Cornel West – The Black Intellectual in a Declining Empire

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Video Links

0:00 Glenn and Cornel’s early correspondence

2:20 Cornel: “Brother Glenn ain’t never been just a black conservative”

9:34 Ground News ad

11:10 One-eyed and two-eyed reason

19:33 The Loury family legacy

25:01 Does race still matter?

34:32 The black intellectual in a declining empire

45:56 Keeping nihilism at bay in the black community

51:42 Keep the funk, and die with a smile on your face

55:40 The Democratic Party plantation

Recorded July 18, 2025

Links and Readings

Glenn’s memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

Toni Morrison’s book, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

Ralph Ellison’s book, Shadow and Act

Thomas Sowell’s book, The Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggle

Cornel’s book, Race Matters

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, The Message

Cornel’s book, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

Coleman Hughes’s book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America

Mahalia Jackson’s rendition of Clara Ward’s, “How I Got Over”

John Coltrane’s album, A Love Supreme

Niall Ferguson’s book, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

Glenn’s book, Race, Incarceration, and American Values

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brother’s Karamazov

Joseph Conrad’s novel, Victory: An Island Tale

Cornel’s 2024 Gifford Lectures