Becoming a Love Warrior w/ Dr. Cornel West

and justice and a deep deep love. Hello everyone, and welcome to the la Verne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox, and I have quoted Cornell west famous proclamation that justice is what love looks like in public so many times I have seen his words attributed to me. Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private. West goes on to say that feels like the truth to me. I discovered Cornell West work through my college obsession with Belle Hooks.

They published a book together called Breaking Bread, Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. Cornell West is certainly one of America's greatest orators. When I started my college tour in I obsessively studied West. West is a professor of philosopher, one of our nation's foremost public intellectuals. Always in spirit, as we say in the Black Church, Dr West allows that holy ghost spirit coupled with a deep desire for justice to enter his body,

to take over and to speak through him. Dr Cornell West is a philosopher, author, professor, and activists fighting for truth, love, and racial justice. He is a familiar name in most households as a prominent democratic intellectual and frequent guest on The Bill Marshow, CNN, c SPAN, and Democracy Now. He has written over twenty books, including Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and It's taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard, Yale, Princeton,

among others. West currently co hosts the podcast The Type Broke with Tricia Rhoes. Please enjoy my conversation the Dr Cornell West. Dr West, Welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today? Well, I tell you I want to salute you and all that you own and all that you have done and are doing. My idea, Sister, I consider you one of the great love conductors on the love trains. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I love that you started with love. I was thinking

about how I wanted you to start the conversation. I was thinking about how much I love you and love your work. And I want to just take a moment to invite the energy, the spirit of what you call that black prophetic fire to enter this conversation. Today. When you speak and when you write, I feel the energy of our ancestors speaking through you. I feel that you get sort of get the spirit in the in the way that we, you know, talk about in the church.

And so I just want to invite that energy and spirit and today as we chat for the first time. But the beautiful thing is is that it's always already operating inside of you. And you and I are at the deepest level kindred spirits, because we come from a

people who have been hated for four hundred years. And keep dishing out the love warriors, yes, terrorized for four hundred years, and keep dishing out these freedom fighters traumatized for four hundred years, of dishing out these wounded heither and anytime I get a chance to see you, the heat, your you, your spirit, your presence exudes and ex simplifies and embodies this love warrior ship, and that to me is always the bottom line in terms of the highest

level of what it means to be human. Absolutely absolutely, So I did a lot of I'm reading in preparation to prepare for our conversation today. And the way that I discovered your work almost thirty years ago was through Bell Hooks, and it was through the book that you and Bell did together, Breaking Bread. I was rereading parts of it last night and I this morning, I was like, I should call Bell and tell her that I'm talking

to for the other day. So I gave her a ring this morning and I said, would you like me to say something to Dr West? And she said, tell him I love him even though he doesn't treat me right. You know that that's a very Bell. I'm thinking, oh, love, she's she's so much an intellectual giant, and uh, she's one of the love conductors to on on the love turn. Of course she comes at it now through the Buddhist tradition,

you know what I mean? I know that I think you A and me design that right, not sig, just just just yeah. And I'm holding the most holy ghost Baptists, and so all of us come out of the best because the worst of that church is a patriarchy, to homophobia, the losing sight of non binary precious folkus form. But the best is still the love that pierces through even those structures that produces the belt hooks, produces a love Ayon cos you know what I mean, produces by the West.

One of the books that I've always been most excited about in terms of dialogue has been that breaking read book. Know that about it. So kind of you to mention that book. You know, a few people even allude or refer to that book even m which is a shame. It's um It's it's thirty years old this year actually I was published. And what you and Bell were trying to do, you were both at Yale at the time, and you're both trying to sort of, you know, have

this public dialogue between black men and black women. And Bell also wanted me to to ask you about patriarchy and where you are with patriarchy. I would love to hear your thoughts now at this stage in your life about about patriarchy, black men in patriarchy, and your relationship to how you where you've examined your own relationship to that in your life. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I should add as a footnote, yes, that the the copy editor to Breaking Bread is now a towering figure the

name of Imanti Perry. Oh yes, yes, yes, that Demanti was an undergrad it. Yeah, let's say that because any time we talk about any form of evil patriarchy, white supremacis home of phobia, predator capitalism, repressive communist, or whatever is a that los a side of humanity folk, that one of our responses has to be trying to help shape and mold into the best of our ability produce

folks who become forces for good against that evil. That's what when I think of Remandy Perry as a student and now a towering figure, I say, well, if my work will speak for me, then the question of who we help push and affirm and encourage and empower. So anytime I think about patriarchy, one of the things I want to say is what have I done to try to kill it? Because patriarchy is killing other folk. I don't want to be narcissistic or solipsistic. It's just about me.

If I come to turn the patriarchy, then patriarchy has a chance of being dismantled. Now it's got to be collectively because its systemics and institutional structure domination exactly. So, these days, I think patriarchy is running amok. You can see it in the culture. And yet we've got some strong forces, including yourself and others and Bail and others,

who are countervailing against the patriarchy running amok. And so anytime we talk about patriarchy, we want to understand it as a balance of forces resistance and domination, but relative too, of the structures of domination. Yeah, and when I think about breaking bread in relationships between black men and and black women, there's so much contempt right now. Colorism feels like it's like ripping our our community apart. In relationships with black men and black women, and in patriarchy, it's

tied to all of very very true. I think that colorism has always been operating in such a way that is ripping us apart. Is just an under gym crow conditions. It couldn't operate in a broader way. Now, these days, we've got unprecedented opportunities for significant slice of us who are part of a black middle class part of a black bourgeoisie, and we have to make sure that no matter what our social status is, that our spirits intact,

our sensitivity with the folk catching hell is strong. And therefore the connection between patriarchy and colorism and class and even empire and homophobia has to always kick in. Yes, the capitalism peace feels very precedent right now, particularly one

one thinks of colorism and relationship to patriarchy. And I think the piece to where seeing black men musical artists be such arbiters of colorism so so blatantly, you know, That's really what I'm thinking in the the pain that that causes, the pain and the trauma that that causes for so many black women out there. And you you obviously talk about the catastrophic, the traumatic and the lives

and the experiences of black people all the time. And I just was there a moment for you, perhaps it was just in the text Two Boys and and Socrates and whatnot, where there was a trauma or where there was something, you know, a moment where you had an awakening of sources where you died. Where you always talk about, you know, philosophy being the space where we go to learn to die? Is that an ongoing process for you?

Was there a moment, you know, in your early scholarship where something shifted for you around and was there something traumatic? I guess, um relationship to all that your question is so good and high quality. I wish we had four hours rather than whatever about the time you wanta take. But um, I mean right now, the death of my mother. That's the major traumatic he's been in my life. The be his catastrophe when I go back, certainly when I got kicked out of school and no school would take

me because I was a young gangster. How old were you when you were kicked out of school? I was kicked out of school and I was seven years old. Refused to salute the flag, and I got in the fight with my teacher and we ended up with a little riot the Communion Elementary School on Chocolate side of Sacramento, and I got in very, very deep trouble. I knew that this was going to be a turning point in my life because mom was a teacher, not in the same school, but a teacher, and Dad came home early,

you know, and got his belt out. That would be one. Uh. When I think of Martin Luther King Jr. Being shocked because I was trying to be a great athlete at that time and track star. It hit me so hard that I decided then that his legacy was something that I would try to always view as a stay ended of moral and spiritual excellence and aspire to and whatever

form of life I pursued. Those were probably the most discernible ones beside the deeply personal ones in terms of you know, relationships to say, I won't get into all of that right now, but in the end, it's really for me and I love to hear what you have to say. My bus sister is uh, it's two black musicians. It's done a halfway and John Coltrane and Saravan Carmen McCrae and glad As Night and dramatics and whispers and thinks.

They're the ones who for me provide the kind of spiritual resources, the spiritual wherewithal to withstand whatever catastrophic effects are bombarding me. Yes, and there there have been many lately. I want to actually read a quote of yours about music that is, they're so beautiful that my brother reminded me of when I spoke to him earlier about you.

You've said of music at its best is the grand archaeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us beyond language to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence. That's some beautiful prose, doctor West.

You know, I was thinking, one of the main reasons I wanted to have a conversation with you is that you for over forty years, you have been a freedom fighter. You've been a love warrior, teaching at prisons, getting arrested, protesting, being canceled, you know, you know, and all of the things, and yet you still are fighting. Yet you still show up last year after you know, Porst George Floyd and post Brianna Taylor and Tony McDade and just all of

what was going on in the world. And really, for me, the trauma of repeatedly seeing black people murdered on camera are nervous, since are made to see people be murdered on camera, that is not normal. Broke I broke down, and it was I just couldn't, you know, I couldn't go to a protest, I couldn't speak. I had to

get myself together. How have you kept going all these years in the fight when it's hard, when it's traumatizing, when people are trying to cancel you, when people are saying all kinds of crazy stuff about you, and you

keep speaking shoot to power? What keeps you in the fight? Dr? West? Well, I mean one is my dear sister, and all honesty that when I see persons like yourself and others who have made a promise to be true to their calling based on the best of a tradition that has shaped them at the deepest spiritual and moral and intellectual level, then I know that the cloud of witnesses that we all, at our best want to be a part of is

always worth it. It's always something that allows us to make whatever risk and take whatever costs we need in order to keep it going, so that, no matter what the immediate consequences are, the quality of the person of period tubbing and either be wells by net and sojourn at Truths and Martin Malcolm, that the quality of who they are, their sincerity and their integrity is worthy of our preservation. Manifest in our lives, regardless of whether it

looks like there will be immediate victory. And so, for example, doing the Obama years, you know, and he had a whole lot of loving folks who didn't treat me to lovingly. And that's all right, because everybody don't love everybody equally. Now, I can I tell you that was deeply painful for

me to watch. So during during the Obama administration, you were very critical of the president at the time, and there was tremendous backlash from the black intelligencia from many people who took issue with you being critical of Obama. There there was so much love for him, and the criticism folks just were we're not able to receieve at the time. No, it's true. I mean I thought he was two tied to Wall Street. None of the Wall Street gangster went to jail where so many of everyday

people were going to jail. At the time. I thought he was too blind when he came to dropping drones on innocent people. Those are war crimes for me, five sixty three drones dropped, two thousand and so innocent people killed. So it was hard to be critical of brother Barack

Obama because he's so borried and he's so poised. But any president, no matter what color, you know, when he tied to Wall Street greed like that, when they tied the drones like that, when you're not really coming out but the critique of mass incarceration and the police and allowing the militarizing of the police take place. So you end up with a black Lies Matter movement under a black president, of black attorney general and a black Homeland

Security Cabinlet secretary. That's just the people themselves expressing their own critiques. And I resonated with that critique in that regard. But that doesn't mean that Barack Obama was not its somewhere forceful good. It was just for me to milk, toast, to centrists, to moderate and too tied to the powers that be and not tied to the least of these enough.

That was really what it was about. If there's anything about that period that you would do differently about around your critique of Obama, there were many people at the time who agreed with your critique but thought that that that the language and the tone was less than than humanizing. All these years later, do you and he regrets? So,

how do you feel today. I think that people have people have good ground for saying some of my language was a little bit too hyperbolic, There's no doubt about that, but that's just the way I am. It really is gang I got gangster elements even in my my fire, and sometimes that spills over. So I could have said that, for example, uh, he's two tips the Wall Street, but I had reached the point where I was calling him, you know, a black puppet of Wall Street. Well, that's

that's my language. Is hard not to be true to my language, you know what I mean. It's like asking Eddie Kendriy is not the same falsetto. It's hard to And yet when I listened to us, said, oh, would have me in turns before golf and and and they're right about that. So then I'd have to come back and I would use a different language. But that lagmage had already taken off next to you know, it's the internet everywhere. So in that sense, yes, I think all of us ought to be able to look back and

be critical and self critical. But I certainly would not have in anywhere attenuate the orientation of where I was going, Because we're really talking about the plight of the least of these under any president, no matter what color they

are or agenda they are. What was that like though, in the midst of it, right in the midst of and I've I've thought interviews that you gave at the time when you know that Michael Eric Dyson Peace came out, What was it like continuing to go on television, continuing to get arrested, continuing to go to protests, continuing to teach when there were such vitriol for me, when I've had people when I felt misrepresented right publicly as a public figure, when people are sort of misrepresenting what my

attentions are, it's so painful, and I really I have this desire to be understood, and just it gets like, how can I keep going on and going out there when people are so cruel? And you kept going out there and and it was it was bad, It was really really bad. So, um, honey, what's going on? I mean, it is different. You know, we give my dear brother Dison coming at me, hit me below the bill. That's a little differ within some of the right wing folks

on Fox or something. That always different when your own people are coming for you so that does hit differently. But you know, as a free black man and as a Christian, though, I always had to have a sense that I should never ever be surprised at any kind

of evil or paralyzed by any kind of despair. So I could be hurt, it could be painful, I could be upset, but I shouldn't be surprised, which means that I've always got some gas in my tank to keep going and recognized Dyson still my brother, He's still got some positive things to say. I'm just coming at him

tooth and nail in the name of the truth. Understand, you see what I mean and say it would be true for whatever it is right wing folks, the Nazi, same as true for you know, gangs like Trump and others, because I know I got some gangs in me like everybody else. So in that way, I can never conceive of circumstances under which I would not still come out swinging in the name of love. And I think you know what one of the things that just spell Holds myself would always say is that you see, our love

for black people is unconditional. It's not quit procool, it's not If you love me, I will love you. I love you because you love me. Now, when we go into a church or a mosque or temple or community center, even a nightclub, to speak that we're loving black people because black people are worthy of being loved regardless of what they say or do to us, and nobody can take that away. Amen, Now, it feels like a great time for a short break. We'll be right back though. Okay,

we're back. Let's keep the conversation going. One of the things I really and it it keeps my own moral and ethical compass, you know, sort of on track and and in the right direction. Is you always talk about the least of these. You always talk about poor and working people and what we can and should be doing for them. You've spoken how you were sort of encouraged by some of the early signs of this current current administration.

And I you know, I'm worried because there's you know, there's no fifteen dollar minimum wage right that we have a able to raise them rasimum wage for poor and working people, and that um, the way in which our politicians are so corrupted by money and politics keeps the the um concerns a poor and working people on the periphery. What can we be doing now to hold our politicians accountable when they're really more accountable, seem more accountable to

special interest into um, you know, big money. There is an opportunity to shift things structurally, and I'm I'm just so terrified that we're not going to take it for the least of least for the people who are most vulnerable. My Desu, you get at the heart and core of what my vision and vocation has been. I bigly appreciate that because those words in the twenty fifth chap. But Matthew, me and the world have made it because what you

do the least these you do unto me. I think in the present moment, on the one hand, we got the fascist threats still operating with Trump and company in the Republican Party that's undergone a fascist expansion. So even the List Change, who has been wrong and cold and callous and and different to working people and poor people her whole career, ends up having a moment of integ because you doesn't want to succumb the fastest taking over her party. And I salute her for that moment, as

it were. But when it comes to somebody like brother Biden, as sister Harris brother Biden. I mean, he's got blood on his hands. He got four crimes against humanity, mass incarceration, invasion and occupation of a rock, the unleashing of Wall Street, greed with the repeal of Glass Stigel, a vicious Israeli domination and occupation. He has been not just a supporter, but he's been an architect and bragged about it up

until recently. So he can change. I believe anybody can change, and he's his capacity to change with the relief bill and the infrastructure bill and talking about white supremacy and Jim Crow. I applaud that he might have been LBJ

in that regard. But also when it comes to these issues of foreign policy, like what's happening Goza, and he finally makes a decision to call for to cease fire, and people want to give him some moral prize because he's engaging in such courageous at you, I say, that's ridiculous. We got to be honest about this, and it's sad to see that. Uh, you know, we don't have forces

in the Democratic Party that are strong. And thank God for Brother Bernie sound Us and Brother Rocanna and the system of read Newman and others, and thank God for Corey and the squad was trying to push this through, but it's still just it's not enough. And I must say, when it comes to our black politicians, my dear sister, it's a sad affair. We've seen coward ladness, we've seen copictulation,

and it's a sad thing. And that's true, not just in terms of the way in which palestines are being treated, but when you get somebody like by and it stands up and says, this is not a racist country. You said, get off the crack pipe, brother, you can't tell the truth. And then sister Harris echoes that. Then brother Clyde Burne echoes that. And you know, if he said this is a racist country, then they would say it's racist because they're just echoes of the boss. And that's the last

thing we need. We need for with integrity who willed to tell the truth, how can you even think that America is not deeply racist and not a racist country. That didn't mean every individual in the country's racial institution structures deeply shot through with white supremacy, going and tell the truth, don't deny it, and then highlight the countervailing forces against it. That's the crucial thing, it seems to me.

And I would say the same thing about America being a homophobic country, and the same thing about it being a class this country, and it is an empire, it's an imperial country, but that doesn't mean anybody in the country is homophobic. Everybody in the country is sexist, but

it's a deeplyst sexist society. So when you get these kind of moments of cowardliness, you said to yourself, you had a democratic party establishment is still in milk toal form, even though it's doing some very progressive things in other spheres, and I do want to support those infrastructure bills and other such efforts. It's, you know, just telling the truth

about that America being a racist country. What is intense to me right now looking at the state of things is that is they they extent to which folks, particularly on the right, are being radicalized by social media based book by conservative media. There's such um persistent propaganda and misinformation happening in conservative media that feels almost insurmountable. Right. We tell you you are always talking about telling the truth and and when you know killing in conways, you

know alternative facts. You know, I think she coined in on Meet the Press. The idea of alternative facts means that we're talking about misinformation, We're talking about lies, mendacity as as you would say. So in the face of mendacity of lives of propaganda, people who aren't even exposed to the truth, right, who have not developed the critical

consciousness because we don't value education. And in this country, how can the truth even break through when our media has done such a bad job, you know, established media has done such a bad job of informing the public, and then there's such a concerted effort in sort of conservative media, you know, propagandies. So then how does the truth prevailed? How can the truth come in this current moment,

in the current state of our media. Yes see, I think historically the truth is always a flickering candle against the backdrop of the night. Always think of what Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman were up against in terms of lives and crimes and mendacity and criminality, the normalizing of hatred and greed, and white supremacy and male supremacy and predatory capital. So in that sense, even though social media is a new form of technology to facilitate lives and

crimes and mendacity in criminality. The truth is always headed towards the cross, So we shouldn't be surprised when you see how mighty these devilish lives are. But we have to believe in the end that there's something that's almighty or mighty year than the lies and the crimes such that it will not suffocate and saturate the world and history in such a way that there's no truth tellers left.

I mean, look at Soviet Union, they thought they could just completely eliminate the truth tellers in the name of communists. And I say this as a leftist, but you gotta tell the truth. Look at South Africa, they thought they can completely do away with the truth tellers, whatever Tina

Tusulu and and and Nelse Mandela and the other. Look at the United States, they think they can completely do away under McCarthy is or with Claudie Jones and and Ben Davis and the communists trying to tell the truth, not always right on everything, but certainly right about capitalism and racism and so forth. So in that way, the

liars never completely wipe folk out. And I just want to be part of that cloud of witnesses that keeps alive that tradition and then pass it on to the sister Laverne Coxes because I read it in the Google that was said Sister labery Cock said justice is what love looks like in public, and it makes me want to break things, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private. I sent as a video of you I'm saying that to my boyfriend a few weeks ago,

and he was like, that's exactly right. And to have that, to really know what love is, to know what that tenderness feels like in private and then have a version for what that could be in public, it's just so

powerful to me. It just I always think, can you imagine what it would look like if our policies were built in love and the truth, and that we can love everyone right, That we could have the humanity, the beautiful humanity of every citizen highlighted in our the way we do public policy, the way we structure our institutions. If that was from a place of love, that could be It's beautiful, beautiful revolution. But you understand, you understand that.

So I've been blessed teaching prisons for forty one years. And if there's an anthem of my brothers in prisons, it would be a zoomed by the common duals. I don't know if I know that zoo zoo. I like to fly Oh wait, well, I like to fly away. I like the fly away zoom. And the dream is the freedom dream, and it reminds us of the great

classic of Robert Kelly book called Freedom Dream. And it's just dream of what things would really be like if our humanity and dignity were affirmed across race, across any form of national identity, during the sexual orientation and so forth. What would it be like if people were able to not just come together with coombae y'all, but most importantly be able to engage in struggle to preserve the possibility of treating others in a humane and human way. And see,

that's that's break dance material, that's hallelloja material. It's abother fire. Make MC look like a boy scout in terms of break dance and in the name of joy and hope and justice and a deep, deep love. Yes, when when I think about I was talking to my brother this morning about that black prophetic fire and traditions and hope and and being in your blues man, of course, and that in the blues and the catastrophe of the blues

is joy and there is always the joy there. And when I, of course, whenever I think about joy, I think about what Burnee Brown says about joy that she in her research, she discovered their joy is the most difficult emotion to feel. That is the most vulnerable emotion to feel, because often when we are truly in a space of being joyous, we are for bow joy, wait for the other shooter drop so to allow ourselves to

feel joy. It is the most vulnerable of emotions. But that is so deeply rooted in in what it means to be black and American. There's so many people in social media now talking about black joy and how important me is to lean into that. Leaning into black joy is leaning into that black prophetic fires, leaning into the things that you know have sustained us for for centuries. And it also is incredibly vulnerable, and vulnerability is really the the source of everything that allows us to be

all that we can be. I think for vulnerability, it's often thought of as weakness, and you know, number one vulnerability yield for for men is to not appear weak. And so I think that that among men that needs to be a conversation around letting go of those those ideas, like letting those ideas die so they can come to a more more in line place. But emotion of associating vulnerability with a willingness to be crushed, you see, they're

not the same thing. That vulnerability is a way of allowing you to open up such that you end up being stronger. So when you do have a confrontation with Miles had had a conversation with the police and they beat him down like a doll and he was swinging. I'm swinging with him too. Why because there's moments in which your strength is not going to be manifesting vulnerability. Of strength will be manifesting the tenacity against the a

force of coersion. But in terms of living and in terms of relationship, the strongest of us, whatever our intention, wherever we are, it has to be one in which we're willing to give in order to receive, and we're giving in such a way that the receiving that we have has a bottom less nets to it. That's what love is. Yes, the more you give the more you receive. The more you receive, the more you're able to give. But you can't do that without verbability. It also means

you're wound the ball. It also means that you can get hurt, and that is that unfortunate or whateverything about love. It's a beautiful thing, but it means we can get hurt, and we have to be willing to risk that hurt, to be wound a ball, to really truly be vulnerable. That's true, No, but that's that's wisdom at the deepest level. Because you know Sappho a great poet from the Greek period, or at least among the Greeks, where she says, the

bitter sweetness its constitutive of the love. Every love, you're gonna get hurt. The question is how you gonna deal with the hurt. Are you tied to a love such that two k survive without that love? Which goes and then add with the bitter sweetness, because if you think you can love with no bitter sweet you better go onto disney Land, stay on Main Street, drink your soda pop. You know what I mean. You won't kill us. And I think that's what I always have to remind myself

of it to face the pain. And we're gonna have to face the pain, but it won't kill us. I can survive. That's exactly. Vulnerability comes from the Latin as you know, BuNos, which means wound. Yes, there is no love without vulnerability, just like there is no intimacy without vulnerability, which means the question becomes, what do you do with your wounds? And with those wounds? Will you be a wounded healer and joy spreader or will you be a wounded hurter and a joy crusher? And all of us

have these poles inside of our souls. But when it comes to Black folks, you see, we are a great people at our best. We are world historical people at our best, because we have looked unflinchingly at the most grim and dim reality these of catastrophe in the modern world and has kept dishing out these persons of hiden vulnerability who look at their wounds and still want to

heal others rather than just go about trashing others. That's what Martin King's about, That's what John Coltran's Love Supremes about. That's what Whya Jackson is about. That's what the tax is about. I'm telling you, because the thing is, people don't understand the connection between your historical role as transgressing some of these ugly homophobic and transgender sensibilities but always

situating it in the caravan and love. But the Isley bother or the love training of any persons who are wrestling with their wounds in such a way that they're concerned about healing others. That's the cloud of what that

says that I'm talking about. You know, I often think that it's not an accident at the first openly transmitter of person to be on the cover of Time magazine, to be nominated for an immediate as a black trans woman and a black trans woman who deeply understands the tradition of black folks in America, and and and I'm very clear that if I've ever done anything great in my life that it is because of the ancestors. It is because of the transcestors. And I've allowed myself to

be used that I that I've allowed that. I think it's important to know when you always say the best of us, and I think to the but the worst of us though, right, you know, the worst of black folks. I think about that Sam Jackson's character and Jay and Go and Chain, and you know, we know black folks sold other black folks. We know that black men have been horribly misogynistic towards Black women, and so there, so there is the trauma piece. Hurt people, hurt people, right,

there's such a deep pain. So there's all these things that we have done that we do out of pain, out of trauma. There's the accountability piece, and there's making amends and how do we heal the trauma? Build trauma resilience and shame resilience, And these are huge parts of my life and my work. And I know that so much of the transphobia I've experienced in my life, and it's been from other black people in a lot of pain.

Right that that there's a that there is historically a legacy of literal emasculation of black men, right when black men were lynched off in their genitalia with with cut off. There's this this history, you know, in cinema and of the literally emasculation of black men. So there's a lot of pain I think that we are aware of and not aware of attached to that, and that has been often projected onto me as a black trans woman, and how do we reconcile that pain without becoming the oppressor?

I mean, one is always recognized and a degree to which we're all on a human continual so that we never put ourselves above others even when they are morally and spiritually wrong, because we know there's elements in them that are in us, which means they have a capacity to change, Which means that at the moment with the engaging gangs activity, and we have a gangster element inside

of us, and that doesn't really all the same. It just means we made different kinds of choices in this regard, you see, so that the kind of internalized oppression that the Great Arctic Lord talks about. Of course Belle Us talks about this as the great theory of radical pedagogy and education that she is. How do we attempt to kill and murder the forms of internalized oppression inside of us so that we are not in any way, in our actions and perceptions reproducing it, even though we claim

to be progressive. And that's a human battle. That is a human battle. And in the end, I think it's really the arts and certain stories of great examples, because in the end, the only thing we really have to go on in terms of our ability to connect with each other with the love and the tenderness. Are the examples. You see what I mean. The sister Laverin Cox is a living sermon. It ain't just what is said head,

it is what is lived. But what has lived still a human life, you know, it's not a life that somehow it's transcended. And and myself as a Christian because I go back to that palsing to do name Jesus, he's questioning the existence of God, my God, my God? Why does that? For a second, He's questioned his ability to conform to any kind of will of God. He's got a whole host of struggles going on inside of him, and it looks like, for a moment he's an atheist.

For a moment he's an agnostic, because why he was the word made flash John one fourteen. It came to dwell among us. A whole lot of interpretations of that, right, Christians, that might be Jesus and other spirits for human beings. Is like the truth made flash, the embodiment of it, the concratization of examples. That's the key traditions that constitute those examples coming together, and there's those traditions that we try to keep alive. And that's why there's so much

spiritual warfare against young folks, especially black young folks. If you can keep them from certain kind of loving spirits, sacrificial spirits, courageous spirits, only presented them the successful spirits who are accommodating themselves to a status quo, well adjusted the injustice, but got big spectacle, big money, big status, big position than the young folks no longer even have a perception. They can't even see what greatness is. All

this is success. They can't see magnanimity, All this is prosperity. They can see integrity. All they say is cupidity. Oh I just want to be a lover of money. I just want to be a love of status. No, keep your money, have your status, but you better know something deep. But what came into the flesh, Some love came in Some justice was injected in there, some sacrifice was injected in there. And now was to exemplify that example, exemplify

that kind of orientation. They got something the offer. Absolutely, they got some thank you so much of it's so beautiful. This it's the example. But I think I also think we should be in therapy, and I think we should be in therapy. I also think that we need to be dealing with addiction. If there is addiction, you know that that there's tough step programs, that there's their their ways, that we're actively engaged in a process of healing. Yes, I really is important to have that embodied in the

somatic work that I do in my trauma resilience. That all of this has to be embodied to the beautiful resource of our ancests, the beautiful resource of those examples you you set forth. It is so incased, so important that that is embodied, that we feel that in our

nervous systems. But then I think sometimes too, the trauma is so great, the abuse is so so real, that we have to seek seek some help too, that we have to You know, my, my, my deeply beloved and a heat she's a professor of psychology but also part of addiction studies, and so she gets a chance to reflect and give me deep wise insight as to how you come to terms with different therapeutic options that can empower, different clinical options that can empower, but even those must

have a spiritual dimension. Here we go back to Bill Hooks again, and by spiritual, all we talk about is love, compassion, empathy, wrestling with hiding vulnerability, open to intimacy, because those are the only things that open we human beings up. And I'll say, and is the best spirituality that it's a sense of having a connection just and something that is greater than us. Something a connection that can be a community, that can be a tradition, it could be a religion.

But but the connection to something that is bigger than us. Absolute know, the great rab By Abraham josh Or has used to know another one of my soul companions, you know, like cold Rane that he used to say, something greater than us is asking us to do something, is making a request and a demand of us. And that's something bigger. Can be a god, but atheists can play just as

important roll. The more it could be an ideal, it could be a tradition, it could be a commitment to artistic vocation, all of those things, something bigger than us is asking us to do something of help to others. Own, brother d Witch, in terms of on the same love train, you just own the judaic section of it, and I'm on the Jesus loving section of it where he loved Jesus too, but not the way that I do. You don't, but but we own the same train together. The same

is true with Angela David. She dead up secondar even though she come out of Black Church. She did, I'm second in the atheistic wing right on. Angela loved you love it. It's hard for the Black Church to ever really leave you if you if you were raised in it. I suspect I take a teensy break here, but I'll be fast. That wasn't so bad, now, wasn't okay? Let's get back to it. Um. One other thing you said

m recently that the language of wokeness is detrimental. You recently said that if you stay woke, you suffer from insomnia. I believe in being fortified. Wokeness is a moment in our attempt to fortify ourselves to be love warriors, be wounded healers, and to be freedom fighters, all three at the same time. Can you can you expand a bit on on that and what guess what it means to be fortified, how we fortify ourselves as opposed to wokeness.

Because you if you watch you know conservative news, you know or listen, they're like, no woke if killing us anti woke sentiment that it's permeating conservative media now. So I would love for you to expand on what you mean by what we need, what it means to fortify ourselves. I was saying kind of ingest that wokeness is a beautiful thing because it means you shattered the sleep walking, which means you shattered your complicity and complacency visa the

oppressive status closed. But what we want a long distance runners in the struggle for love and justice. And you can't be along distance running if you just woke every second. That was part of got a joke in Joe been something you know that you got to fortify yourself to recognize when you awoke, you're seeing things you haven't seen before. You're feeling things deeper, you're acting more courageously. But there's moments in which you're gonna have to steal away, gonna

need some sleep. Brother, It's just you got to pace yourself for the long run. We just lost one of the greatest track athletes of all time, Lee Evans. He was the greatest full forty and four hundred meter run ever and he had a wokenus in terms of his discipline, and when he was practicing and discipline, he was the

most woke on the track field. But he knew he's gonna have to somehow have the whole life so that he could be the great track person that he was met after me year after year, and so he fortified himself. And I think anytime we think of great athletes like Lee, ever great musicians like Ben Webster or Mary Lou Williams, they were fortified. What is fortified mean put on the whole, whole on, put the whole. Any justice that's only justice

soon degenerates into some the less the justice. You need a love to keep your justice afloat, Yes, Because if you're only concerned about justice and you don't have a deep love, care and concern for the folks you're fighting for, you're gonna sell out pretty soon. You're gonna get bought off real quick. But if you gotta deepcare, even when you change your ideology, like Malcolm, you see, he had a love that cuts so deep that it informed his

new conceptions of justice. Embracing struggles against patriarchy, embracing struggles against any form that loses sight of the humanity and in that sense, you know, the shift from Malcolm Little of Malcolm X at the end, it hardly gets better than that. Amazing. You often talk about two Boys is four questions that that he has for young people. You often mentioned that think because I think we live in

an anti intellectual era. Uh, we live in an era where predatory capitalism, where people want to make a lot of money and and greed. It's just it's rampant, right, And you've said this in other ways, that people just want to be successful but not great and and and the money motives and the integrity piece, and so in one what are your thoughts under boys is four questions now for young people? And do you still feel it's it's it's those questions are relevant. You know what what

do boys asked us to? You want? Should I do you want to tell us what they are? Should I tell us? Oh? Absolutely no? And I had a feeling you'd like to. I appreciate you mentioned in those And how shall integrity face oppression? What does honestly do in the face of deception? What does decency do in the face of ind so how shall courage meet brute force? Those questions are as relevant as they can be today. The oppression is still there all parts of the world, Europe,

Middle East, Asia, United States. Where is the intellectual, moral, and spiritual integrity to tell the truth? Deception lies everywhere? Where is the honesty to point it out and then laid bare what the alternative is? And then you think of the assaults and attacks micro and macro. Where is the decency? Decency is a revolutionary act and an indecent society. For me, that's what decency is. Making sure that the

Golden rule is amplified across the board. I want you to do to poor folks in South side of Los Angeles, white bossist in Appalachia, Precious trans Froke in Brazil, Palestinians on the West Bank, Jews in Russia, Muslims in China. Do to them what you would want to be done to you personally and structurally. And so the vorce's questions integrity, honest, decency, courage. Oh, if we had a renaissance that those we had a more spiritual renaissance of those were on our way to revolution.

But there's a price to pay. It's trickier for black politicians, I think right it's it was easier for Clinton and for Biden to talk about race, and it was for Obama because he's black, so so that the doll know it's useful Obama. But it's harder to talk. But the political calculations that black politicians have to do, that black celebrities have to do to maintain a certain level of no sort of being canceled, I guess, or just or being able to continue to have a platform, continue to

be able to do some kind of work. Their choices that have to be made. And it's and it's like, are those choices anti are integrity? There's the incrementalism, and there's a revolutionary the consequences of step telling the truth. You have lived those, right, We've seen when you were campaigning for Sandra's last year and and and the year before, and all of a sudden I saw you on television again.

I saw people looking to you with reverence when you said were not enough to put black faces in high places. It just there was something so beautiful about it, right that somehow the culture hits shifted and you were still, you know, saying the same things and doing the same things.

But then the world kind of came around. You're able to You're you're in the academy, and I know you weren't tating your at Harvard, but you weren't your other places that you're able to, you know, continue to survive into and to take care of yourself for those folks who want to be able to tell the truth. But the consequences of telling the truth, right, there are real life consequences that you know when you tell the truth.

And you know the way in which Sanders last year went right before Super Tuesday, the way all the Canadas sort of dropped out and coalesced behind Biden because Sanders was such a threat to the status quo. It was such for me an example of how the system is relentless. Bell has called imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarch. Added that cis normative, heteronormative, imperialist, white supremas is capitalist, patriarch is relentle us in trying to in fortifying its own power.

And so in the face of all of that, in the consequences of telling that, you the consequence that being in your anyone's integrity, everyone is unable to bounce back. Yeah, what would you say to that, Doc? Dr West? I don't really think there is a definitive answer. It's only our lives that are lived. In a response to that question, I think about the Alonious Monk, you know, one of the great geniuses, who went silent those last years of his life, every day getting up looking out the window,

year after year. We don't know what went into that, but he had already given the world so much, and yet his response is going to be in the end very different than you know the ways in which Billie Holiday would respond. And she's gone through her own catastrophic experiences, but all of them are and to have enough resilience to give us, enough to help us in our resilience

for the next generation. You see what you've already given, sus a Laverant is extraordinary and more to come, but whenever comes, you pushed it to the end of what you could. That's our cannosis, that's our emptying of ourselves, are giving, our donating and sacrificing of ourselves. Right and with me, I tried to do all that I can do. I dropped that tomorrow night with a smile on my face. I gave all that I could give, but it was still not enough. It's never enough, because the world is

too overwhelmingly demon griment as many ways. But there's enough life, enough love, enough justice, enough compassion to keep the cloud of witnesses going from one generation to the next. But that's really not a definitive and and so because history is always open ended, you don't know, we have to wrap up, which is I'm such a shame. And I like to end the podcast with a question that comes from my therapy, from the community resiliency model, from the

idea of both. And when I'm struggling there, what do I use to kind of get through? What else is true for me? What helps me to get through? I can choose to focus on what's difficult, right, and that what we focus on sort of magnified. But I can choose to focus on something that is neutral or positive in my life, something that helps me get through a resource. So Dr Cornell West today, for you, what else it's

true for me? See, I believe in revolutionary piety, and piety is remembrance, it is reverence for something bigger than you is resistance allows you to want to serve and sacrifice for what is bigger and better. What are the sources of good in your life that have allowed you to preserve your sanity and your dignity in your deeper and darkest hours. And you have to have something to

pull from. Doesn't just fall down from the sky. Comes out of your mom and your daddy, your grandparents, your friends, your partners, your boyfriends, your girlfriend, your teachers, your coaches, invisible folk, wol you've never seen, but you read that text. It could be played though, it could be deal, it could be dose to Avsky. It could be within the Linn Brooks. It could be Lorderca, or it could be pasta night. All of them can constitute your community of voices.

And then you got to follow the Negro national anthem. Lift yo voys, not your echo, let the echo chamber. Go find your voice. Lift your voice. Be of service to others with the voice that you have given, the vocation that God has given you, such that you can allow the love inside of you to have impact on vocal feel on love. So they think of doing things they didn't even think they could do. They have possibilities

that they had downplayed. But you provided a certain way of looking at the world such that they could begin to actualize them. Why because that's what the folk did for us. That's what's kept not just black pool going. That's the best of the human spirit. Amen. Oh yeah, as you were just talking now, I was reminded and we started with bell hooks and yearning, bell hooks rights. Our struggle, too, is also one of memory against forgetting. How do we remember? And when we can remember? So

much else is true. There's so many things that can get us through these catastrophic times, these lose infused times. Thank you so much. Dr West. You're on social media. I follow you on Instagram and we and you have the tight Rope podcast. Where can folks find find your people? Come on just Twitter and and and and Facebook and things. But I just want to thank you from the bottom

of my heart. You are just beyond extraordinary in terms of your mind, your heart, your soul, your willingness to love, love and swer and you you're one of the grand examples that I talked about very much, so very very grateful Right now in this moment, I'm overwhelmed. Thank you so much, Dr West. Thank you, Thank you the love and respect which I can give you a hug virtually there there's a virtual hug. Dr Cornell West. Wow, I

have to tell you I was so nervous. I've been just steeped in writings and speeches and interviews for for quite some time preparing for this, and it was just such a beautiful experience sharing ideas and virtual space with him. He's been such a huge influence on me and my work.

He talked about being an example and how important it is to have those examples of how how to love through adversity, how to love through injustice, how to love through indecency and terrorism and trauma and shame, how to love, how to love, how to love? How to love? Justice is what love looks like in public, dislike tenderness is what love feels like in private. Oh, my goodness, it

is such a beautiful thing. And I think it is so important for us to be respectful of our elders, even when they are imperfect, even when um we don't agree with them, that there is respect and kindness because the road that they of walked is a road that we can learn from. And I love being in the space of respect for Dr Cornell West, being in respect

of Bell Hooks. Both of them are key in my coming to critical consciousness around issues of race, gender, and class, and they continue to be teachers for me, and we should be looking at their example and holding them up, holding them up and celebrating them and giving them their flowers while they are here. Thank you so much, Dr Cornell West. Thank you for being a love warrior and being a beautiful, beautiful example for us all. Thank you

for listening to the Laverne Cox Shows. Please rate reviews, subscribe, and share with everyone you know. Join me next week from my conversation about the challenges black women face as they search for intimate partners and create families, especially if they're educated. Dr Sarah Adayinka, scold, social worker and assistant professor of sociology at Furman University, shares her latest research

with us about black women in the dating world. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.