Democracy cannot survive if citizens divorce themselves from the problems that plague society, warned Cornel West, professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy of Religion at Harvard University. In his General Session address, West suggested that all citizens—but teachers in particular because they "care so deeply and love so much"—need to remember that far too many of the children who enter public schools today live in poverty and are marked by "unjustified suffering, unmerited pain, and undeserved harm."
West's critique of the status quo was familiar territory for the prolific writer, scholar, and social activist. West, who as a teenager refused to salute the flag because of the second-class status of African Americans in the United States, is unflinching in his determination to raise issues that are difficult for most to face. He is also unwavering in his belief that unless there is public discourse about how to "wrestle with the problem of evil" in democracy, those who would "live lives of evasion and avoidance and denial of all forms of unjustified suffering" sentence the victims of oppression to further victimization.
It's too easy, West claimed, to view minority segments of the population as "problem people." And, unfortunately, he added, these "problem people" begin to internalize the feeling of being "problematic." How do you think it feels, he asked, to be a "walking flesh and blood problem"? And how, he continued, do we enable these people to take part "in that perennial process of becoming, in that perennial quest for wisdom"?
The family, West said, can do much to offset the negative effect that the "legacy of white supremacy" has on people of color, but family alone, he argued, cannot keep the democratic tradition alive. Great literature has addressed the dysfunctional family in America, West said, and that literature reflects the "delusion and deception" in thinking that "somehow the family can serve as an adequate pillar" to help heal the "scars and wounds" history has wrought.
"History will track you down whereever you go," West cautioned, urging teachers to continue to "cut against the grain" by challenging romanticized and idealized versions of U.S. history, by challenging the hypocrisy that "keeps us from being open to learn." Only through such honest and frank dialogue, West concluded, will the democratic tradition "make it in the 21st century."