Brother West by Cornel West Read Free Book Online Page A

Dad never used his cool to seduce women. He was a one-woman man. He knew about what the psychologists would later call ‘healthy boundaries.’ But man, I used that cool for all it was worth. And it was worth a lot of girls. They dug that cool. Fact is, there were several girlfriends I was juggling at the same time when, out of nowhere, still another one popped up. We’ll call her ‘V.’ I said, ‘Corn, if V calls, tell her I’m not home.’ Sure enough, V called and you gave her my message. But then you started chatting her up. Next thing I know, bro, you’re going out with V!”
    “But no, Cliff. That happened only after you broke up with her.”
    V was definitely ghetto fabulous.
    C OACH B ILL M AHAN LOVED THE West brothers. He was our biggest booster and our cross country coach. When Dad couldn’t take us running, Coach would show up at six am and take us on ten-mile treks. Coach had gone to Stanford, where he earned a master’s degree in history. He was a progressive white brother. At one point, he gave me Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a novel that introduced me to the horrors suffered by workers exploited by unchecked capitalism. Coach and I discussed it for days.
    “Here’s another book,” he said, giving me Uncle Tom’s Cabin . “You’ll hate it, Corn, but I think it’s important that you read it.”
    I didn’t hate it.
    “Why not?” asked Coach. “I was sure you’d hate the stereotypes.”
    “I saw Tom as somehow trying to be Christ-like,” I said.
    Recognizing my voracious appetite for the written word, Coach gave me books far beyond my reading grade level, such as the renowned American historian Richard Hofstadter, who wrote about anti-intellectualism from a subtle progressive perspective. A lifetime later, my first public lecture would take place in the classroom of Coach Mahan—turned Professor Mahan—at Sacramento City College. The topic? Hofstadter’s classic treatment of anti-intellectualism.
    Back when I was still a kid, Coach was also determined to teach me how to swim.
    “It’ll increase your strength,” Coach said, “and help your stamina when you run. There’s a swimming pool in the apartment complex where I live. We can practice there.”
    When we arrived, the pool was being used by a half-dozen white people. I didn’t pay them any mind. I was dead-set on learning to swim. But the moment Coach and I got in the pool, every last swimmer got out. I mean, those folks fled! I looked at Coach and Coach looked at me. I didn’t understand it. I had showered that morning and brushed my teeth. What was going on here? No matter. Coach gave me my lesson, and an hour later we got out. While we were leaving, maintenance arrived and began to drain the pool.
    “Why are you doing this?” Coach asked indignantly.
    “The manager just told me to clean out the pool.”
    “Is this when you usually do it?”
    “No. It’s not due for a draining for another week.”
    “Did the manager tell you to wait to drain until after we got out?”
    “Yes.”
    With that, Coach went in and told the manager that he was moving out of the complex. “You hurt me,” he told the manager, “and you hurt my student. You should hang your head in shame.”

NEGATIVE CAPABILITY
    I HAVE A LIFELONG LOVE for John Keats, the greatest of the English Romantic poets who lived during the nineteenth century. His uncanny ability to create beauty with words touched my soul. I was still quite young when I read the letter Keats sent to his brother in 1817. In it, he wrote about “negative capability,” which he explained as the quality “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” I was drawn to this idea because so much of what I experienced as a kid, teen, and young man seemed shrouded in mystery.
    Even the basic story that had been passed down from my grandparents to my parents to me was clearly mysterious. If I read a biography, for