If YOU have issues with Cornel West-well, what are they?

[mythology]

11. His habit of using name calling in an attempt to shame others for one

Calling Obama a "Republican in blackface", or Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton a "house negro" not okay in my book. Far too much of West's rhetoric falls into that category which means I can't take him seriously as an intellectual. He uses intentionally racialized terms to declare somebody else unauthentically black. He's not stupid enough to be using those terms by accident. In doing so, he's declaring his position to be the only authentic black voice. To me that's no different than somebody like a Pat Robertson declaring only his understanding of Christianity is accurate, or Osama bin Laden's understanding of Islam.

Also anybody who is arrogant enough to consider themselves a prophetic voice, I feel perfectly fine ignoring. But it speaks to why West really can't handle disagreement and so has to resort to petulant name calling. He sees himself as having access to some divine voice, but he has an increasingly limited ability to impact society and cause change. I'm sure that's intensely frustrating, but it doesn't mean it's okay to call people names instead of doing something actually useful.

He wasn't attacked from the right by Dyson. He wasn't actually attacked on political grounds at all. It's not about positions on should we increase funds going to majority minority schools, or how can we get more blacks to graduate college, or reduce the unemployment rate of blacks, or reduce income inequality on racial lines or any of a myriad of actually political positions.

He was attacked for becoming a sanctimonious self-aggrandizing ass who lost his way and descended into self-parody. Once West was reduced to using racial insults, he lost any actual claim to morality. Once West began to believe his own hype, he let himself become more important than what he claimed to believe in.