Cornell West Calls Obama a “Rockefeller Republican in Blackface;” says Harris-Perry, Sharpton and Dyson are ‘For Sale’
Dr. Cornell West and Tavis Smiley recently sat down for an interview with Democracy Now.
And Dr. West pulled no punches.
Regarding President Obama, West asserted that he is anything but a progressive, instead calling him a “A Rockefeller Republican in Blackface.”
I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.
Regarding popular black pundits Melissa Harris-Perry, Al Sharpton and Michael Eric Dyson, West went even harder, essentially calling them sellouts.
I love Brother Mike Dyson… but we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kind of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people.
What are your thoughts on Dr. West’s statements?
Does President Obama have our community’s interests at heart?
Sound off below!
