Restoring Hope

For this post I watched Dr. Cornel West talk about his book Restoring Hope. The link for this video can be found at the bottom of this post.

After reading some excerpts from the actual book I couldn’t help but wonder how a book full of such raw emotion is edited. And while I acknowledge that his speech was likely also edited, I would imagine it was edited to a lesser degree – not going through publishers. There is something to be said about the way Cornel West speaks. His tone and demeanor itself was part of an answer to a question that interested me as I began looking into Mr. West. How do you approach a topic that spans the socio-economic spectrum without offending or ostracizing some of your audience? Mr. West accomplishes this feat by somehow blending himself into every person in the audience. Mr. West is dressed in a nice suit with a slightly unkempt beard, he mixes standing up straight and delivering resounding ideas with hunching over his podium and simply talking, and finally he mixes words spelling bee contestants dread with simple slang words.

One idea Mr. West mentioned that was particularly interesting was the idea that being an optimist is a dangerous thing to be. Instead, he promotes being a “prisoner of hope.” This struck me because it was both poetic and intriguingly positive compared to most of what Mr. West talked about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPaf9gqBIx8