Dr. West, Dr. Chekhov and us

After casually asking a member of the student body, I was granted permission to ask one question. I would be allowed a minute or two is what the student representative said as I was ushered into a hall situated somewhere between the Hinde Auditorium and the University Union Ballroom at Sac State, where Dr. Cornel West was scheduled to present a lecture last week.

Stepping into the hall, I witnessed one of America’s most brilliant public intellectuals speaking privately to his mother. After they embraced, West motioned that I sit next to him. Shoulder-to-shoulder, he appeared just as he frequently does, and as he often says, “coffin-ready:” black suit, white dress shirt, necktie, cufflinks, Afro, beard and an impossibly-wide smile with a charismatic void between his central incisors. My question was a selfish one: Having a deep appreciation of the Russian realist Anton Chekhov, which of his stories does West favor? “‘Misery’ … ‘In [the] Ravine,’” he replied.

I’m familiar with those two particularly tragic examinations of human suffering, but I said something inelegant and unimportant as I left the hall with a grain of understanding as to the possible debt West’s thought may owe to the work of Chekhov. In a nutshell: The Chekhov West enjoys centers around themes of human blindness in struggles of despair, both that of others and that of ourselves.

Shortly after some introductory formalities at about 7:30 p.m., West began his lecture. Immediately, I found Chekhov (among many others) present in his oration; West delivered a message of hope comfortably couched in the trauma of Truth: the trauma that racism is an intimate event that touches and deforms the lives of people of color; that to be born in America is to be born into a racist tradition, one that creates the social tightrope that W.E.B. Dubois termed double consciousness; the trauma that as a culture we hold a distracting view of cash designating success and failure and instilling in us an ugly indifference to the suffering of others. This was 15 minutes in and West filled every second of the hourlong lecture with the articulation of his thought.

As if in one kaleidoscopic breath, West recited axioms from Socrates, made etymological claims on the origin of the word human, linked birth to funk music, reminded us that “C.R.E.A.M.” is indeed the state of things, that love conquers all but is “commodified” and “hollow” today; that people are the democracy, not those that have been elected, and that we, the people, are merely here to remedy our persistent mistakes; that a drought in dialogue in a democracy foreshadows its chaos.

West’s lecture asked we cultivate courage, compassion, vulnerability and self-criticism in order to be transformed by difficult and necessary conversations in an attempt to conquer hatred, improve democracy and reintroduce love. West advocated we die. Not once, as we are biologically wont to do, but time and time again—to die philosophically—to shed ignorance by embracing our despair and our disillusionment. Chekhov’s protagonists are stuck in time, yearning for what West hopes to inspire: that the world would listen, it would love and it would be human.