Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

414 // CORNfL WEST
Jewish world caught me a bit by surprise. I've been on the battlefield for over two
decades, so I am accustomed to principled criticisms and ad hominem ones. But
the recent wave of venom and vitriol directed at me is new. Needless to say, I try
to learn what I can from such contemptuous criticisms, keep my stride, and do
my work. And with all of us being the cracked vessels that we are, there will
always be degrees of mendaciousness and tendentiousness, envy and jealousy, misunderstandings
and misinterpretations in our human exchanges. Furthermore,
the degraded state of public conversation in American culture leads us to lower
our intellectual expectations in regard to a spirit of empathy, charity, or generosity.
But the virtual absence of fair-mindedness, the predominance of such intellectual
obscenity and personal vulgarity bespeaks a gangsterization of the mind
that behooves all of us to resist. Even among tormented and tortured journalists
aspiring to serious intellectual work such as Leon Wieseltier we expect more than
third-rate hatchet: jobs predicated on homework undone in the guise of lowbrow
wit and middlebrow wordplay. Similarly, we look for more than paternalistic
rankings (Ellen Willis), glib reputation assessments (Sean Wilentz), or weak
efforts at mediation in leading liberal and progressive weeklies and quarterlies
(Andrew Delbanco). In other works, the degeneration of Black-Jewish relations is
suffocating certain pockets of our intellectual life. How sad!
This degeneration can be seen in the responses of some of my old Jewish
friends to the attacks. Silence. Avoidance. Evasion. Capitulation. Deference to
power. Cowardly careerism. In other words, hardly any serious grappling with my
texts or actions—just a shadow game with close colleagues and tribal loyalties.
Many of my supportive Jewish friends reach these same conclusions. And most of
my Black friends simply say we told you so.
For me, this painful situation raised a number of existential and vocational
questions. What were the fundamental reasons 1 persisted in promoting Black-
Jewish coalitions? How would I define the sources of hope for such unpopular
efforts? What is the most wise and moral response to such ugly disrespect and
degradation? My fundamental commitments are to human decency, mutual
respect, and personal integrity. The common thread of these commitments is
compassion or empathy. Needless to say, for a Christian, this thread flows from
the love ethic of Jesus Christ; for a human being, it serves as the basis of a
democratic mode of being in the world. Those great existential democrats—from
Walt Whitman, Maurice Maeterlinck, John Dewey, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Louis
Armstrong, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Audre Lorcle, and John Coltrane—all promoted
forms of human connection mediated with compassion without dissolving
diversity and differences. My own investment in Black-Jewish alliances is not
simply a political effort to buttress progressive forces in American society. It also
is a moral endeavor that exemplifies ways in which the most hated group in
European history and the most hated group in U.S. history can coalesce in the
name of precious democratic ideals—ideals that serve as the sole countervailing
force to hatred, fear, and greed.