West lecture at IU Auditorium sounds a 'blue note'

In a lecture peppered with allusions ranging from Socrates to Billie Holiday and Martin Luther King Jr. to John Coltrane, Cornel West urged his listeners to examine the ugly side of American history in his lecture Thursday at the IU Auditorium.\n"Who wants to talk about the darkness of the past and the underside of the present?" asked the professor, author and highly-regarded public intellectual.\nIn a voice which vacillated between a quiet growl and a leonine roar, West discussed the importance of Socratic thinking in bringing about a deeper understanding of oneself as well as America's past and present. West said Socratic self-examination fused with love and concern for the suppressed will lead one to the blue note, an attitude where although there's no realistic hope of change, one keeps on working to build connections and struggle against oppression.\n"I've been down so long, that's why I keep on keeping on," West said. "That's what the blue note is." \nWest likened Socrates' critical self-examination and the pain of losing one's illusions and prejudices to death. "To philosophize is to learn how to die," he explained.\nWest said African Americans have always been intimately acquainted with different forms of death -- from the social death of slavery to the physical death of lynching. This results in a paradox between the sunny light in which the United States regards itself and the reality of African Americans' experiences with racism and suppression, he said. \n"You can recognize already the clash between a hotel civilization, death-defying, death-ducking, death-dodging and these particular people on intimate terms with forms of death," West said. \nWest also addressed the conflict between America's fragile experiment with democracy and America's history of slavery and racism. He also said America's current status as an imperial power belies its professed democratic ideals. \n"We don't want to acknowledge that we're living in the age of the American empire," West said. \nWest's lecture emphasized the importance of working against divisions and the interdependence of Americans of all races.\n"In the democracy, in the end, our destinies are intertwined," he said.\nAn Auditorium employee estimated the attendance, which filled the lower levels of the auditorium, at 1,200. The audience interrupted West several times with applause, and reaction to the lecture seemed positive. \nBloomington resident and IU graduate Amy Graff said she thought the talk was inspiring and powerful.\n"I realized how easy it is for everyone to live in their own little bubbles and not be connected," Graff said.\nKeema Walden, a third-year doctoral student in the School of Health Physical Education and Recreation, said she was excited for the opportunity to hear West.\n"He's a part of black history," she said.\n-- Contact staff writer Daniel Wells at djwells@indiana.edu.