Famed philosopher Cornel West says Kanye West’s desire to rename Black History Month is entirely unwarranted.
TMZ asked Dr. Cornel how he felt about Kanye’s comment that “FEBRUARY IS NOW BLACK FUTURE MONTH” instead of Black History Month.
In response, Dr. Cornel called Ye “a genius” but also said he is “confused” in many ways.
Further, into the interview, Cornel explained just how wrong Kanye is in his analysis of BHM.
“Kanye should recognize as an artist that every performance is the authorizing of a future in the midst of a present trying to recover the best of the past.” He went on, adding that, “Black History is not about the past! It’s about the past in the present that can authorize a better future — you get that in Kanye’s music, but you don’t get it in his rhetoric!”
He continued, “There’s a sense in which an artist [can be] so much more profound than his rhetoric. It’s true; when I hear “Jesus Walks” that he wrote with Rhymefest, what do you get — rich history of people! [It’s] Black folk moving into the present with a vision for the future.
Three dimensions of time: past, present, future — they all go together. So Kanye think you can have ‘Black Future Month’ without having a ‘Black History Month’? Tell that brother to get off the symbolic crack pipe and be true to his own artistic genius!”
According to Dr. Cornel, thinking that BHM is only about Black people’s past is misguided.
