Dr. Cornel West - How Funky Is Your Faith, How Holy Is Your Funk?

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:01]both a celebratory moment and a uh historic moment. I've been down in South Carolina for the last week.

[00:00:10]Something is happening in America.

[00:00:13]Something going on. Oh yeah, something's going on. No doubt about that.

[00:00:21]No doubt about that.

[00:00:24]People say, "Oh, Brother West, well, you you were so critical of the brother. You were so hard on him at the state of the black union under the t smile.

[00:00:34]Even brother Barack asked me said why did you say what you said about me?

[00:00:39]I said I said it because I believed it.

[00:00:42]I I believed it then.

[00:00:44]I sat out and had long talks with my brother and wrestled with my brother and grappled with my brother. I was convinced that he could be a force for good.

[00:00:56]That's why I changed my mind.

[00:01:00]>> That's why I changed my mind.

[00:01:04]>> Now, it's true. He talked about America as a magical place. I said, "Brother, you are in for a Christopher Columbus experience. You're going to discover America.

[00:01:13]There ain't no magical place.

[00:01:17]Indigenous peoples, enslaved folk, Jim Jane Crow folk, folk lynching. You might think as a first generation voluntary immigrant is magical for you, but I'm here to tell you I'm ninth generation African.

[00:01:29]>> My lord, >> new world Africa. So we work together.

[00:01:32]We just different kind of folk, >> right?

[00:01:35]>> We all don't have to be the same.

[00:01:40]>> But I also want to salute my dear brother John Edwards. I think he's a very, very decent brother. I love him very much.

[00:01:48]And his beloved wife, we want to pray for her.

[00:01:51]And I also salute Sister Hillary Clinton. We got folk who still tied to Hillary. I don't lean in that direction, but I love her, you know.

[00:02:01]But the important thing is that this moment is not about one candidate in any exclusive way >> that what we are experiencing is the beginning of the melting of an ice age that has been in place for the last 30 years. And an ice age is a historical period in which it is fashionable to be indifferent to the suffering of other people, especially the most vulnerable in our society, the children.

[00:02:31]>> And once an ice age begins to melt, all hell breaks loose.

[00:02:38]>> It's both a fascinating moment. It's a turbulent moment, but it's also a dangerous moment. That's precisely why we need Jesus now.

[00:02:47]more than ever >> because the battle is just beginning. I was talking to my dear brother Barack Obama at the state capital right before he gave the talk for Martin Luther King Jr.

[00:03:00]He said, "But brother brother West, have you talked about Martin?" I said, "Yes, I've talked about Martin twice already in Florence, South Carolina. I met some of the wonderful Howard students there at Trinity Baptist Church." Reg.

[00:03:11]Didn't we have a good time?

[00:03:17]And I say, you know, in an ice age, you have to resist the Santa Clausification of Brother Martin.

[00:03:24]>> You see, people turn him into Santa Claus. Big smile on his face, toys in his bag, domesticated, tame, defang, no longer threat to the status quo. You sanitize him, sterilize him, manicure him, deodorize him.

[00:03:45]And >> I said, "Brother Barack, we got to keep defining Martin."

[00:03:53]>> The FBI said he was the most dangerous man alive when he was alive. So Jad Gahoo said he was transgressive. He was subversive.

[00:04:02]Why? Because he was fundamentally committed to unarmed truth and unconditional love. And he understood that he came out of a tradition and a people and a community that said that the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak.

[00:04:17]>> Amen.

[00:04:20]>> And that justice ain't nothing but what love looks like in public.

[00:04:26]>> If you really love folk and especially you love the folk who've been SO HATED AND DESPISED, YOU CAN'T STAND the fact that they're being TREATED UNFAIRLY. YOU LOATHE THE FACT THAT they're being treated unjustly AND YOU'RE WILLING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION AGAINST unfairness is the expression of the voice of God.

[00:04:43]>> Amen.

[00:04:44]>> AMEN.

[00:04:45]>> THAT'S AMOS. LET JUSTICE ROLL DOWN LIKE WATERS and righteousness like a mighty stream.

[00:04:52]And that's what we're experiencing now.

[00:04:54]For the first time, young people can INVEST SOME HOPE, NOT JUST IN A CANDIDATE, but in motion and momentum because things are beginning to change.

[00:05:04]And some of the coldhearted and mean-spirited forces are in disarray.

[00:05:10]>> IT CAN'T COME TOGETHER NO MORE.

[00:05:13]>> And we'll see what happens.

[00:05:16]>> It's a fascinating moment.

[00:05:19]>> But I've come here this morning to try to preach to y'all. Pray for me.

[00:05:27]>> I'd like to preach on how funky is your faith.

[00:05:42]>> And how holy is your funk?

[00:05:48]cuz we in some very very difficult times. WE'RE ABOUT TO TAKE off and we need folk whose faith is so deeply rooted not in that thin stuff but that thick stuff. And you can't have the thick stuff unless you got some funk in your faith. Amen.

[00:06:12]>> But you got to MAKE SURE IT'S A holy funk, not an unholy funk.

[00:06:18]Brother Wes, what you talking about?

[00:06:20]Well, let let me let me just put it first in colloquial terms.

[00:06:25]>> It it it's the difference between Curtis Mayfield and Pat Boon.

[00:06:32]>> You know what I'm saying?

[00:06:36]The difference between Artha and Dolly Parsons, the two-part Shakur and Vanilla Ice, the Duke Ellington's orchestra and Paul Whiteman's band, Ashford and Simpson and Captain Antineil. We could go on and on.

[00:06:57]Tony Marson's beloved, Margaret Mitchell's gone with the wind. Come on now.

[00:07:04]John Cole training Kennedy Gary Jay Blig and Sister Brittany.

[00:07:18]We not putting nobody down.

[00:07:23]There's a difference between the Boyce and Daniel Moahan in terms OF COMING TO TERMS WITH THE doings and sufferings of people of African descent.

[00:07:32]the tradition that I'm talking about regard to the funk and of course we just lost the funk master himself James Brown >> just a year ago >> born in Barnwell South Carolina still born you know he was pronounced dead when he was born wasn't for his aunt to breathe in breath through his lungs WE WOULDN'T EVEN HAVE HAD THAT genius >> that was love then went on to Augustine hooked over to ever ready gospel singers with Sarah Bird and his her brother Bobby Bird and we come out of a people who have resisted Santa Clausification and what I mean by that is we've attempted to always highlight the world through the lens of the cross.

[00:08:26]>> Amen.

[00:08:27]>> Through the lens of the cross. And so many folk these days are afraid of the cross with a hole in it arms length. In fact, you go into some churches today and see two ATMs before you see a cross.

[00:08:42]Scared of it.

[00:08:45]Why? Because the cross forces us to come to terms with the catastrophic, with the calamitous, >> with the scandalous, the monstrous It forces us to come to terms with the underside and the night side. And you have to have a funky faith to remain focused on the cross as you carry your cross through life.

[00:09:17]>> That's why the great Leroy Jones attended this grand university called black people the blues people in his class of 1963.

[00:09:26]Cuz the blues ain't nothing but personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.

[00:09:34]>> Nobody loves me but my mama and she might be jing too.

[00:09:42]That's catastrophic.

[00:09:45]That's calamitous.

[00:09:48]That's traumatic.

[00:09:53]But to be black in America for 400 years is to be on intimate terms with forms of death. Be it the social death of American slavery for 244 years where black people have no social standing, no public worth, only a commodity to be bought and sold at the slave auction. Or then Jim Crow and Jane Crow with the lynching, the American terrorism, that civic death. where we were told not just to hate ourselves but to believe in fact that we had been niggerized all the way down.

[00:10:30]>> One of the differences between black people in Alabama as opposed to our precious black folk in Barbados and Jamaica. THEY WERE NEVER JIM CROWED.

[00:10:38]They were enslaved. They were never Jim and Jane Crow.

[00:10:43]>> Cuz when you're Jim Crow and Jane Crow, there's levels of terrorism coming at you. NOT JUST YOUR BODY BUT AT YOUR SOUL and your mind.

[00:10:53]>> And that kind of nigorization is a thoroughly going US phenomena >> to take a particular people and make them so afraid and scared and intimidated.

[00:11:07]>> Walk around feeling as if they're helpless and helpless and hopeless and have no sense of possibility. So you end up having to defer and scratch when it don't itch and laugh when it's not funny and cowttow to the powers that be.

[00:11:24]>> I saw a lot of it in South Carolina cuz nigorization hit harder there >> than where I grew up, California.

[00:11:33]>> It hit California but not like South Carolina.

[00:11:39]>> That violence and terror coming at you.

[00:11:44]And then of course the spiritual death, another form of catastrophe. And we see it now killing fields, the hoods, the American empire.

[00:12:00]Not just the hopelessness, but the lovelessness, the touchlessness, the gangster proclivities enacted.

[00:12:12]You see fathers drifting, some of them downright irresponsible, mothers overworked and underpaid.

[00:12:20]Schools utterly disgraceful, ridiculous, unavailable health care and child care, not enough jobs with a living wage. That is catastrophic.

[00:12:37]But during an ice age, you hide and conceal those catastrophic circumstances and act as if everything is normal. And those of us who have a righteous indignation at those realities, we're the ones that's told that we out of touch with reality.

[00:12:58]>> But we also come from a tradition that says what? You're going to reap what you sow. Chickens come home TO ROOST. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. TRUTH CRUSHED THE EARTH TO RISE AGAIN. SOONER OR LATER, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO COME to terms with it or it's going to backfire on you.

[00:13:15]>> And that's what's happening right now.

[00:13:18]>> All of A SUDDEN, WALL STREET'S IN TROUBLE. WE TOLD YOU WITH THE FREE MARKET fundamentalism and the market as an idol thinking it can solve all problems generating obscene levels of wealth inequality with 1% OF THE POPULATION HAVE 52% OF THE NET WEALTH BUT 23% OF ALL THE PRECIOUS AMERICAN CHILDREN OF ALL COLORS LIVING IN POVERTY. THAT'S A MORAL DISGRACE. SOONER OR LATER YOU GOING HAVE TO COME to terms with it.

[00:13:46]No way around it.

[00:13:49]But you got to have a funky faith to pursue that unarmed truth >> and that unconditional love. That's what I told my brother Obama. So, oh brother, they hitting me so hard and brother Bill Clinton, he kind of out of control.

[00:14:10]I said, "That's what the terrain is like, my brother. It's treacherous.

[00:14:18]No matter who it is, even though the Clintons got to twist them, >> certain kind of way of winning at any cost, >> but that's not the point. The point is you have to ready yourself.

[00:14:34]>> You have to be prepared.

[00:14:37]>> You have to do your homework on all different fronts. Amen.

[00:14:44]>> Because what is emerging now with the melting is precisely the things that have been unspeakable and unutterable and unsayable and intolerable and unbearable for the last 30 years.

[00:15:02]>> You say, "Well, they should have just listened to some hip-hop for the last 30 years. They would have found out a lot of the realities had been hidden and concealed. KS1 would have told them about it. Rod Digger would have told him about it. Lupe would tell him about it.

[00:15:17]Ryan Fest tell him about it. Them one dead president and the whole host would tell him about it. But no, they want to marginalize it.

[00:15:25]That's true for black folk too. Just talking to my dear brother Nas coming out with the n-word if they allow him to do it. I love my dear brother.

[00:15:33]He's a great artist. He's a great intellectual. He loves black people. He wants to overcome black suffering in his own distinctive way. he's going to hit the have to hit the ground running. But it has to come to terms with c certain realities.

[00:15:49]Now I want to say especially to young people that in this particular moment as your faith becomes more fified keep track of your vocation not just your profession.

[00:16:08]You see, we've been living at a time in which so many young folk, gang access, high quality skills, very important.

[00:16:21]Gang access to spaces where they can cultivate their intellectual dispositions. Crucial.

[00:16:31]But you come from a folk who have never viewed profession as an end in itself.

[00:16:40]>> Profession is always a means toward your vocation.

[00:16:47]And by vocation, what do we mean? Your calling.

[00:16:52]>> What are you called to do?

[00:16:55]And you see, you can't answer that question by yourself because there's no vocation without invocation.

[00:17:03]>> You'll never be able to understand what your vocation is unless you understand those who came before who wrestled with their vocations in such a way that you become enhanced, mature, and develop in your struggle.

[00:17:19]>> Amen.

[00:17:21]32nd chapter of Genesis is not alien to them with Jacob wrestling with the angel of night, angel of death in the midnight hour. Wounded it and emerges with a new name, Israel, God wrestler.

[00:17:35]And that's what we need. We need wrestlers. We need those who are grappling with their vocation. There's no calling without recalling.

[00:17:47]So if you want to be A PREACHER, THAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Howard Thurman and Or Roberts.

[00:17:53]>> Got a DIFFERENT KIND OF CALLING. AIN'T TALKING ABOUT THE SAME GOD. Very different view.

[00:18:00]>> Cuz one's looking at it from the vantage point of the catastrophic Jesus and the disinherited.

[00:18:08]>> That's Howard Thurman, the grand dean of this chapel 70 years ago.

[00:18:15]Young folk, prepare yourself to find your vocation and your calling to be part of this melting of an ice age. And keep in mind that even your mama can't tell you what your vocation is.

[00:18:33]>> You can ask her for consultation, but she can't tell you. Don't even ask for her permission, just her advice.

[00:18:42]Because you got to answer that in the depths of your own soul, in the precincts of your own minds.

[00:18:49]your particular response in that regard. But the history becomes fundamental because that dialectical interplay between vocation and invocation and calling and recalling means that you're going to have to be able to sit situate yourself in a story bigger than you that goes all the way back down through the course of time. You got to locate yourself in a narrative grander than you that allows you to understand your vocation in light of the invocations of the past.

[00:19:25]And I tell you, it's a dangerous things these days to take your vocation and your calling seriously.

[00:19:32]>> It cuts against the grain.

[00:19:37]Sometimes rewards won't go your way. If you understand rewards in terms of short-term prosperity but vocation is about what what brother Richardson said it's about greatness and he or she is greatest among you servant >> be your servant what is the quality of your service to others especially the least of these echo in the 25th chapter of Matthew what's the depth of your love especially the least of these echoing not just Leviticus 19:18 love thy neighbor as thyself self that Jesus talked about on the sermon on the mount. But don't forget the sermon on the plane.

[00:20:15]>> Not the same thing.

[00:20:18]One's logic of equivalence. Do unto others that you'd have others do unto you.

[00:20:24]>> But the sermon on the plane says what?

[00:20:27]Even love your enemy.

[00:20:30]>> I can hear Malcolm saying that's kind of sick.

[00:20:36]And we love brother Malcolm, but Malcolm wanted to hold on to the equivalent.

[00:20:41]He said, "You treat me right, I'll treat you right. You treat me with respect, I'll treat you with respect. You trash for me, I'm going to kick your Malcolm did that out of love. The black people were so unloved."

[00:20:56]And the niggerization was such that very few people wanted to stand up and straighten their backs up and speak the truth in an unarmed way. And he did that for us.

[00:21:06]And we love him for that >> whether you agree with his theology or not.

[00:21:16]>> But of course, what we come back to Malcolm, brother, brother Malcolm, what you don't forget that Jesus denigorizes too.

[00:21:25]>> Jesus gives black folk backbone >> so they can stand.

[00:21:35]Anytime you straighten your back, you're going somewhere because a man can't ride your back if it's bent.

[00:21:42]>> That's what Sly Stone meant when he said, "Stand.

[00:21:46]Stand with grace and dignity.

[00:21:50]Take action with courage and compassion.

[00:21:54]Malice toward none. We're not talking about hating anybody. We're talking about hating deeds. Malice toward none.

[00:22:02]But a righteous indignation against the unfairness against those Sly Stone call everyday people or those the late great James Cleveland called ordinary people.

[00:22:15]That is a vocation.

[00:22:17]That is a calling. And we need more young folk to be part of that wave of that calling. And it's more than supporting a campaign. It's a matter of deciding what kind of human being you want to be, what kind of way of life you want to pursue. That is the most fundamental question you could ask.

[00:22:41]And you say, "Well, Brother West, what's funky about it?" What's funky about it is you begin with as a featherless two-legged luistically conscious creature born between urine and feces.

[00:22:49]That's how you start the love push that got you out your mama's womb.

[00:22:56]and your body soon going to be the culinary delight of terrestal worms.

[00:23:00]That's kind of funky.

[00:23:03]Amen. That's right.

[00:23:04]>> And in the meantime, you're going to have to get down with the blood at the cross to try to be shaped in such a way that you understand yourself as someone who is capable of love, capable of confidence, capable of pursuing the highest levels of excellence and then making it contagious in such a way that you don't just serve others, you actually find joy in serving others.

[00:23:29]That's the tradition that produced you.

[00:23:33]can't wait.

[00:23:36]John Cold Train couldn't wait to blow his horn in the morning. Went to sleep with the horn in his mouth and woke up blowing.

[00:23:44]Marcus Garvey had Negroes on his mind all day and all night and woke up with Negroes on his mind. Now that that's taking it a little far for me. I don't know about y'all.

[00:23:54]I got to wait till about 10:30.

[00:23:59]I need a break.

[00:24:01]But that's love. Deep love. And that's why vocation IS TIED TO VISION. Vision is not something that you actually adopt.

[00:24:12]>> Amen.

[00:24:13]>> A vision is not even something you follow. A vision is something that seizes you. It possesses you. It's almost like the Holy Ghost. It provides a power inside of you to do things you didn't think you can do. And therefore, you don't have an external relation to vision. Vision constitutes who you are.

[00:24:33]>> And that's what we mean by we don't have leaders with vision because these days it's all about polls and scripts >> to find out what they really believe.

[00:24:44]>> They don't feel it >> in the deepest sense.

[00:24:50]>> Y'all know that song that Curtis Mayfield wrote for Artha Franklin that Invogue picked up giving him something he could feel.

[00:24:58]I'm talking about spiritual and moral feeling.

[00:25:03]>> You can't help yourself. And if you don't do it, the rocks are going to shout out.

[00:25:07]>> That's the kind of vision that I'm talking about. That's the kind of vision we want among the young folk.

[00:25:13]>> That's how Stokeley Carmichael was when he was here.

[00:25:19]>> Always on fire for justice, >> on fire for truth, trying to make the world a better place. Whether you disagree with him or not, IF WE DON'T PRODUCE THOSE KIND OF BLACK FOLK, >> then we're going to end up with a whole generation of the most welladjusted black people, but welladjusted to injustice.

[00:25:42]>> And Martin and the others didn't die to produce welladjusted negroes to injustice.

[00:25:50]The age of the peacocks is over.

[00:25:56]We don't need more folk just walking around showing their foliage, >> showing how accomplished they are and and their achievements and I'm somebody and I'm the first X and I'm the second Y. No peacocks truck because they can't fly.

[00:26:13]WE TALKING ABOUT FLYING AWAY LIKE AN EAGLE. STRETCH OUT. STRETCH YOUR WINGS.

[00:26:17]STRAIGHTEN YOUR BACKS OUT.

[00:26:20]That's the KIND OF TRADITION WE COME OUT OF.

[00:26:24]THAT'S WHY THE MOST FAMOUS SERMON OF THE 20TH CENTURY PREACHED BY ARTHA FRANKLIN father Reverend CL Franklin was what?

[00:26:30]The eagle stirs his nest >> to stretch OUT AND KEEP TRACK OF WHAT'S GOING ON, ESPECIALLY THE WRETCHED OF the earth in the language of France Fenome or those catching hell. Not because you're so self-righteous because as a correct vessel, you choose to live that kind of life. You trying to muster the courage with your crooked heart to love your crooked neighbor.

[00:26:58]and you're willing to serve that neighbor cuz both of y'all crooked with gangster proclivities.

[00:27:04]Let them free a spot of wrinkle.

[00:27:07]>> Nobody messianic, no one LEADER GOING TO LEAD BLACK PEOPLE NOWHERE ANYBODY ELSE.

[00:27:14]>> But it's the everyday folk who have the COURAGE TO STEP UP AND create a context for whoever emerges.

[00:27:24]In the 1950s and60s, IT WAS FANNY LIU HAMER and Martin KING AND STOKELEY CARMICHAEL AND DIANE NASH AND ROBERT MOSES. THEY WERE THE ONES WHO STRAIGHTENED up and a whole host of black folk watched it on television with great interest.

[00:27:47]The 1980s in the middle of this the ice age. Who was it? a crack vessel named Jesse Jackson >> stepping forward.

[00:27:58]>> Everybody's so critical of Jesse today.

[00:28:02]>> Well, Obama's not the first one to win the primary in South Carolina.

[00:28:07]>> Jesse won 84 and 88.

[00:28:10]Already tried to denigorize folk in South Carolina way back during the ice age when everybody was scared.

[00:28:19]when Ronald Reagan was running things.

[00:28:20]The same Ronald Reagan who had begun his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three precious civil rights activists were killed by American terrorists called a Klux Clan. The same Ronald Reagan that said, "MY FAVORITE POLITICIAN IS JEFFERSON DAVIS, WHO WAS THE PRESIDENT OF THE the Confederacy WAS NOTHING BUT A CRYPTONAZI attempt to engage in violence, insurrection, OR OVERTHROW THE US GOVERNMENT." THAT'S THE SAME REAGAN. THAT'S WHY black people not crazy about Reagan.

[00:28:49]LET THE MAINSTREAM SAY WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY. WE LOOK AT THE world through THE LENS OF THE CROSS.

[00:28:57]>> And it's not a matter of pigmentation.

[00:28:59]Even a debate these days about whether Barack was black enough or not. Look how the white mainstream press just twisted it, distorted it as if black people, as if we're not intelligent, thinking it's just about his precious white mother and precious African father and his pigmentation. No, no, no. When black people say you're not black enough, they say you're not bold enough.

[00:29:31]Thot Marshall Clarence Thomas both beautifully black. One of them's not black enough.

[00:29:41]You come from a tradition of the catastrophic.

[00:29:45]When you're black enough, YOU SIDE WITH THE WEAK AGAINST THE STRONG.

[00:29:51]>> NO MATTER WHAT THE COST IS.

[00:29:54]And if you SIDE WITH THE STRONG, THEN SAY YOU'RE SIDING WITH THE STRONG AND GONE WITH YOURSELF. BUT DON'T TRY TO RATIONALIZE IT AND ACT AS IF YOU REALLY TRYING TO HELP THE WEAK WHEN YOU'RE CRUSHING THE WEAK.

[00:30:07]>> That's the difference between Jesse Jackson and Allen Keys. They both beautifully black. One's not black enough because it's not bold enough to side with the weak.

[00:30:17]Has nothing to do with demonizing them at all. You can love Allen Keys. He and I used to be in the same graduate seminar at Harvard. He was more reactionary then. He's grown.

[00:30:33]>> But I loved him. We had arguments. I was just rarely persuaded.

[00:30:37]>> Amen.

[00:30:39]>> If the police were beating up on him, I'd side with HIM AGAINST THE POLICE CUZ IT'S a matter of principle.

[00:30:45]>> You say, "Oh, brother, you just kidding me." That's not true.

[00:30:50]I would I hate white supremacy.

[00:30:55]>> I don't hate white folk. I hate white supremacy.

[00:30:58]I hate male supremacy.

[00:31:02]I can't stand imperial arrogance. This notion that somehow American babies have more weight than a baby in South Africa or India or Guatemala OR VENEZUELA.

[00:31:12]WHERE'S THAT COME FROM? That's an idol.

[00:31:14]It's a form of idolatry.

[00:31:17]I CAN'T STAND HOMOPHOBIA. I CAN'T STAND PATRIARCHY. That's not PC CHITCHAT.

[00:31:23]THAT'S JUST THE kind of person I choose to be.

[00:31:27]believe I'm wrong. Rescue me.

[00:31:33]>> That how my dear brother MARANA CORINGA PUT IT. RESCUE me if I'm wrong.

[00:31:38]>> I might need it.

[00:31:40]>> But the point for the younger generation is this connection between your vocation on the one hand and this vision. Now your vision is not the same as your individual program.

[00:31:52]>> A lot of people say what's your vision?

[00:31:53]what my vision is that uh I got my eye on that dynamite job. No, that's not a vision. That's your day job. Now, I want to know what your life task is.

[00:32:04]>> Don't confuse your day job with your life task.

[00:32:08]>> Day job just a means to just a vehicle.

[00:32:11]It's an instrument for something deeper and broader.

[00:32:17]Of course, anytime you talk about wrestling with your vocation, being seized by your vision, open to the power greater than you, allowing yourself to stand up straight with that dignity and grace, you need to find your voice.

[00:32:36]And if there's one thing that has been central in the history of black people in the new world, it has been voice.

[00:32:44]It's why music has such a very very very special place in black people preserving our sanity, dignity, and humanity.

[00:32:57]>> That's why I always began by making a reference to the music was on those slave ships.

[00:33:04]Precious Africans speaking variety of different languages could only moan and groan together in order to comfort and console one another.

[00:33:14]And when we entered the slave auction in this whirlwind of white supremacy called the USA, confronting social death, we had no political rights whatsoever.

[00:33:26]No economic power, no control even over our progeny, our precious children, and stripped regarding our relation to our predecessors, those who came before.

[00:33:37]What did black people have that preserved us? where we stole away in the midnight hour and formed circles with ring shouts. And these nonliterate folk got together and raised their voices.

[00:33:51]They lifted their voices in such a way that they were able to feel powerful.

[00:33:57]Even though the world looked at THEM AS SO DEEPLY POWERLESS, >> the only power we had was over our voices and our bodies. And we stylize space and time by walking certain ways and talking certain ways and relating with our body in certain ways and raising our voices.

[00:34:19]And those voices and the styles of those voices are species of historical memory.

[00:34:27]That's why when we hear a usher, a Luther, a James Cleveland, it's not even solely in the words they have to sing. It's in how they do it because it comes out OF A TRADITION THAT IS ROOTED IN A historical memory locked into the catastrophic circumstances, BUT RESISTING THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES in that way only with their voice.

[00:34:52]>> Yeah. That's why it's hard for me to turn off Snoop Dog's music sometime cuz the content upsets me.

[00:35:02]But that need broken flow and the way he flows is connected TO THAT SAME TRADITION.

[00:35:15]>> THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DRAMATICS AND THE LETTERMEN.

[00:35:22]species of historical memory. We heard it in the choir.

[00:35:27]>> It cuts deep.

[00:35:29]It's not cerebral. It's visceral.

[00:35:33]>> Yes.

[00:35:34]>> It stirs your soul to invoke the group of Sam Cook and Lou RS.

[00:35:42]And it does it in such a way that it makes voice central. It was no accident of course that the Negro national anthem is what?

[00:35:51]>> Lift every >> voice. Every voice >> absolutely >> every voice needed ought to be available for service >> ought to be available for organizing, mobilizing, reflecting, healing or the greatest art form of the 20th century which is what? Jazz.

[00:36:13]>> Jazz is about what? Finding your voice.

[00:36:16]That's right.

[00:36:18]>> Imitation is suicide. Cold train quit imitating Johnny Hutchkins.

[00:36:25]>> Neo had to quit imitating Michael Jackson to find his voice, didn't he? He found it though.

[00:36:33]>> You bounce your voice up against those who came before, but you have to find your voice. Don't confuse your voice with an echo.

[00:36:45]>> And that's a problem. These days, I speak to the hip-hop community all the time. I say, you know, part of the problem is y'all got too many copies and not enough originals.

[00:36:58]>> It's easy to be a copy because you're concerned about your career and that money and those resources that flow. My dear brother of infinite value called himself two quarters, half a dollar, 50 cent.

[00:37:13]What did he say the other day? I'm not interested in the music. I'm interested in the money.

[00:37:19]>> I SAID, "BROTHER, YOU'RE SO TALENTED, BUT DON'T SAY THAT."

[00:37:23]>> THAT MUSIC IS NOT A PLAY THING. IT'S NOT JUST ENTERTAINMENT and amusement for black people.

[00:37:29]>> Sustains their souls when the music gets thin.

[00:37:34]Conception of who you are gets thin. And most of them so far removed from the blood at the cross cuz they unchurched.

[00:37:44]Music's the last thing they have as a form of transcendence to get some distance from their pain.

[00:37:51]>> AND THEY DON'T EVEN REALIZE HOW THEIR PAIN IS SO VISIBLE with all OF THE STUFF IN THEIR TEETH IN every inch OF THEIR BODY WITH TATTOOS. AND YOU CAN SEE IT JUST A PARAPHERNALIA OF SUFFERING. AND THEY DON'T REALIZE IN FACT THERE WAS A TRADITION THAT SAYS THAT THERE ARE SOME OTHER WAYS TO DEAL WITH THAT SUFFERING.

[00:38:09]BUT WE LOVE YOU ANYWAY WITH THE TATTOOS AND ALL YOUR TEETH LOOKING GOLD AND SILVER.

[00:38:18]>> YEAH, LIL WAYNE, WE LOVE YOU, BROTHER.

[00:38:24]>> BUT WE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY TO YOU, >> just like you got something to say to us.

[00:38:31]You see, that's the caravan of love that the Eley brothers was talking about, y'all.

[00:38:38]But our particular twist on it has to do with the cross.

[00:38:42]And that's where our challenge is today.

[00:38:46]Raising our voices seized by a vision owing to our vocation in such a way that our commitment to unarmed truth and unconditional love can wake this nation.

[00:39:01]And by waking the nation, it wakes the world given the Americanization of the whole world.

[00:39:09]>> And that's one of the reasons why every 30 years or so, America has to recognize that black people are still the key to American history.

[00:39:21]>> You wouldn't have a constitution that was not a proslavery document without Frederick Douglas and the abolitionists.

[00:39:29]Amen.

[00:39:30]>> You wouldn't have a multi-racial democracy in the 60s if it wasn't for the freedom movement in the 60s. You wouldn't have a DEMOCRACY IF AMERICAN BLACK PEOPLE WHO WERE TERRORIZED FOR 400 years had responded in the same WAY THAT THE WHITE HOUSE RESPONDS when it is terrorized after 9/11.

[00:39:52]>> Comes Martin. Here comes Fanny. Here comes Ray Charles. Here comes Curtis Mayfield. Here comes Stevie Wonder. Here comes James Bowwin. Here comes Tony Morrison. Love, love, love. But love not a play thing. Daring, difficult, dangerous. Love for a hated people. Love for a despised people. A love that ties them in the struggle for justice. We didn't have to read Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice to know the difference between justice and revenge.

[00:40:20]>> Right. Right.

[00:40:20]>> BUT OH, WHEN AMERICA'S TERRORIZED, DO WE HEAR LOVE, LOVE, LOVE? NO. HUNT THEM DOWN LIKE COCKROACHES.

[00:40:27]BRINGING BACK DEAD or alive. Nobody messes with us. We big and bad. IF BLACK PEOPLE HAD RESPONDED TO AMERICAN terrorism in that way, WE WOULDN'T HAVE A DEMOCRACY. WOULD HAVE HAD A CIVIL WAR EVERY GENERATION. LET'S BE HONEST ABOUT IT.

[00:40:44]I TELL MY DEAR WHITE BROTHERS AND SISTERS, SOMETIMES WHEN YOU SEE NEGROES, YOU OUGHT TO JUST GIVE THEM A standing ovation. Thank you for YOUR DEMOCRACY.

[00:40:51]WE THANK YOU FOR DUKE ELLINGTON. WE THANK YOU FOR COUNT BASY. OH YES. WE THANK YOU FOR ALL THESE LOVING BLACK FOLK WHO'VE BEEN SCARRED AND WOUNDED, BRUISED, AND THEY STILL LOVING ANYWAY.

[00:41:03]WHAT IS IT ABOUT THESE NEGROES?

[00:41:08]>> Oh yeah. I WAS IN CAIRO JUST FEW MONTHS ago and I told him, I SAID, "LET ME TELL YOU ALL WHY WE DON'T HAVE A BLACK AL-QAEDA.

[00:41:19]IF >> YOU'VE BEEN TERRORIZED FOR 400 YEARS, SOMEBODY MUST HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT IT.

[00:41:29]It has something to do with the the funky faith.

[00:41:33]>> Oh yes. Had something to do with the idea of grandmama telling folk over and over again. It's better to be momentarily defeated and right than to win and be a gangster. It's better not to get down in the the gutter with revenge and bigotry and hatred even if you can get away with it. Preserve your integrity. Don't be concerned just WITH YOUR SECURITY. TRY TO HAVE MAGNANMITY.

[00:42:00]DON'T BE CONCERNED JUST WITH YOUR PROSPERITY. THAT'S THE TRADITION THAT PRODUCED us at our best.

[00:42:08]And America KNOWS IT.

[00:42:11]WHAT IS America was out that tradition of black people.

[00:42:18]It's what? And I'll tell you what it is.

[00:42:22]It's a nation of excessive greed, spiritual malnutrition, and moral constipation.

[00:42:31]That's what it is. We're not saying all white brothers, sisters like that. We talking about the tilt, the dominant orientation.

[00:42:43]Now, we living in an ice age where there's been many black folk who just couldn't wait to get in on any terms.

[00:42:53]because they think it was all about success. THEY MISSED THE POINT.

[00:42:58]>> They think it was all about getting over. They missed the point. And it certainly was never been about the 11th commandment. Thou shalt not get caught.

[00:43:10]>> No. There's a people in your midst on intimate terms with forms of death, social, civic, psychic, spiritual death in close proximity to terrorism.

[00:43:24]And now that the nation has the blues, you either learn something from a blues people with a funky faith or you can end up losing your democracy.

[00:43:35]>> And what makes it holy? What makes it holy is precisely that fundamental commitment to the love of that first century Palestinian Jew named Jesus.

[00:43:49]>> That millions of black people, including myself, fell in love at a particular moment in our lives. And we can say such a manner we have no shame that Jesus is in fact that rock in a weed land.

[00:44:06]never would have made it.

[00:44:09]>> I've got gangster proclivities. Yes, my righteous indignation does blure into hatred sometimes.

[00:44:19]But that Jesus reminds me not just of himself and Godself, but also of the tradition of black people appropriating Jack Ginges so that our ancestors remain a point of reference so that their afterlife becomes manifest in our lives in space and time. God takes where takes care of what happens on the other side of the Jordan. But if we don't have young people who have a deep sense of vocation, who have vision and have voice and can understand that the afterlife of those great ancestors is in your life, that what they give to you in fact is your life in terms of a tradition that shape you and what you give to them is their afterlife in the life that you live.

[00:45:12]And that's a grand challenge to connect those three dimensions of time, past, present, and future. And we can lose it.

[00:45:21]There's no guarantee.

[00:45:24]We don't have time to get into the way in which our churches have been flattened out.

[00:45:31]We don't have time to get into the way in which so many of the grand sources of struggle for truth and justice are evacuating quickly.

[00:45:43]And it may well it may well be the case.

[00:45:47]We'll see in the next nine months or so whether America has the capacity to melt.

[00:45:57]>> It may become so used to the ice that it it won't melt.

[00:46:05]You see, we don't know. But one benchmark of the melting is the overcoming of indifference.

[00:46:13]>> And that's what we've seen this past week.

[00:46:17]That's what we've seen in the past few weeks.

[00:46:20]Indifference is the one trait that makes the very angels weep.

[00:46:25]It's the very essence of inhumity.

[00:46:28]When you look at the levels of indifference toward those who have been suffering in the last 30 days, disproportionately black, but not exclusively black, >> there poor white brothers and sisters, poor red brothers and sisters, poor Latino brothers and sisters, poor Asian brothers and sisters. But the indifference toward it, that's what needs to be shattered.

[00:46:50]The great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Hesshel used to say, "In evil is more evil than evil itself."

[00:46:58]That's what makes the ice age what it is. The iciness of the heart, the coarsening of the conscience, the hardening of the soul.

[00:47:06]>> Do we have what it takes? Howard University? I don't know. Cuz it's not in our hands. It's in the Lord's hands.

[00:47:13]What we are required to do is to find our vocation, be seized by our vision and then lift our voice.

[00:47:26]And something tells me that given the history of Howard that we got a whole new generation of folk who can't wait to get out there and enact the tradition that produced this grand plane. Thank you all so very much. God bless you.