A review on the Book "Restoring Hope" by Dr. Cornel West with commentaries on Mr. Obama's strategy of hope.Why

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Now that the 2012 election cycle is finally in "full swing" and one of the candidates has had us relying on hope for the last four years, a review of Dr. West's book "Restoring Hope" would be an appropriate place to re-examine and take a more careful look at Mr. Obama's idea of hope, especially as it applies to the present black American condition. Dr. West's book actually is the perfect vehicle for all Americans voters to do the same.

It is a series of interviews and discussions between Dr. West and nine prominent people: Harry Belafonte, Bill Bradley, Charlayne-Hunter Gault, the Reverend Dr. James Forbes, and the Reverend Dr. James M. Washington, Wynton Marsalis, Patricia Williams, Haki Madhubuti, and Maya Angelou. It would be an understatement to say that all are far-ranging discussions, with framing questions to fit the experiences of the interviewees being asked at the beginning of each session by Dr. West himself.

As a self-proclaimed "non-theist," I had initially skipped the fourth interview in this book between Dr. West and the two ministers, thinking erroneously that what they would have to say would be the conventional religious take on issue of hope. However, that assumption was a colossal mistake, because as it turns out, not only was the three-way interview between them the centerpiece of the book, but also the most incredible free-wheeling discussions on America's contemporary spiritual predicament ever put in print. It alone awards the book at least five stars. My own detailed interpretation of it, with commentaries, makes up the bulk of this review.

Can you speak your truth in a way that allows you to preserve your integrity as an individual, while allowing your subgroup to be able to come together in a larger community of humanity?

How one answers that question is what animated the discussion among the ministers and actually is not just the output of the three-way discussion between them, but also provides the subtext for the other interviews -- all led by Dr. West posing, framing, agitating and signifying with the overarching question of: What is spirituality in the context of American society, and especially as it applies to black Americans?

Each of the ministers put their own unique meanings and (as a surprise to me, a committed existentialist) their own existential spin into the ring: To Rev Forbes, spirituality is the system of values that gives meaning and strength to the struggles of life; to Rev Washington, it is the anchor that holds us together in the struggle against the opposing force of meaninglessness, including against entrenched American style racism. Forbes says that we are thrown into the world to struggle and then forced to watch ourselves deteriorate: condemned to be observers to our ultimate fate, death. Spirituality to Forbes thus is just another way of coping with the meaning of life --- that is to say all the while we are on our way to die. In a beautiful and powerful existentialist metaphor, he describes us all as "Researchers," trying to decide if the act of "being born" was a friendly or a "hostile" act? According to him, the way we live our lives is our only report card: An "A" says that our birth was life-affirming and thus was a fortuitous moment; an "F" says that our very birth was a dark and deep tragedy.

Dr. West's take is that when we speak of spirituality in this nation, we are only speaking of various forms of darkness in a sea of forward-looking, blued-eyed, thin- lipped, straight haired sunshine, a kind of sunshine that is constantly trying to redefine us black people negatively and designed to relegate us permanently to the margins of society where there we are to remain quiet and helpless. But wrestling with the darkness on the backside of all this sunshine is just part of "our continuing struggle," and also part of the underside of the struggle of the human condition as a whole: If its not physical death, it is social death. If it is not social death, it is cultural death and degradation. If it is not cultural death and degradation, it is economic death through exploitation"

The ministers then chime in in agreement that we must all learn to be "truth tellers;" for the struggle for a meaningful life and the courage to be, are difficult undertakings. But also because therein lies the source of our moral integrity and authenticity. Only from this platform, standing firmly on our own truth, can we then become humble enough to engage in compassion and love of ourselves first, and then of others.   To validate ourselves, we need a cause larger than ourselves worth dying for, and not just dying in a war for the U.S. Army in a foreign country, but also one here on the "mean streets" of America. Mustering the courage to be is difficult work but the ability to engage in compassion and love are its rewards. In fact they are the only real (and remaining) signs of our humanity.

The three ministers agreed that humility is the gateway to everything else that is human in us. It is the only thing that really makes us human, and thus the only human attribute that always commands respect. Humility is the ultimate source of any personal empowerment we may acquire. However, without truth, integrity and authenticity, one does not know how to learn to be humble. And one does not get to   become courageous, confident, or secure, for free. One has to do the work, and it all lies in the realm of self-awareness. Without attaining humility through self-awareness, we do not have a basis for attaining or enjoying our full humanity.

These ministers together, then go on to say that our society is being over-run by moral pygmies, people who lack the requisite humility and thus whose internal engines are fired up only by false egotistical bombast, which in reality is fear of their own shadows, expressing itself in other ways. These moral pygmies are constantly "faking it" and are teaching us how to "fake it" too. But in truth they are haunted by deep inner doubts, and insecurities, lacking both the confidence and the courage to be. They barrel through life beating their chests, with checkbooks, creative comforts and exaggerated titles, pretending to have what it takes. But in fact are scared to death that they may be empty of any humanity whatsoever; and thus that they will not be loved, will not be accepted, or validated in life by mainstream society -- and most of all, scared of their own failures. These are the people who are out front, who think they are leading us to the promise land, but who are in fact leading us over a destructive cliff far away from our own humanity and far away from the center of the democratic cultural ideals that have been bequeathed to us.

But life is a process that involves lots of failure. "Failing up" (by always telling the truth) makes you strong; failing down" (through lies, dissembling, avoidance, deception and fantasy) makes you weaker. And hiding from weaknesses leads to fallings back on convenient crutches as the preferred way of coping; that is to say, as a way to avoid facing the fear, insecurities, and lack of confidence that are at the root of such weaknesses. The author and his guests agree that the crutches have all become endemic idols of choice in contemporary American culture. They include all of the normal post-modern amusements: of drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, chasing money, religion, the need to be entertained, the need to belong, and thus the need to be swept away from everyday reality by coping through sanctioned fiat. Foremost among these idols is religion itself, which all three agree has a lot to answer for -- as does God.

Reality construction too is a process in which, we blacks, as is true of all groups, must always have a stake. Mustering the courage to be is difficult and "it is dangerous to live in a world in which you do not have the power to help shape the nature of the experiences in that world, or to define who you are." Black reality does not have to be confined to what others tell us is real about our world or about ourselves. When we are honest, we can help define and shape our own reality, and can thus reconceive ourselves to ourselves.   In this way, even without a dime we can write our own narrative, plot our own destinies and become qualitatively a richer people.

Even though in our new erstwhile stage of equality, where the breaking out of the ghetto (or other segregated circumstances), is like a second semester in life, it is not a time to recoil and become complacent or become lemming-like followers of the mainstream living off the land, and constantly looking askance for mainstream approval. But it is also our opportunity to make a case for how the world is -- as well as how it should be -- with us, not just "of," but also "in" it.

As a people black people have many unseen and still "untapped" strengths that these interviews draw out: the Blues, and Jazz or good examples. We can also sing; write poetry, and we can also "rap" and even hum. There is untapped knowledge for life's journey in all of these forms of strengths. For as history has shown, they can be subversive, progressive, conservative, or neutral, but always are life affirming and empowering.

Today, even with a mulatto President, in America, racially we are in a difficult situation, make no mistake about it: Right before our eyes, the American dream has turned to dust, a dim vapor trail, like cotton candy: You bite down on it: nothing is there? These ministers say it is thus time for a paradigm shift in spirituality; time to invent new ways of being spiritual. They say we now need new social movements, new ways of activism, new politics, new ways of being subversive, alternatives to hustling, Uncle Tomming and Aunt Jemaiming, and relying only on the self-destructive "get over strategies" of the ghetto and of the past. We need to call on our historical memory, on our forefathers and foremothers, and on all our historical connections.

As well, going forward, these three ministers admit that God too is a problem, He too must be interrogated. We have the right to ask Him hard questions. Maybe this will mean that we will need more secular models to help us cope? But here we must be careful for we are treading on thin ice. For we don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. Because in reinventing the spiritual, throwing out God, we may also throw out our own collective vitality.

The role of Hope in Obama's Democracy

These discussants as well as others in the book generally agree that if our history has taught us anything, it is that democracy itself is nothing if not a rich platform for action, not just a platform for endless calls for hope - whether that hope is full, empty, or audacious. Democracy also is not for the faint-hearted or the perpetual wishful thinker, the slackers, fence sitters or the free riders. In short, democracy is not for those scared to engage in committed and difficult actions. And the forces of racial evil, inequality and injustice, our constant adversary, as the contributors to this volume make so clear, are not in the business of just "harvesting empty or audacious hope" as their only program to roll back as many of the gains we have make towards a fair society with equal justice for all. To go along with hope, they also have in their toolbox, a robust "action program," one designed to defeat equality and justice. And so far, they are succeeding admirably. Is Mr. Obama's hope forever going to be the Progressives' only action plan? Where are the foot-soldiers for that change we can believe in?

Although this book was written in 1997, we can still see how prescient it was. The asymmetry, between the Republicans' "hope plus action," and now 15 years later, Obama's "hope without action," is so glaring that it screams at us from beneath this veil of empty mourning, singing, marching, camping out, praying and wishful thinking, to do something -- anything! And as quiet as it is kept, one of the most important allies of our adversaries' action program is to constantly encourage us (their adversaries) to do nothing: that is, but mourn, sing, pray, march and like good Christians are wont to do, call on God for more hope? And then when we have finished mourning, singing, praying, marching and hoping, they want us to do it again.   And, incredibly, we do? None of these discussants agree that that is a winning strategy, no matter how much hope we can muster.

This cultural leitmotif for non-action has been repeated so often that it is imprinted on our fore heads in the same way that the scars of Selma bisect John Lewis' head. Now every time I see a fat black woman solemnly singing a gospel like Mahalia Jackson, I get mad; because I know that that is just a Pavlovian calling card for more non-action, the ultimate black symbol of retreat, a cue to "tuck your tail and run back into the Church in order to receive another dose of hope." Maybe, just maybe that is why "we" are constantly retreating and "they" are constantly advancing forever on the attack   -- and in the process why are still racking up victory after victory as they roll back all our gains?

Mr. Belafonte, who leads off this book of interviews, is one of my heroes; and whenever he speaks, I believe that the world must stop and listen. His wisdom and experience about this country run so deep and are so profound that they never miss the mark.   It is true as he says that today we have more blacks and minorities with titles who don't give a damn about the black or minority conditions than we have ever had before. I can name a few of them: Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, John Yoo, Linda Chavez, Clarence Thomas, Ed Perkins, Herman Cain, and Barack Obama -- as the ones that immediately come to mind. These people did not fight in the trenches of the Civil Rights movement, or for justice and equality, they just waited around, to help pick up the pieces, and pick them up they did.

They are the "living legacy" that provides the current weak and brittle foundation of what we refer to as American multiculturalism.   But that vessel is empty, only put out on "Front Street" for "show" to outside company. There is no reality in it, because it has yet to be filled with any meaningful content. And in this regard, I agree with Mr. Belafonte's recollection of Dr. King's last conversation with him, that with our collective moral cowardliness as a nation, especially on the issue of race, blacks have "integrated into a burning house." Amid all the destruction and confusion of a nation run by moral cowards, black culture has been neutered; it has lost its cultural base; its vitality, lost young people to the "entertainment culture;" and the churches, our only solid institution, have been transformed into "cash-and-carry" mega-dollar enterprises. Mr. Belafonte is right again when he says that we have not just lost our culture and our vision, but we have also lost our moral authority and even a great deal of our humanity.

Dr. West is another of my heroes. He is that rare mixture of existentialism and Christianity, a so-called self-described, Chekhovian Christian. As he did in this book, it is important for West to continue to allow the existentialist side of his being rise to the fore, and allow his Christian side to slowly recede further into the background. For he knows as well as any one, that hope -- whether Christian hope or existentialist hope -- is not a program. But rather than say that to us straight up, he sometimes finds himself mimicking Obama and pushing an empty and impotent framework made up of hope slogans, and then he tries to pawn that off on us like Obama does? Yet, in his own life, Dr. West is not waiting around for hope in the next dimension. In fact, his life is filled with profoundly committed existentialist action programs such as the Obsidian Society. Why then, like Obama, is he constantly selling these "wooden nickels" made of false hope, these "hope Wolf tickets," when what we really need is the same kind of committed confrontational action that he himself engages in?

Is action instead of hope not what Democracy was made for, and demands of us? Indeed, if hope were a program, then black people would already be "riding high" and way ahead of the game because despite all the despair in our communities described in this book, there are no more hopeful people on earth than American black people; no group of Americans more committed to the hope of a fair and just democracy than we black people.   We do not need to incessantly be encouraged to continue to be hopeful, it is a natural part of our DNA, how else could we have survived this racist continent for 400 years without it? Why then are so many people, Dr. West included, still singing the "Obama hope song" and advocating more and more hope instead of what we really need, which is more and more committed (and where necessary) confrontational action? We need to be able to do in the streets what the Republicans are able to do in the back rooms off of Wall Street. We need more actions forcing politicians to respond to our concerns, including Mr. Obama?

Plus, now that we have in the White House, the self-declared world champion of all hope: our first mulatto President, the ever slippery, Mr. Barack Obama, we have seen where his audacious brand of hope has led us black people: directly back to the future, back to yet another cycle of mourning, singing, praying, marching and hoping. Am I the only one who notices that he only shows up in Irish bars --even goes to Ireland to do so? I am still "hoping" to see him arrive one day in one of the many black bars in the inner city black ghetto? I don't recall reading where the Irish voted for him at the rate of 95% in the last election. Nor did I see him there during black History month? [Hope on ... huh?]

No wonder our race-sensitive adversaries have been able to use him like a heavy punching bag. He has been on the ropes in his "rope-a-dope for hope" posture for almost four years. Now that it is election time again, he is back out in the center of the ring bouncing on his toes like Rush Limbaugh. But by now he must know that we know the real deal and the real Obama: "Obama's hope" is like Sarah Palin's "bridge to nowhere:" It does not include an action plan, unless it is what we have seen for the last four years of pre-emptively rolling over and genuflecting in the face of the power of our Republican, corporate and warmongering adversaries.

And then Mr. Obama's hope is that we will patiently wait for the next election cycle where, empty-handed, he again will come center stage and puff up his chest and crow progressive themes like a Banny rooster, and then expect us to line up and vote lockstep for him again?   He does this all the while he is sending millions of robo-calls seeking more campaign donations with the same old lame and false messages about how liberal and progressive he is, and about how the "Republican bogey man" will get us unless we again send money to his campaign and vote for him again?  

Somehow, I feel that the polls that show blacks still supporting him by 90% are wrong, you can fool blacks one time, but not two times in a row. Many of us, especially those outside the Oprah sphere, will be sending a message to him this time around. We will be doing so if for no other reason than that as far as black issue are concerned -- the cities, unemployment, etc., Mitt Romney and Obama are soul mates: They both are political chameleons and moral pygmies who will tell everyone but black people exactly what they want to hear. The only difference is that they are equally cheap politicians carrying ideological flags of opposite colors, red and blue. I have been tempted to send Mitt Romney some talking points that say: All you have to do to split-off a large percentage of the black from Mr. Obama and send him into an allergy attack, is to mention doing something for the inner cities. Only Newt Gingrich was smart enough to do so, and his chances at this stage seem nil.

Remember the old joke about the two buzzards sitting high out on a limb waiting for something to die. Impatient, one buzzard says to the other: "To hell with waiting, I am going to go down there and kill something." That my friend, is the difference between a black Christian and a black existentialist, between Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Jeremiah Wright, between Harry Belafonte and Condoleezza Rice. One will sit out on a limb forever waiting for his rewards in the next dimension. This life to him is only a rehearsal for the next world, the "real life." Christian hope and Obama's audacious hope, is enough for this life. To the others, like Mr. Belafonte, Dr. West, and the two ministers he interviewed here, they will try to take their lives into their own hands and try to fashion something out of them. To hell with waiting on Obama's audacity of hope. Again, Mr. Belafonte is right on target on this point: when he says that groups must take responsibility for themselves. Politicians no matter their skin color, or "verbal only" ideology, will sell us all down the drain.

There is a little Barack Obama and a little Jeremiah Wright in each of us black people. We have waited, sung, mourned, cried, marched and prayed "too long" and our cause is "too just" to watch Mr. Obama act as if he is allergic to black people? It is time to stop turning the other cheek, and start turning all this empty hope into an action program. Despite the cost, people like Mr. Obama must be pushed out of the way so we can get own with a more progressive action program, one that at least in principle can compete with the race-sensitive Republicans on an equal footing. Obama's pre-emptive compromise is an action plan that helps the only helps the other side.

And maybe, just maybe, Mr. Obama has miscalculated. With a Republican Congress, why should blacks vote for four more years of Obama's promises, when we already know that it will only be more Washington gridlock? Even the crumbs from the Republican table, (with both a Republican President and a Republican Congress) can't be any worse than "hoping" for Obama to acknowledge the reality of our 95% voting bloc?

In this book we see that Mr. Belafonte, like Dr. West did not use his life way out on a limb "hoping for something to happen." He did not wait for a Messiah; he flew down to Selma, Alabama with a hundred thousand dollars of his own money in his briefcase to help Dr. King survive during one of King's most trying times. This was a profoundly existentialist's act. Unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Belafonte audaciously put his hope and his money where his mouth was; and then he executes in unapologetically and with perfection. He did not ask the Republicans for their consent.

We cannot continue to assert, insinuate or "hope" our way into the hearts of the racists who oppose our every move. While we diddle with Obama's hope, they are on a fast track in the "active rollback mode," and are succeeding at it -- using every lever of power and action to their advantage. Right before our eyes, the whole Republican Party has morphed into a "legitimized racist anti-black, anti-minority Party" literally a "white Citizens Council, writ large" circa 2012, all out in the open and all under the convenient rubric of "being conservative." What they have, my friend is a definite "action program:" not Barack Obama's gauzy non-plan of audacious hope?

Even Newt Gingrich talks about revitalizing the inner cities. Mr. Obama apparently is not even "hoping" to revitalize them, because he is scared to go have a beer there. Maybe he needs to call Bill Clinton in to tell him what the black bars in Harlem look like? Sadly, so far, our only response to this national rollback challenge of the Republican Party has been to either join them (like Hermann Cain, Clarence Thomas, Linda Chavez, and J.C. Watts have done), or put our faith in yet another political Messiah peddling hope?   But it is precisely in this regard that Mr. Obama has made it clear in everyway that he knows how, that he does not want to be our "Messiah," or "savior," we blacks are treated as if we have a disease; as if we were an albatross around his neck? Yet we nevertheless cling to his empty messages of hope? If that were not enough, gratuitously and mockingly he has called us "professional liberals," and shakes his fists in the faces of the CBC and thus in the face of all black men, telling us we are all irresponsible, and admonishing us to get off the couches and out of our house shoes, and to stop whining?  

These gratuitous insults are painful coming from the same politician that Rev Wright had already warned us about: as being just another "Chicago politician." And so far, Rev Wright has been correct.   Barack Obama is the man that black people supported with 95% of our votes in the last election? A President who has visited Ireland but who has not yet gone to Harlem, or any other black American inner city ghetto where those who voted for him are suffering so? Now, we all feel a deep sense of betrayal, the kind that failed hope cannot repair.

In another interview in the book, Wynton Marsalis says that the Blues is a form of affirmation in the midst of darkness and thunder; it is an emotional way of resolving the conflict that results when hopes are dashed. Maybe that is why with Mr. Obama, black people must learn to sing the Blues again and in yet another minor key. Five Stars.

Authors Bio:
Retired Foreign Service Officer and past Manager of Political and Military Affairs at the US Department of State. For a brief time an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Denver and the University of Washington at Seattle. A graduate of the National War College and a Phd from the University of Southern California.