicly as a
public figure, when people are sort of misrepresenting what my
attentions are, it's so painful, and I really I have
this desire to be understood, and just it gets like,
how can I keep going on and going out there
when people are so cruel? And you kept going out
there and and it was it was bad, It was
(19:47):
really really bad. So, um, honey, what's going on? I mean,
it is different. You know, we give my dear brother
Dison coming at me, hit me below the bill. That's
a little differ within some of the right wing folks
on Fox or something. That always different when your own
people are coming for you so that does hit differently.
But you know, as a free black man and as
(20:10):
a Christian, though, I always had to have a sense
that I should never ever be surprised at any kind
of evil or paralyzed by any kind of despair. So
I could be hurt, it could be painful, I could
(20:31):
be upset, but I shouldn't be surprised, which means that
I've always got some gas in my tank to keep
going and recognized Dyson still my brother, He's still got
some positive things to say. I'm just coming at him
tooth and nail in the name of the truth. Understand,
(20:53):
you see what I mean and say it would be
true for whatever it is right wing folks, the Nazi,
same as true for you know, gangs like Trump and others,
because I know I got some gangs in me like
everybody else. So in that way, I can never conceive
of circumstances under which I would not still come out
swinging in the name of love. And I think you
(21:16):
know what one of the things that just spell Holds
myself would always say is that you see, our love
for black people is unconditional. It's not quit procool, it's
not If you love me, I will love you. I
love you because you love me. Now, when we go
into a church or a mosque or temple or community center,
(21:39):
even a nightclub, to speak that we're loving black people
because black people are worthy of being loved regardless of
what they say or do to us, and nobody can
take that away. Amen, Now, it feels like a great
(22:01):
time for a short break. We'll be right back though. Okay,
we're back. Let's keep the conversation going. One of the
(22:23):
things I really and it it keeps my own moral
and ethical compass, you know, sort of on track and
and in the right direction. Is you always talk about
the least of these. You always talk about poor and
working people and what we can and should be doing
for them. You've spoken how you were sort of encouraged
by some of the early signs of this current current administration.
(22:43):
And I you know, I'm worried because there's you know,
there's no fifteen dollar minimum wage right that we have
a able to raise them rasimum wage for poor and
working people, and that um, the way in which our
politicians are so corrupted by money and politics keeps the
the um concerns a poor and working people on the periphery.
(23:03):
What can we be doing now to hold our politicians
accountable when they're really more accountable, seem more accountable to
special interest into um, you know, big money. There is
an opportunity to shift things structurally, and I'm I'm just
so terrified that we're not going to take it for
the least of least for the people who are most vulnerable.
My Desu, you get at the heart and core of
(23:26):
what my vision and vocation has been. I bigly appreciate
that because those words in the twenty fifth chap. But Matthew,
me and the world have made it because what you
do the least these you do unto me. I think
in the present moment, on the one hand, we got
the fascist threats still operating with Trump and company in
the Republican Party that's undergone a fascist expansion. So even
(23:50):
the List Change, who has been wrong and cold and
callous and and different to working people and poor people
her whole career, ends up having a moment of integ
because you doesn't want to succumb the fastest taking over
her party. And I salute her for that moment, as
it were. But when it comes to somebody like brother Biden,
as sister Harris brother Biden. I mean, he's got blood
(24:13):
on his hands. He got four crimes against humanity, mass incarceration,
invasion and occupation of a rock, the unleashing of Wall Street,
greed with the repeal of Glass Stigel, a vicious Israeli
domination and occupation. He has been not just a supporter,
but he's been an architect and bragged about it up
(24:35):
until recently. So he can change. I believe anybody can change,
and he's his capacity to change with the relief bill
and the infrastructure bill and talking about white supremacy and
Jim Crow. I applaud that he might have been LBJ
in that regard. But also when it comes to these
issues of foreign policy, like what's happening Goza, and he
(24:56):
finally makes a decision to call for to cease fire,
and people want to give him some moral prize because
he's engaging in such courageous at you, I say, that's ridiculous.
We got to be honest about this, and it's sad
to see that. Uh, you know, we don't have forces
in the Democratic Party that are strong. And thank God
for Brother Bernie sound Us and Brother Rocanna and the
(25:18):
system of read Newman and others, and thank God for
Corey and the squad was trying to push this through,
but it's still just it's not enough. And I must say,
when it comes to our black politicians, my dear sister,
it's a sad affair. We've seen coward ladness, we've seen copictulation,
(25:40):
and it's a sad thing. And that's true, not just
in terms of the way in which palestines are being treated,
but when you get somebody like by and it stands
up and says, this is not a racist country. You said,
get off the crack pipe, brother, you can't tell the truth.
And then sister Harris echoes that. Then brother Clyde Burne
echoes that. And you know, if he said this is
(26:01):
a racist country, then they would say it's racist because
they're just echoes of the boss. And that's the last
thing we need. We need for with integrity who willed
to tell the truth, how can you even think that
America is not deeply racist and not a racist country.
That didn't mean every individual in the country's racial institution
structures deeply shot through with white supremacy, going and tell
(26:24):
the truth, don't deny it, and then highlight the countervailing
forces against it. That's the crucial thing, it seems to me.
And I would say the same thing about America being
a homophobic country, and the same thing about it being
a class this country, and it is an empire, it's
an imperial country, but that doesn't mean anybody in the
country is homophobic. Everybody in the country is sexist, but
(26:48):
it's a deeplyst sexist society. So when you get these
kind of moments of cowardliness, you said to yourself, you
had a democratic party establishment is still in milk toal form,
even though it's doing some very progressive things in other spheres,
and I do want to support those infrastructure bills and
(27:10):
other such efforts. It's, you know, just telling the truth
about that America being a racist country. What is intense
to me right now looking at the state of things
is that is they they extent to which folks, particularly
on the right, are being radicalized by social media based
book by conservative media. There's such um persistent propaganda and
(27:32):
misinformation happening in conservative media that feels almost insurmountable. Right.
We tell you you are always talking about telling the
truth and and when you know killing in conways, you
know alternative facts. You know, I think she coined in
on Meet the Press. The idea of alternative facts means
that we're talking about misinformation, We're talking about lies, mendacity
(27:53):
as as you would say. So in the face of
mendacity of lives of propaganda, people who aren't even exposed
to the truth, right, who have not developed the critical
consciousness because we don't value education. And in this country,
how can the truth even break through when our media
has done such a bad job, you know, established media
(28:16):
has done such a bad job of informing the public,
and then there's such a concerted effort in sort of
conservative media, you know, propagandies. So then how does the
truth prevailed? How can the truth come in this current moment,
in the current state of our media. Yes see, I
think historically the truth is always a flickering candle against
(28:38):
the backdrop of the night. Always think of what Frederick
Douglas and Harriet Tubman were up against in terms of
lives and crimes and mendacity and criminality, the normalizing of
hatred and greed, and white supremacy and male supremacy and
predatory capital. So in that sense, even though social media
(29:00):
is a new form of technology to facilitate lives and
crimes and mendacity in criminality. The truth is always headed
towards the cross, So we shouldn't be surprised when you
see how mighty these devilish lives are. But we have
to believe in the end that there's something that's almighty
(29:22):
or mighty year than the lies and the crimes such
that it will not suffocate and saturate the world and
history in such a way that there's no truth tellers left.
I mean, look at Soviet Union, they thought they could
just completely eliminate the truth tellers in the name of communists.
And I say this as a leftist, but you gotta
(29:43):
tell the truth. Look at South Africa, they thought they
can completely do away with the truth tellers, whatever Tina
Tusulu and and and Nelse Mandela and the other. Look
at the United States, they think they can completely do
away under McCarthy is or with Claudie Jones and and
Ben Davis and the communists trying to tell the truth,
not always right on everything, but certainly right about capitalism
(30:06):
and racism and so forth. So in that way, the
liars never completely wipe folk out. And I just want
to be part of that cloud of witnesses that keeps
alive that tradition and then pass it on to the
sister Laverne Coxes because I read it in the Google
that was said Sister labery Cock said justice is what
(30:29):
love looks like in public, and it makes me want
to break things, just like tenderness is what love feels
like in private. I sent as a video of you
I'm saying that to my boyfriend a few weeks ago,
and he was like, that's exactly right. And to have that,
to really know what love is, to know what that
tenderness feels like in private and then have a version
for what that could be in public, it's just so
(30:52):
powerful to me. It just I always think, can you
imagine what it would look like if our policies were
built in love and the truth, and that we can
love everyone right, That we could have the humanity, the
beautiful humanity of every citizen highlighted in our the way
we do public policy, the way we structure our institutions.
If that was from a place of love, that could
(31:13):
be It's beautiful, beautiful revolution. But you understand, you understand that.
So I've been blessed teaching prisons for forty one years.
And if there's an anthem of my brothers in prisons,
it would be a zoomed by the common duals. I
don't know if I know that zoo zoo. I like
to fly Oh wait, well, I like to fly away.
(31:36):
I like the fly away zoom. And the dream is
the freedom dream, and it reminds us of the great
classic of Robert Kelly book called Freedom Dream. And it's
just dream of what things would really be like if
our humanity and dignity were affirmed across race, across any
form of national identity, during the sexual orientation and so forth.
(32:00):
What would it be like if people were able to
not just come together with coombae y'all, but most importantly
be able to engage in struggle to preserve the possibility
of treating others in a humane and human way. And see,
that's that's break dance material, that's hallelloja material. It's abother fire.
(32:22):
Make MC look like a boy scout in terms of
break dance and in the name of joy and hope
and justice and a deep, deep love. Yes, when when
I think about I was talking to my brother this
morning about that black prophetic fire and traditions and hope
and and being in your blues man, of course, and
that in the blues and the catastrophe of the blues
(32:45):
is joy and there is always the joy there. And
when I, of course, whenever I think about joy, I
think about what Burnee Brown says about joy that she
in her research, she discovered their joy is the most
difficult emotion to feel. That is the most vulnerable emotion
to feel, because often when we are truly in a
space of being joyous, we are for bow joy, wait
for the other shooter drop so to allow ourselves to
(33:06):
feel joy. It is the most vulnerable of emotions. But
that is so deeply rooted in in what it means
to be black and American. There's so many people in
social media now talking about black joy and how important
me is to lean into that. Leaning into black joy
is leaning into that black prophetic fires, leaning into the
things that you know have sustained us for for centuries.
And it also is incredibly vulnerable, and vulnerability is really
(33:30):
the the source of everything that allows us to be
all that we can be. I think for vulnerability, it's
often thought of as weakness, and you know, number one
vulnerability yield for for men is to not appear weak.
And so I think that that among men that needs
to be a conversation around letting go of those those ideas,
(33:54):
like letting those ideas die so they can come to
a more more in line place. But emotion of associating
vulnerability with a willingness to be crushed, you see, they're
not the same thing. That vulnerability is a way of
allowing you to open up such that you end up
(34:16):
being stronger. So when you do have a confrontation with
Miles had had a conversation with the police and they
beat him down like a doll and he was swinging.
I'm swinging with him too. Why because there's moments in
which your strength is not going to be manifesting vulnerability.
Of strength will be manifesting the tenacity against the a
(34:38):
force of coersion. But in terms of living and in
terms of relationship, the strongest of us, whatever our intention,
wherever we are, it has to be one in which
we're willing to give in order to receive, and we're
giving in such a way that the receiving that we
have has a bottom less nets to it. That's what
(35:01):
love is. Yes, the more you give the more you receive.
The more you receive, the more you're able to give.
But you can't do that without verbability. It also means
you're wound the ball. It also means that you can
get hurt, and that is that unfortunate or whateverything about love.
It's a beautiful thing, but it means we can get hurt,
and we have to be willing to risk that hurt,
(35:24):
to be wound a ball, to really truly be vulnerable.
That's true, No, but that's that's wisdom at the deepest level.
Because you know Sappho a great poet from the Greek period,
or at least among the Greeks, where she says, the
bitter sweetness its constitutive of the love. Every love, you're
gonna get hurt. The question is how you gonna deal
(35:47):
with the hurt. Are you tied to a love such
that two k survive without that love? Which goes and
then add with the bitter sweetness, because if you think
you can love with no bitter sweet you better go
onto disney Land, stay on Main Street, drink your soda pop.
You know what I mean. You won't kill us. And
I think that's what I always have to remind myself
of it to face the pain. And we're gonna have
(36:08):
to face the pain, but it won't kill us. I
can survive. That's exactly. Vulnerability comes from the Latin as
you know, BuNos, which means wound. Yes, there is no
love without vulnerability, just like there is no intimacy without vulnerability,
which means the question becomes, what do you do with
your wounds? And with those wounds? Will you be a
(36:30):
wounded healer and joy spreader or will you be a
wounded hurter and a joy crusher? And all of us
have these poles inside of our souls. But when it
comes to Black folks, you see, we are a great
people at our best. We are world historical people at
(36:51):
our best, because we have looked unflinchingly at the most
grim and dim reality these of catastrophe in the modern
world and has kept dishing out these persons of hiden
vulnerability who look at their wounds and still want to
(37:12):
heal others rather than just go about trashing others. That's
what Martin King's about, That's what John Coltran's Love Supremes about.
That's what Whya Jackson is about. That's what the tax
is about. I'm telling you, because the thing is, people
don't understand the connection between your historical role as transgressing
(37:34):
some of these ugly homophobic and transgender sensibilities but always
situating it in the caravan and love. But the Isley
bother or the love training of any persons who are
wrestling with their wounds in such a way that they're
concerned about healing others. That's the cloud of what that
says that I'm talking about. You know, I often think
(37:56):
that it's not an accident at the first openly transmitter
of person to be on the cover of Time magazine,
to be nominated for an immediate as a black trans
woman and a black trans woman who deeply understands the
tradition of black folks in America, and and and I'm
very clear that if I've ever done anything great in
my life that it is because of the ancestors. It
(38:17):
is because of the transcestors. And I've allowed myself to
be used that I that I've allowed that. I think
it's important to know when you always say the best
of us, and I think to the but the worst
of us though, right, you know, the worst of black folks.
I think about that Sam Jackson's character and Jay and
Go and Chain, and you know, we know black folks
sold other black folks. We know that black men have
(38:38):
been horribly misogynistic towards Black women, and so there, so
there is the trauma piece. Hurt people, hurt people, right,
there's such a deep pain. So there's all these things
that we have done that we do out of pain,
out of trauma. There's the accountability piece, and there's making
amends and how do we heal the trauma? Build trauma
resilience and shame resilience, And these are huge parts of
(39:01):
my life and my work. And I know that so
much of the transphobia I've experienced in my life, and
it's been from other black people in a lot of pain.
Right that that there's a that there is historically a
legacy of literal emasculation of black men, right when black
men were lynched off in their genitalia with with cut off.
There's this this history, you know, in cinema and of
(39:23):
the literally emasculation of black men. So there's a lot
of pain I think that we are aware of and
not aware of attached to that, and that has been
often projected onto me as a black trans woman, and
how do we reconcile that pain without becoming the oppressor?
I mean, one is always recognized and a degree to
which we're all on a human continual so that we
(39:46):
never put ourselves above others even when they are morally
and spiritually wrong, because we know there's elements in them
that are in us, which means they have a capacity
to change, Which means that at the moment with the
engaging gangs activity, and we have a gangster element inside
of us, and that doesn't really all the same. It
just means we made different kinds of choices in this regard,
(40:09):
you see, so that the kind of internalized oppression that
the Great Arctic Lord talks about. Of course Belle Us
talks about this as the great theory of radical pedagogy
and education that she is. How do we attempt to
kill and murder the forms of internalized oppression inside of
us so that we are not in any way, in
our actions and perceptions reproducing it, even though we claim
(40:30):
to be progressive. And that's a human battle. That is
a human battle. And in the end, I think it's
really the arts and certain stories of great examples, because
in the end, the only thing we really have to
go on in terms of our ability to connect with
each other with the love and the tenderness. Are the examples.
(40:52):
You see what I mean. The sister Laverin Cox is
a living sermon. It ain't just what is said head,
it is what is lived. But what has lived still
a human life, you know, it's not a life that
somehow it's transcended. And and myself as a Christian because
I go back to that palsing to do name Jesus,
(41:14):
he's questioning the existence of God, my God, my God?
Why does that? For a second, He's questioned his ability
to conform to any kind of will of God. He's
got a whole host of struggles going on inside of him,
and it looks like, for a moment he's an atheist.
For a moment he's an agnostic, because why he was
the word made flash John one fourteen. It came to
(41:37):
dwell among us. A whole lot of interpretations of that, right, Christians,
that might be Jesus and other spirits for human beings.
Is like the truth made flash, the embodiment of it,
the concratization of examples. That's the key traditions that constitute
those examples coming together, and there's those traditions that we
(41:59):
try to keep alive. And that's why there's so much
spiritual warfare against young folks, especially black young folks. If
you can keep them from certain kind of loving spirits,
sacrificial spirits, courageous spirits, only presented them the successful spirits
(42:20):
who are accommodating themselves to a status quo, well adjusted
the injustice, but got big spectacle, big money, big status,
big position than the young folks no longer even have
a perception. They can't even see what greatness is. All
this is success. They can't see magnanimity, All this is prosperity.
(42:42):
They can see integrity. All they say is cupidity. Oh
I just want to be a lover of money. I
just want to be a love of status. No, keep
your money, have your status, but you better know something deep.
But what came into the flesh, Some love came in
Some justice was injected in there, some sacrifice was injected
(43:05):
in there. And now was to exemplify that example, exemplify
that kind of orientation. They got something the offer. Absolutely,
they got some thank you so much of it's so beautiful.
This it's the example. But I think I also think
we should be in therapy, and I think we should
be in therapy. I also think that we need to
be dealing with addiction. If there is addiction, you know
(43:28):
that that there's tough step programs, that there's their their ways,
that we're actively engaged in a process of healing. Yes,
I really is important to have that embodied in the
somatic work that I do in my trauma resilience. That
all of this has to be embodied to the beautiful
resource of our ancests, the beautiful resource of those examples
you you set forth. It is so incased, so important
(43:48):
that that is embodied, that we feel that in our
nervous systems. But then I think sometimes too, the trauma
is so great, the abuse is so so real, that
we have to seek seek some help too, that we
have to You know, my, my, my deeply beloved and
a heat she's a professor of psychology but also part
of addiction studies, and so she gets a chance to
(44:11):
reflect and give me deep wise insight as to how
you come to terms with different therapeutic options that can empower,
different clinical options that can empower, but even those must
have a spiritual dimension. Here we go back to Bill
Hooks again, and by spiritual, all we talk about is love, compassion, empathy,
(44:36):
wrestling with hiding vulnerability, open to intimacy, because those are
the only things that open we human beings up. And
I'll say, and is the best spirituality that it's a
sense of having a connection just and something that is
greater than us. Something a connection that can be a community,
that can be a tradition, it could be a religion.
But but the connection to something that is bigger than us.
(44:59):
Absolute know, the great rab By Abraham josh Or has
used to know another one of my soul companions, you know,
like cold Rane that he used to say, something greater
than us is asking us to do something, is making
a request and a demand of us. And that's something bigger.
(45:20):
Can be a god, but atheists can play just as
important roll. The more it could be an ideal, it
could be a tradition, it could be a commitment to
artistic vocation, all of those things, something bigger than us
is asking us to do something of help to others. Own,
(45:41):
brother d Witch, in terms of on the same love train,
you just own the judaic section of it, and I'm
on the Jesus loving section of it where he loved
Jesus too, but not the way that I do. You don't,
but but we own the same train together. The same
is true with Angela David. She dead up secondar even
though she come out of Black Church. She did, I'm
second in the atheistic wing right on. Angela loved you
(46:05):
love it. It's hard for the Black Church to ever
really leave you if you if you were raised in it.
I suspect I take a teensy break here, but I'll
be fast. That wasn't so bad, now, wasn't okay? Let's
(46:33):
get back to it. Um. One other thing you said
m recently that the language of wokeness is detrimental. You
recently said that if you stay woke, you suffer from insomnia.
I believe in being fortified. Wokeness is a moment in
our attempt to fortify ourselves to be love warriors, be
(46:53):
wounded healers, and to be freedom fighters, all three at
the same time. Can you can you expand a bit
on on that and what guess what it means to
be fortified, how we fortify ourselves as opposed to wokeness.
Because you if you watch you know conservative news, you
know or listen, they're like, no woke if killing us
anti woke sentiment that it's permeating conservative media now. So
(47:15):
I would love for you to expand on what you
mean by what we need, what it means to fortify ourselves.
I was saying kind of ingest that wokeness is a
beautiful thing because it means you shattered the sleep walking,
which means you shattered your complicity and complacency visa the
oppressive status closed. But what we want a long distance
(47:38):
runners in the struggle for love and justice. And you
can't be along distance running if you just woke every second.
That was part of got a joke in Joe been
something you know that you got to fortify yourself to
recognize when you awoke, you're seeing things you haven't seen before.
You're feeling things deeper, you're acting more courageously. But there's
(48:00):
moments in which you're gonna have to steal away, gonna
need some sleep. Brother, It's just you got to pace
yourself for the long run. We just lost one of
the greatest track athletes of all time, Lee Evans. He
was the greatest full forty and four hundred meter run
ever and he had a wokenus in terms of his discipline,
(48:21):
and when he was practicing and discipline, he was the
most woke on the track field. But he knew he's
gonna have to somehow have the whole life so that
he could be the great track person that he was
met after me year after year, and so he fortified himself.
And I think anytime we think of great athletes like Lee,
(48:43):
ever great musicians like Ben Webster or Mary Lou Williams,
they were fortified. What is fortified mean put on the whole,
whole on, put the whole. Any justice that's only justice
soon degenerates into some the less the justice. You need
(49:03):
a love to keep your justice afloat, Yes, Because if
you're only concerned about justice and you don't have a
deep love, care and concern for the folks you're fighting for,
you're gonna sell out pretty soon. You're gonna get bought
off real quick. But if you gotta deepcare, even when
you change your ideology, like Malcolm, you see, he had
(49:26):
a love that cuts so deep that it informed his
new conceptions of justice. Embracing struggles against patriarchy, embracing struggles
against any form that loses sight of the humanity and
in that sense, you know, the shift from Malcolm Little
of Malcolm X at the end, it hardly gets better
than that. Amazing. You often talk about two Boys is
(49:52):
four questions that that he has for young people. You
often mentioned that think because I think we live in
an anti intellectual era. Uh, we live in an era
where predatory capitalism, where people want to make a lot
of money and and greed. It's just it's rampant, right,
And you've said this in other ways, that people just
want to be successful but not great and and and
the money motives and the integrity piece, and so in
(50:16):
one what are your thoughts under boys is four questions
now for young people? And do you still feel it's
it's it's those questions are relevant. You know what what
do boys asked us to? You want? Should I do
you want to tell us what they are? Should I
tell us? Oh? Absolutely no? And I had a feeling
you'd like to. I appreciate you mentioned in those And
(50:36):
how shall integrity face oppression? What does honestly do in
the face of deception? What does decency do in the
face of ind so how shall courage meet brute force?
Those questions are as relevant as they can be today.
The oppression is still there all parts of the world, Europe,
(51:00):
Middle East, Asia, United States. Where is the intellectual, moral,
and spiritual integrity to tell the truth? Deception lies everywhere?
Where is the honesty to point it out and then
laid bare what the alternative is? And then you think
of the assaults and attacks micro and macro. Where is
(51:20):
the decency? Decency is a revolutionary act and an indecent society.
For me, that's what decency is. Making sure that the
Golden rule is amplified across the board. I want you
to do to poor folks in South side of Los Angeles,
(51:41):
white bossist in Appalachia, Precious trans Froke in Brazil, Palestinians
on the West Bank, Jews in Russia, Muslims in China.
Do to them what you would want to be done
to you personally and structurally. And so the vorce's questions integrity, honest, decency, courage. Oh,
(52:02):
if we had a renaissance that those we had a
more spiritual renaissance of those were on our way to revolution.
But there's a price to pay. It's trickier for black politicians,
I think right it's it was easier for Clinton and
for Biden to talk about race, and it was for
Obama because he's black, so so that the doll know
it's useful Obama. But it's harder to talk. But the
(52:23):
political calculations that black politicians have to do, that black
celebrities have to do to maintain a certain level of
no sort of being canceled, I guess, or just or
being able to continue to have a platform, continue to
be able to do some kind of work. Their choices
that have to be made. And it's and it's like,
are those choices anti are integrity? There's the incrementalism, and
(52:45):
there's a revolutionary the consequences of step telling the truth.
You have lived those, right, We've seen when you were
campaigning for Sandra's last year and and and the year before,
and all of a sudden I saw you on television again.
I saw people looking to you with reverence when you
said were not enough to put black faces in high places.
It just there was something so beautiful about it, right
that somehow the culture hits shifted and you were still,
(53:09):
you know, saying the same things and doing the same things.
But then the world kind of came around. You're able
to You're you're in the academy, and I know you
weren't tating your at Harvard, but you weren't your other
places that you're able to, you know, continue to survive
into and to take care of yourself for those folks
who want to be able to tell the truth. But
the consequences of telling the truth, right, there are real
(53:30):
life consequences that you know when you tell the truth.
And you know the way in which Sanders last year
went right before Super Tuesday, the way all the Canadas
sort of dropped out and coalesced behind Biden because Sanders
was such a threat to the status quo. It was
such for me an example of how the system is relentless.
(53:53):
Bell has called imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarch. Added that
cis normative, heteronormative, imperialist, white supremas is capitalist, patriarch is
relentle us in trying to in fortifying its own power.
And so in the face of all of that, in
the consequences of telling that, you the consequence that being
in your anyone's integrity, everyone is unable to bounce back. Yeah,
(54:14):
what would you say to that, Doc? Dr West? I
don't really think there is a definitive answer. It's only
our lives that are lived. In a response to that question,
I think about the Alonious Monk, you know, one of
the great geniuses, who went silent those last years of
his life, every day getting up looking out the window,
(54:37):
year after year. We don't know what went into that,
but he had already given the world so much, and
yet his response is going to be in the end
very different than you know the ways in which Billie
Holiday would respond. And she's gone through her own catastrophic experiences,
(54:58):
but all of them are and to have enough resilience
to give us, enough to help us in our resilience
for the next generation. You see what you've already given,
sus a Laverant is extraordinary and more to come, but
whenever comes, you pushed it to the end of what
(55:20):
you could. That's our cannosis, that's our emptying of ourselves,
are giving, our donating and sacrificing of ourselves. Right and
with me, I tried to do all that I can do.
I dropped that tomorrow night with a smile on my face.
I gave all that I could give, but it was
still not enough. It's never enough, because the world is
too overwhelmingly demon griment as many ways. But there's enough life,
(55:43):
enough love, enough justice, enough compassion to keep the cloud
of witnesses going from one generation to the next. But
that's really not a definitive and and so because history
is always open ended, you don't know, we have to
wrap up, which is I'm such a shame. And I
(56:04):
like to end the podcast with a question that comes
from my therapy, from the community resiliency model, from the
idea of both. And when I'm struggling there, what do
I use to kind of get through? What else is
true for me? What helps me to get through? I
can choose to focus on what's difficult, right, and that
what we focus on sort of magnified. But I can
choose to focus on something that is neutral or positive
(56:25):
in my life, something that helps me get through a resource.
So Dr Cornell West today, for you, what else it's
true for me? See, I believe in revolutionary piety, and
piety is remembrance, it is reverence for something bigger than
you is resistance allows you to want to serve and
(56:49):
sacrifice for what is bigger and better. What are the
sources of good in your life that have allowed you
to preserve your sanity and your dignity in your deeper
and darkest hours. And you have to have something to
pull from. Doesn't just fall down from the sky. Comes
out of your mom and your daddy, your grandparents, your friends,
(57:11):
your partners, your boyfriends, your girlfriend, your teachers, your coaches,
invisible folk, wol you've never seen, but you read that text.
It could be played though, it could be deal, it
could be dose to Avsky. It could be within the
Linn Brooks. It could be Lorderca, or it could be
pasta night. All of them can constitute your community of voices.
(57:36):
And then you got to follow the Negro national anthem.
Lift yo voys, not your echo, let the echo chamber.
Go find your voice. Lift your voice. Be of service
to others with the voice that you have given, the
vocation that God has given you, such that you can
(57:58):
allow the love inside of you to have impact on
vocal feel on love. So they think of doing things
they didn't even think they could do. They have possibilities
that they had downplayed. But you provided a certain way
of looking at the world such that they could begin
to actualize them. Why because that's what the folk did
for us. That's what's kept not just black pool going.
(58:20):
That's the best of the human spirit. Amen. Oh yeah,
as you were just talking now, I was reminded and
we started with bell hooks and yearning, bell hooks rights.
Our struggle, too, is also one of memory against forgetting.
How do we remember? And when we can remember? So
much else is true. There's so many things that can
(58:40):
get us through these catastrophic times, these lose infused times.
Thank you so much. Dr West. You're on social media.
I follow you on Instagram and we and you have
the tight Rope podcast. Where can folks find find your people?
(59:02):
Come on just Twitter and and and and Facebook and things.
But I just want to thank you from the bottom
of my heart. You are just beyond extraordinary in terms
of your mind, your heart, your soul, your willingness to love,
love and swer and you you're one of the grand
examples that I talked about very much, so very very
(59:24):
grateful Right now in this moment, I'm overwhelmed. Thank you
so much, Dr West. Thank you, Thank you the love
and respect which I can give you a hug virtually
there there's a virtual hug. Dr Cornell West. Wow, I
(59:54):
have to tell you I was so nervous. I've been
just steeped in writings and speeches and interviews for for
quite some time preparing for this, and it was just
such a beautiful experience sharing ideas and virtual space with him.
He's been such a huge influence on me and my work.
(01:00:16):
He talked about being an example and how important it
is to have those examples of how how to love
through adversity, how to love through injustice, how to love
through indecency and terrorism and trauma and shame, how to love,
how to love, how to love? How to love? Justice
(01:00:38):
is what love looks like in public, dislike tenderness is
what love feels like in private. Oh, my goodness, it
is such a beautiful thing. And I think it is
so important for us to be respectful of our elders,
even when they are imperfect, even when um we don't
agree with them, that there is respect and kindness because
(01:00:58):
the road that they of walked is a road that
we can learn from. And I love being in the
space of respect for Dr Cornell West, being in respect
of Bell Hooks. Both of them are key in my
coming to critical consciousness around issues of race, gender, and class,
(01:01:20):
and they continue to be teachers for me, and we
should be looking at their example and holding them up,
holding them up and celebrating them and giving them their
flowers while they are here. Thank you so much, Dr
Cornell West. Thank you for being a love warrior and
being a beautiful, beautiful example for us all. Thank you
(01:01:47):
for listening to the Laverne Cox Shows. Please rate reviews, subscribe,
and share with everyone you know. Join me next week
from my conversation about the challenges black women face as
they search for intimate partners and create families, especially if
they're educated. Dr Sarah Adayinka, scold, social worker and assistant
(01:02:10):
professor of sociology at Furman University, shares her latest research
with us about black women in the dating world. You
can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox
and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time,
stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a
(01:02:33):
production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Host
Laverne Cox
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!