Should-Read: FYI, IMHO Cornel West has not read even the ...

Should-Read: FYI, IMHO Cornel West has not read even the first page of Ta-Nehisi Coates's "We Were Eight Years in Power": An American Tragedy. The very first words of the book are:

INTRODUCTION

Regarding Good Negro Government

In 1895, two decades after his state moved from the egalitarian innovations of Reconstruction to an oppressive ���Redemption,��� South Carolina congressman Thomas Miller appealed to the state���s constitutional convention:

We were eight years in power. We had built schoolhouses, established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary system, provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the ferries. In short, we had reconstructed the State and placed it upon the road to prosperity.

By the 1890s, Reconstruction had been painted as a fundamentally corrupt era of ���Negro Rule.��� It was said that South Carolina stood under threat of being ���Africanized��� and dragged into barbarism and iniquity. Miller hoped that by highlighting black achievement in governance and marshaling a credible defense of black morality, he might convince the doubtlessly fair-minded people of South Carolina to preserve the citizenship rights of African Americans. His plea went unheeded. The 1895 constitution added both literacy tests and property requirements as qualifications for enfranchisement. When those measures proved insufficient to enforcing white supremacy, black citizens were shot, tortured, beaten, and maimed...

It would not have been possible for Cornel West to have read the first page of We Were Eight Years of Power and said the following with a good heart: German Lopez: Cornel West���s attacks on Ta-Nehisi Coates, explained - Vox: "In discussing the ���black elite leadership��� that has tried to fit into ���a neoliberal world,��� West cited ���[d]ear brother Ta-Nehisi Coates��� as an example...

Should-Read: FYI, IMHO Cornel West has not read even the first page of Ta-Nehisi Coates's "We Were Eight Years in Power": An American Tragedy. The very first words of the book are:

INTRODUCTION

Regarding Good Negro Government

In 1895, two decades after his state moved from the egalitarian innovations of Reconstruction to an oppressive ���Redemption,��� South Carolina congressman Thomas Miller appealed to the state���s constitutional convention:

We were eight years in power. We had built schoolhouses, established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary system, provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the ferries. In short, we had reconstructed the State and placed it upon the road to prosperity.

By the 1890s, Reconstruction had been painted as a fundamentally corrupt era of ���Negro Rule.��� It was said that South Carolina stood under threat of being ���Africanized��� and dragged into barbarism and iniquity. Miller hoped that by highlighting black achievement in governance and marshaling a credible defense of black morality, he might convince the doubtlessly fair-minded people of South Carolina to preserve the citizenship rights of African Americans. His plea went unheeded. The 1895 constitution added both literacy tests and property requirements as qualifications for enfranchisement. When those measures proved insufficient to enforcing white supremacy, black citizens were shot, tortured, beaten, and maimed...

It would not have been possible for Cornel West to have read the first page of We Were Eight Years of Power and said the following with a good heart: German Lopez: Cornel West���s attacks on Ta-Nehisi Coates, explained - Vox: "In discussing the ���black elite leadership��� that has tried to fit into ���a neoliberal world,��� West cited ���[d]ear brother Ta-Nehisi Coates��� as an example...