What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America

by Michael Eric Dyson

This is not the first time West has peppered prominent black thinkers and politicians with ad hominem assaults dressed up as ideological difference. He also accused Melissa Harris-Perry of being the darling of the liberal elite. He claimed that Al Sharpton served time as a boss on Obama’s plantation. He accused Jesse Jackson of being addicted to television cameras. And he’s accused me of being a sellout, prostitute, and bootlicker who’s turned his back on the poor. What is behind West’s animus? And how does it reflect the fierce and ugly tensions that rose in black America when the first black president took office? Amidst the enormous pride and psychological satisfaction many black folk felt in Obama’s rise, it was exceedingly difficult to engage him with anything like the critical analysis warranted by his historic presidency.