Brother West by Cornel West Page B

exceptional man, my father’s dad, the Reverend C.L. West. When he asked me about Harvard, I told him about my Hebrew course. He was pleased and proud.
    “What other books are those professors telling you to read, Corn?” he wanted to know.
    I mentioned the modern theologian Paul Tillich. With that, Granddad got up, walked into his library and returned with a wellworn copy of Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith , a text I had read at Harvard. Granddad handed me the volume and just smiled, as if to say, I might be a country preacher down here in Oklahoma, but I know what’s happening.

R. E. S. P. E. C. T.
    1971. S OPHOMORE YEAR AT H ARVARD. I was the kind of student who followed my curiosity. If a course interested me, I was going to take it. Professor Preston Williams, for example, taught a famous course in Christian ethics for graduate students only. I wasn’t bothered being the only sophomore in the class. Nor was Preston Williams. I received an A–. At the end of my term paper, he wrote a note urging me to do graduate work and become a professor, a validation that meant the world to me. I then suggested that I turn my term paper into a larger project entitled A Stroll Through a Theologically Inclined Mind . A few months later, I delivered a 110-page manuscript to my surprised professor and his delightful wife Connie, herself a Ph.D.
    Meanwhile, the storm brewing over racial politics, on campus and off, kept gathering strength. The storm was coming whether we liked it or not. Rallies, protest meetings, all-night rap sessions in the dorm. Questions were raised. Answers were challenged. Everyone was restless. Everyone was on edge.
    The Nation of Islam was coming to Harvard, and we black students were curious, eager, and excited to see what George X, the minister representing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, had to say. We packed the hall.
    The minister began speaking. He was an articulate and intelligent man, but when he referred to Malcolm X as a “dog,” I was startled. Though Malcolm had been shot six years earlier , his murder still felt painfully close . The minister’s speech went on, and then, for no apparent reason, he found it necessary to call Malcolm “dog” a second time. I was about to say something, but my friends, seeing I was agitated, restrained me. There were hefty Fruit of Islam guards, the paramilitary wing of the Nation, stationed at all the doors. I swallowed hard and let it pass. But when the minister went out of his way to call Malcolm a “dog” for the third time, I couldn’t take it. I jumped up and spoke my mind.
    I said, “Who gives you the authority to call someone who loved black people so deeply a ‘dog’? You better explain yourself.”
    “Young man,” the minister said, seething with rage, “you best be careful. You’re being highly disrespectful and impudent.”
    “Being disrespectful of character assassination is nothing I’m ashamed of.”
    “I demand that you apologize.”
    “For what? Ain’t nothing to apologize about,” I said.
    “Young brother,” the minister fired back, “you’ll be lucky to get out of this building alive. And if you do manage to slip out, you’ll be gone in five days.”
    “Well, if that’s the only response to my challenge, then I guess you’re just going to have to take me out.”
    From there, it got only worse. The crowd went dead silent. They figured me for dead meat. I figured I had probably gone too far, but I said what I felt. I realized Malcolm’s shortcomings, but his life, his writings, and the development of his character, had taken on—and still retain—heroic grandeur. I knew he was wrong to have castigated the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in public. Discretion demanded otherwise. And God knows, following Malcolm’s lead, I had hardly been discreet in castigating George X. But when the Four Tops sang “I Can’t Help Myself,” they might as well have been talking about me.
    When the minister’s lecture finally ended,