A Beaming Lecture by Cornel West

I came across a lecture given by Cornel West, I believe at Princeton University. He crafts his speech/lecture brilliantly, catching the audience off guard and simultaneously reeling us in: "I hope I say something that not simply empowers,enables, and ennobles you, but most importantly unsettles you." He goes on to talk with much enthusiasm that it is education that can shake things up--or unsettle. When a people becomes educated they are given the eraser of all that is preconceived or predetermined; given the tools to un-house all that dust that has settled from outside . They can "muster the courage to learn how to think for themselves."

In America, we are usually told that the the idea of settling down, or being settled is a positive thing. We should work, earn money, and have kids, watch the news, and be quiet and patriotic: The American Dream!

Cornel West grabs us and shakes us with his words, reminding us that if we are to be awake and aware as a people we must educate ourselves, in the deepest sense of the word education. We can not fight against the American injustices, if we do not know what these injustices are.

So perhaps to become "unsettled" has unhappy connotations, but progress is only made from state of acute perceptiveness and yet unknowing and unnerved readiness.