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[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato here.

For the next half hour, we're gonna have a conversation with one of the most thoughtful, interesting, compelling, some might say, controversial, but one of the most interesting people I've ever spoken to in the past, and I'm honored to have him back again.

He's Dr. Cornel West.

You know who he is.

You don't even need me to tell you this.

He's Dr. Cornel West.

He's an independent candidate for President of the United States, and also a Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary.

Dr. West, it's once again an honor to have you with us.

- Brother, it's always a blessing.

You have such a high quality team, work so well and so patient, but I can understand when they're working with you.

And I salute your precious mother Francis, though, man.

We know how precious mothers are.

You know what I mean?

- Absolutely.

Dr. West, do this for us.

Philosophy, I get.

Christian Practice, describe what that means.

- Christian Practice simply means a love-centered practice where you love your neighbor as yourself, which means you are a neighbor to all others, and you're willing to not only serve but sacrifice.

You have a steadfast commitment to their welfare.

And of course, that's biblical.

And I'm very much a biblically-centered Christian in terms of defining what moral and spiritual greatness is.

He or she is great among you, will be your servant, will love, will sacrifice, will tell the truth, will seek justice in the spirit of humility, but with a spirit of tenacity, you're constant and consistent.

So that's a great tradition though, brother.

That's my tradition.

- I have, and you may not be able to tell from the cover, but this is one of your most significant books, "Race Matters."

You might not be able to tell.

- Oh yeah.

- And it's all marked up on the inside.

(Cornel laughing) - It's kind of.

- I've been going back and marking it up for years now, and race does matter.

So let me do this.

Last time we spoke was several years ago in Atlantic City at the New Jersey Education Association Convention.

You were the keynote speaker, and I was honored to sit for half an hour with you in person.

And we talked a little bit about race then, but I wanna update that conversation.

Where are we today?

Because race matters.

Where do you believe we are today in 2024 as it relates to race relations in our country?

A, where are we?

B, what do we need to do to get to a much better place?

- I think it's very important to always keep attuned to what the moral and spiritual standards are, my brother.

Anytime you talk about race, the standards are all of us acknowledging that we are made in the image of a God that gives us the sanctity and the dignity.

The secular aversion of that in terms of egalitarianism is a religious version, but that's the standard.

So the question becomes, how then are we treating Black people, Indigenous people, Asian people, any human beings, but especially those who have been degraded and demeaned?

As human beings, affirming their sense of humanity and allowing them to live lives of decency and dignity.

That's the standard.

So then when we look at where we are now, oh, my God, we've got a lot of institutionalized contempt out there.

- As opposed to regular contempt?

What's the difference between institutionalized contempt and just plain old contempt?

- Well, that's a wonderful question because both of them ought to be rejected, but institutionalized contempt means when it works through your laws or when it works through your custom.

So it becomes normalized.

Or you can take for example the history of Italians coming into the United States.

They're Catholic from the southern part of Europe, so they don't have the same status as the Brit from the northern part of Europe and is Protestant.

So that the customs and the morays were deeply anti-Catholic and anti-Italian, even though the laws themselves were not targeting just Italians, you see.

- Right.

- So that institutionalized contempt is through the laws and more formal institutions.

Now, it's now with Black people, of course, you had both.

You got the laws of slavery, the laws of Jim Crow, and then you've got the customs of these people are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, and so on.

But the important thing is you know and I know that a precious Italian brother and sister has exactly the same value as a precious Black brothers and sister.

We're talking about something profoundly human and we've got to always come back to that or we'll find ourselves sliding into forms of hatred, forms of revenge, forms of contempt.

We've got to have a moral corpus, a compass, and especially at a moment in which there's so much hatred and revenge and contempt being expressed.

- A along those lines, Doctor, first of all, I wanna go back to the issue of race relations in just a moment, but I wanna go to the presidency first.

Lemme try this.

You're running for president as an independent because?

- Because I believe both parties are beyond redemption in terms of speaking the truth and seeking justice, especially for poor and working people.

- Including the Democratic party?

- Oh, absolutely.

The Democratic party is deeply captured by big money, big business, Wall Street.

You can see when they have a choice to bail out Wall Street versus Main Street, they go Wall Street.

That's Biden and Obama many, many years ago.

I think that the sad reality is, is that big money dictates so much of American politics these days, and big money usually is associated with raw power, not associated with morality.

Now, I believe that rich people can make moral judgements and follow through, but the dominant tendencies of the wealthy is be obsessed with their interests rather than morality.

And morality for me has to do with how are you treating the least of these?

How do you treat the most vulnerable?

How are you treating the children, the elderly, the disabled, those folk who have been pushed against the wall, poor people?

Where's the discourse on poverty right now in the country?

Neither party talks about it.

I come outta the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Dorothy Day and Rabbi Heschel.

You begin talking about the least of these, you begin talking about the poor, you begin talking about the children and the elderly and those who are pushed back.

- Dr. West, let me push back a little bit on this.

So if someone were to play the game, who's worse?

What I mean by that is who's worse when it comes to the plight of people who are struggling economically, disproportionately Black or Brown, who's worse for that community of Americans?

Is it Donald Trump or Joe Biden?

- Yeah, but you see, I don't live my life playing the who's worse as a lens- - You're not gonna play the lesser of two evils.

You won't do it.

- Exactly, I just, I don't live my life like that.

I mean, it's like Frederick Douglass in the 1850s.

He had to choose between a liberal slaveholder and a conservative slaveholder.

He's an abolitionist.

He's not going, who's worse, who's not worse?

They opted for a liberty party, right?

That came into free soil.

Next thing you know, here's Abe Lincoln.

Abe Lincoln's got the integrity, he's got a willingness to grow and so forth, and they can break the back of the slavery that Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and William Lloyd Garrison with the multiracial movement.

So that, for me, I try to look at the world through the lens of the cross in a Christian sense.

The cross signifies unarmed truth.

The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak.

That cross signifies unconditional love, and justice is what love looks like in public.

So that I come out of tradition in which I wanna tell the truth about both parties.

I think you got corruption in both parties.

You got indifference to poor in both parties.

There's no doubt I think Donald Trump is a neo-fascist.

There's no doubt about that.

Biden himself is tied at the moment to some very, very ugly policies, genocide, and ethnic cleansing, and so forth.

- You're talking about Gaza.

- Absolutely.

- You're talking about support of Israel.

- Absolutely.

- So bring it up because let me ask you this.

If your candidacy were to attract a significant number of voters, a significant number of African American voters, people of color, all kinds of voters, and you supported Bernie Sanders last time, you're running yourself this time.

If that were to help Donald Trump become president once again, which is clearly not your intent.

- That's right.

- Does that, would it concern you?

- Oh, absolutely.

I know that Trump enables the same kind of genocide that Biden does in terms of that particular foreign policy.

- Not worse?

- But you see, my truth telling and my justice seeking takes the form of trying to convince all fellow citizens, whoever they might be thinking about voting for.

You and I know 40% of fellow citizens don't vote at all, and I'm spending a lot of time speaking to them just to get them to participate in the voting process.

Then you've got another 63% who say they will never, ever, ever vote for the two parties.

And right now you've got, what, 68% who are disappointed in the two, but haven't decided.

So that each candidate, they have to make the case.

No candidate owns anybody's votes.

They have to earn those votes, you see.

So that if for example, let's say in the Gaza situation, we got American citizens that say they're gonna vote for Brother West rather than Brother Biden because of Gaza.

I'm not stealing from Biden.

That's his fault.

That's his policy.

They have a right to respond.

If those bombs are being dropped on their grandparents and their family members and so forth, Biden doesn't own their vote.

He's not making a case for their vote.

They're looking for somebody else.

And if they choose Brother West because I have a moral commitment rather than just a tactical and strategic one.

I respond because of the voters moving away as opposed to those are precious human beings whose lives are not to be taken.

13,000 precious children, a Palestinian child has the same value as an Italian child, a Black child, an Israeli child, an Ethiopian child, or Guatemalan child.

That's my sensibility.

It's the moral issue.

- And the same thing about October 7th.

Sorry for interrupting, Doctor.

But the same in terms of October 7th, the horrific massacre perpetrated by Hamas on Israelis, children, women, men, innocent people.

- Murder is murder, brother.

- Murder is murder.

- Murder is wrong.

Murder is murder and murder is wrong.

There's just no doubt about that.

Now, it's also true that as you know, I mean, Hamas itself was founded in 1988, so you already had a context of Palestinians being terrorized and you get a counter-terrorist organization that responds.

But I believe murder is murder.

I believe in being morally consistent.

I believe in being ethically constant in terms of anytime you kill an innocent child, it's wrong my brother.

I don't care what color the child.

- There's no justification for their actions.

- I don't care who does it, that's right.

If the IDF does it, if the American troops do it, if British troops do it, if South African troops do it, if Hamas does it, it's morally wrong.

But at the same time, it's true that when you're a counter-terrorist organization, you have to keep in mind what the context is without trying to justify or excuse murder.

- We're talking with Dr. Cornel West.

Thought provoking, compelling, and we'll continue the conversation in just a moment.

To watch more Think Tank with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- Welcome back, folks.

We're talking with Dr. Cornel West.

He needs no introduction.

Dr. West, lemme go back to the conversation about race relations.

So the United States Supreme Court decides what they decide regarding affirmative action, particularly as it relates to, college, entry into admissions that race will no longer be used as a criteria for admission.

To what degree do you acknowledge that there is a significant degree of resentment, quote unquote, white resentment from many, many of whom support Donald Trump or may not but who are saying, "We've done enough, enough is enough.

What about my kid?

And when are we ever going to quote, balance the scales and say, "We're good with affirmative action quotas, et cetera"" There's a question in there somewhere.

Do you understand the so-called white resentment?

- Oh, oh, absolutely.

I just think that we have to be honest with our fellow citizens.

We have to respect them enough to tell them the truth.

You and I know, affirmative action emerged in the '60s because there was - Richard Nixon.

- A (crosstalk) under Nixon - Under Nixon.

That's right, Republican, absolutely.

But they called it preferential treatment because black folk had been excluded for hundreds of years and there was a affirmative action for white Protestants, especially, 'cause the white Catholics are very different.

Catholics had their own forms of discrimination against them, my brother.

- I hear you.

- When I was at Harvard College, I was right there on the faculty floor.

And I'd say, "Where are the Italian professors?

Where are the Italian students?"

And everybody get quiet and say, "Oh, how come you're concerned about Italians?"

Well, I'm concerned about justice.

I've spoken all the time about black folk but I'm concerned about any group that has not been fairly treated.

Now black folk are Exhibition B, Exhibition A is indigenous peoples in the country, right?

But it's interesting to me that what happened was, affirmative action began by saying, "We want this special treatment for these folk who have been excluded all these years."

But when they shifted to diversity, it was no longer a question of injustice.

It was just a question of making things more diverse.

So when the morality drops out and it becomes just a tactic for bringing in a lot of different people.

And that's a good thing but that's a different thing.

And that's what was struck down.

That's what was struck down.

I've always felt poor students, especially at the elite institutions, they need a special treatment to get in too, because they've gone through hell and high water to get those As.

They've gone through hell and high water to be able to achieve.

And they ought to be able to have access in the same way that anybody else does.

And some of those are poor white students too.

So you've got class as well as race operating here.

- So Dr. West, let me ask you, I asked you the same thing in Atlantic City when we sat in person at the teacher's convention, I'm gonna do it again.

Why do you think it's so difficult for so many Americans to have a remotely honest and candid conversation about race, race relations, our racial similarities, our racial differences of opinion, thoughts, whatever, without demonizing each other or not talking to each other and talking to those who look like us and saying what we want to say and feel safe to say, I'll get off my soapbox in a second, but we're not really talking to each other.

- Right, right.

- Why not?

- No, it's true, it's true.

I think part of it is, is that it's a very painful thing to talk about.

- Race?

Why is it painful?

I'm not simply talking about the painful, horrific history of racism, slavery, Jim Crow, but where we were, where we are, what our differences are.

Why is that painful as opposed to just honest?

- Well, it's both, you're right.

It's honest, but it's also painful.

For example, you and I, we sit down as brothers and we reflect and I say, "Well, Brother Steve, man, if you had a sense of some of the things that I have to put up with week in and week out, in terms of people saying this and people putting you down this and people saying, you have no real talent and merit.

You just got in positioned because of your race and so forth.

And you say, "Oh Brother West, that's ridiculous.

My god, you carrying that kind of burden out."

I say, "Yeah Steven, I don't talk about it that much, but it's a painful thing."

And it's not a matter of trying to solicit your pity because we know pity itself, victimizes, right?

It's just an honest dialogue about what people are going through.

- Well, along the same lines, Doctor, I'm sorry for interrupting, Doctor, because it's a question of empathy from my point of view, not pity.

- Exactly.

- Let me ask you this.

- Crucial distinction.

- Let me ask you this.

- Crucial distinction.

- Among many of my friends who happen to be white and disproportionately Italian- American, the guys I hang out with from my old neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, they all live in the suburbs now.

We talk to each other.

Here's the thing, if they were to talk to you or someone else of color to describe their frustration.

Their worry about their kids' future, their sense that they're wondering where their opportunity is for their children, grandchildren, et cetera, they actually believe that.

And I'm not saying they, because I'm one of them, I may not agree with them on everything, and I don't, but my point is this, how much empathy would there be for that point of view as opposed to, are you kidding me?

Yes, you may have been discriminated against in this situation or that but it's not institutional, it's not systemic, and it's nothing compared to what people of color have dealt with.

- Oh, see, I think that empathy ought to go not just both ways, but all ways.

That's part of what the love ethic is all about, you see.

You think of the relationship between Vito Marcantonio and the great WB Du Bois.

Du Bois is the greatest.

- Vito Marcantonio (crosstalk) - In New York, one of the great New York City politicians.

Back, back, back in the day.

Go ahead.

- That's right, he represented East Harlem.

He was also a brilliant lawyer.

- He was a progressive.

- He was W. Du Bois's lawyer when Du Bois was brought to court with his hands cuffed.

And they had a human relationship, a humane relationship.

Du Bois could deeply sympathize with what Italian brothers and sisters were going through at that time.

And of course, Marcantonio deeply empathized with Du Bois and the black community.

Of course, he was representing black and Spanish speaking as an Italian brother, as an Italian brother, you see.

- But that's so rare.

And by the way, take a look at the documentary we did, Jacqui Tricarico and I did a documentary on Sacco and Vanzetti that I know Dr. West knows well.

He knows why I mentioned it.

I'm not gonna open up that Pandora's box, but he knows why I mentioned it and how it's relevant to the conversation we having right now.

- It's a courageous thing you did.

Very courageous what you did, my brother.

I'm just throwing that in.

- I appreciate that.

But let me try this.

Why and where.

I know you're an optimistic person by nature.

I've seen you enough.

I've interviewed you in the past, and again, I get a sense of you, but why are you optimistic about our representative democracy?

It's not debatable.

We know we're in danger but what gives you reason to be optimistic, Dr. West?

- Well, one, my brother, I would never call myself an optimist.

I'm a prisoner of hope.

I believe that's a very different thing.

Now, you know the difference between the Christian discourse on hope and secular discourse on optimism.

I believe we are a wretched species, my brother, and organized greed, institutionalized hatred, routinized indifference toward the vulnerable are the dominant tendencies of our species, going back to the caves.

The beautiful thing is we have possibilities of eruption and interruption with love, justice, sweetness, kindness, gentleness, grins, hugs, family feelings that provide some counterweight against the greed and against the hatred and against the indifference.

And so hope simply says, "We can always go another way.

We can always make choices for integrity, honesty, decency, and generosity.

But generally speaking, going back, there’s 70 empires in the history of the species, the United States is the 68th empire.

Now, Jefferson said, "We're the empire of liberty."

- He did.

- Well, that sounds a little oxymoronic from the indigenous people's point of view.

We know we're in empathy of vicious attack, stolen land, from enslaved Africans and we're in an empire of ugly slavery and Jim Crow and Jane Crow and lynching and so forth.

From the Italian's point of view, it's discrimination and anti-Catholic perception and so on.

Now, that doesn't mean we haven't had breakthroughs, but we've only had breakthroughs when you had courageous people who chose empathy, who chose integrity, and tried to enact some kind of justice.

- Pandora's box, I'll open it anyway.

You have two minutes left, Doctor.

Immigration policy in our nation, the crisis that many people believe it is a crisis, and it is for many in certain communities with limited resources.

Every community has limited resources.

What do you believe needs to be done regarding the situation as it relates to our borders?

- Well, one the Canadian border is an open border, right?

We've got open borders.

We, Americans can go to almost any country with open borders.

So we gotta keep in mind when we're talking about borders, we're zeroing in on Mexico, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico.

- That's right.

- Absolutely.

The first move is to treat people humanely.

The second is to make sure we have procedures that people can gain access to the country.

- Is a wall wrong, Dr. West.

- Yeah, I think a wall is wrong.

- It's wrong.

- I think it's wrong.

I really do.

- Morally wrong?

- Yeah, I think it's morally wrong.

I really do.

I think there's ways in which we could come up with criteria such that there's a difference between legal and illegal.

I still believe in that, but I do believe that for the most part, for those people who are fleeing, and of course, you know the levels of violence and poverty, that they are leaving.

And sometimes it's actually connected to US policy, sometimes it's not.

Sometimes it's just corrupt leadership.

Sometimes it's just bankrupt leadership.

Sometimes the gang activity is becoming so overwhelming because of the levels of poverty.

So there's a lot of different factors.

But we could have a summit of leaders of those particular countries that are trying to gain access to the United States and say, these are the ways in which we're going to try to treat these people humanely.

And we'll come up with ways in which there's access and we'll come up with ways in which some people will not be able to get in.

Everybody just can't get in, there's no doubt about that.

But we also have to make sure citizens here don't feel as if they had to pit themselves over against the newcomers, because that's scapegoating the most vulnerable, rather than confronting the most powerful.

If that were the case, we never would've had Jews and Italians and Poles and others, coming into the country over the last 150 years.

- Hey, Dr. West, I said it to you five years ago when I interviewed you.

I'll say it again.

It is an honor to have a conversation with you and just listen to your thoughts.

People can decide whether they agree or disagree, but it provokes thought, an honest, genuine, civil, respectful conversation.

I cannot thank you enough, thank you, Dr. West.

- I thank you, my brother.

You know, it's always a blessing to be in conversation.

Anytime your team calls, I respond, even though sometimes it takes a while.

- Thank you, Dr. West.

- I salute you.

I salute them, my brother.

- Thank you so much, I'm Steve Adubato, that's Cornel West, Dr. Cornel West.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Wells Fargo.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

NJM Insurance Group.

Johnson & Johnson.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And by New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by Meadowlands Chamber.

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