A True Defense of Smiley and West | Black Agenda Report

The cult of Obama would brook no dissenters.”

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West faced tremendous criticism from large sectors of the African American population for daring to stick to their own political principles and attempting to hold Barack Obama, the U.S. empire’s first Black head of state to account to said principles, in the grand tradition of Black activists, intellectuals and media. By attempting to remain true to their own political positions, and to positions most of their critics themselves held prior to the election of Obama, the two men, one a media personality, the other an academic and activist, fell from grace in elite black circlesand in the popular opinion of the black masses.This fall, in this author’s opinion, was the result of the black electorate who felt some need to protect Obama and who largely were unaware of the role and purpose of the U.S. president, combined with the Black “mis-leadership class” who took on the duty of providing cover for the president, thereby exposing their own lack of political principles.