Cornel West Character Analysis

Cornel West is a philosopher, activist, and public intellectual whose work concerns race, gender, and class in American society. In his monologue, “A Bloodstained Banner,” West situates the Rodney King beating within a broader sociopolitical and economic context. He suggests that America’s fixation on a problematic “machismo” ethic to protect one’s own resources and land against “an enemy-other” fuels both police brutality against Black people, as well as Black gang violence. He also presents Black gang violence as the Black community’s attempt to “outbrutalize the police brutality.” To West, both displays of machismo are problematic, oppressive, intertwined with economic incentives, and existing “within a patriarchal mode.” West sees race, class, and gender as destructive social constructs that drive wedges between people and prevent them from realizing their shared consciousness as members of a collective humanity.