"The Crisis of the African-American Intellectual: What's to Be Learned From the Cornel West v. Melissa Harris-Perry Debate"

Mark Sawyer:

"...we have on one hand a pragmatic Obama administration under siege from right wing forces and on the other hand black intellectuals trying to articulate the voices of what are absent mass social movements. This creates a crisis that plays itself out in peculiar ways. The conflict between Professors Melissa Harris-Perry and Cornel West is one such area." MORE...

Howie P.S.: The bottom line: "Folks like Melissa Harris-Perry tend to underplay the need for the President to sometimes better frame and articulate a progressive agenda and the West's and Smiley's of the world overestimate the degree to which the President can through persuasion enact a more progressive agenda."