President Obama should have used another Bible, and not that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to be sworn in for his second term, according to Dr. Cornel West.
During a discussion on poverty in America, last week, Dr. West,who has called the president a “Republican in Blackface,” cited what he sees as vast discrepancies in the actions of Obama and the belief systems of the late Dr. King.
“When I got the news that my dear brother, Barack Obama, President Obama, was going to put his hand on Martin Luther King Jr.’s Bible, I got upset,” he said, during a discussion on poverty in america. “I got upset because you don’t play with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and you don’t play with his people. By ‘his people’ I mean people of good conscience, fundamentally committed to peace, and truth, and justice; and especially the Black tradition that produced it.
“All of the blood, sweat and tears that went into producing a Martin Luther King Jr. generated a brother of such high decency and dignity that you don’t use his prophetic fire for a moment of presidential pageantry without understanding the challenge he represents to all of those in power, no matter what color they are.”
Growing very passionate in his delivery, Dr. West explained that the thought of using the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. for a moment in “political calculation,” made his “blood boil.”
In West’s view, government doesn’t subscribe to the same thought practices for which Dr. King died.
View the entire statement below.
http://www.springboardplatform.com/js/overlay
—
Photo: YouTube
