In the cadences of a preacher and with the animation of a rapper, the African American activist-scholar Cornel West yesterday challenged his audience at the Camden School District's Male Youth Summit to achieve greatness through service to others.
"Many young brothers and sisters have a stare instead of a vision," West said.
Summon the courage to find your unique voice, he told about 1,000 predominantly black and Latino secondary school students in the Woodrow Wilson High School auditorium.
The Princeton University professor of religion and African American studies was keynote speaker at the summit, entitled "I Matter." The author of 19 books, who has also recorded a hip-hop CD and acted in several movies, said he frequently speaks at schools and prisons out of concern for young minority men. He was invited to Camden by Woodrow Wilson principal Tyrone Richards.
"There's a lot of mess coming at you out there," West told the teenagers. And success is unlikely "if all you do is get caught up in the superficiality of TV, the surface, and have no deep love."
He referred to Oliver Truitt, 87, a guest at the summit, as an example of greatness. State Sen. Dana Redd (D., Camden) was at the event to read a proclamation from the Legislature honoring Truitt for his volunteer work at the school, much of it with the football team. Richards told the audience that the school weight room would be named for Truitt.
"I'm blessed to be here on the same stage with Mr. Oliver Truitt," West said of the Camden resident. "He is a long-distance runner. . . . He is a great man who chose to live serving others."
Sporting his trademark black scarf and unruly Afro, the social commentator quoted from figures ranging from Socrates to the rapper Lil Wayne. He spoke of the difference between success and greatness, and cited figures in black history who also put service to others before themselves.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s children were not even insured when he was "shot down like a dog," West said. And Malcolm X, leader of the Nation of Islam, had only $151 to his name when he was assassinated in 1965.
"I want each brother here," West said, "to wrestle with what your calling is. . . . When you talk about calling, you have to talk about courage. I see too much cowardliness. People acting big and bad, but really being cowards."
To those in the room who themselves are scarred and hurting, West encouraged them to rise above their pain. "You can have wounds and still be a wounded healer," he said.
Richards said later that he was pleased by the response that West received from the young men, all juniors and seniors, who attended from Woodrow Wilson, Camden, Creative Arts, Brimm Medical Arts, and MetEast High Schools.
"Coming from a background of hard-core thugs myself, I was surprised at the hugs he got from some hard-core [youths] later," said Richards, whose behavior got him kicked out of Wilson when he was enrolled there.
Following his speech, West was mobbed like a rap singer by students who asked him to sign copies of his book Race Matters, which they had been given.
"He made me want to succeed more in life and be successful, to leave a legacy. I'm an actor. I want to be an actor like Denzel," said Kwazeek Fisher, 16, as he waited in line to have his book inscribed.
"Most of us here are going through the struggle," said Kingsley Ibeneche, 17. "We have the stare rather than the vision." He said West's speech could help to change that.
On his way to a summit-closing reception, West added another thought on the theme of success vs. greatness. Asked about President Obama, he said it was too soon to gauge the greatness of America's first black president.
"Obama is magnificent in his ascendance, and symbolically," said West, who supported Obama during the presidential campaign. "The problem is, Obama is a politician. . . . He's got to get poor and needy people on his economic team. Right now his economic team consists of people who never cared about poor people."
