Brother West is clearly an awesome orator and writer. His prose is incredible. I got a few new quotes I love out of it and gained insight into the man. I loved that his use of 'brother' and 'sister' extends far past any familial, cultural, ethnic, or political boundary. He is a bit egotistical, s...
*I had to shorten this review.The book is about the importance of Democracy, threats to Democracy, both in America and around the world interlaced with historical background and shared experiences. West declares that there are three nihilisms at work in American Democracy that need to be overcom...
It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted. —WALT WHITMAN, Democratic Vistas (1871) To be an Afro-American, or an American black, is to be in the situation, intolerably exaggerated, of all those who have ever found themselves part o...
No matter how much respect, no matter how much recognition, whites show towards me, as far as I’m concerned, as long as it is not shown to every one of our people in this country, it doesn’t exist for me. MALCOLM X (1964) THERE has not been a time in the history of black people in this country wh...
I must declare my love for this man and everything that he represents. I must publicly mourn my precious brother. In another era and in a far different context, W.H. Auden mourned the death of the Irish poet W.B. Yeats with these lines: In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountains start,...