Cornel West, Latinos Are Also Disappointed In Obama

What do President Obama, Professor Cornel West, Latinos and Immigration Reform have to do with each other?  A lot!  A great deal, actually!

Last week Professor Cornel West, an eminent professor of religious studies at Princeton and one of the leading African American intellectuals in the world who strongly supported President Obama during the 2008 General Election, went off on Obama.

Professor West lost his cool and declared Obama a traitor to progressives and blacks because he has succumbed to the pressures of the powers that be in Washington, New York and all points powerful.  West was so public with his statements, an opinion column in The New York Times for instance, that Obama got angry and hit back.  West had campaigned hard for Obama, unusual for an academic we usually play it safe and don’t support anyone in any election ever, making 54 campaign stops times across the country, writing columns and appearing on national television talk shows on the president’s behalf.

In the end, Obama didn’t even get tickets for the professor or his family members to the inauguration ceremony.  Although West saw this as an insult, he was more upset with Obama’s support of corporate America and banks during the recent economic downfall.  Instead of prosecuting the banking wrongdoers, the president simply let them off the hook with slaps on their wrists.  How come some of these financial geniuses were not tried, convicted and sent to prison like Bernie Madoff?

Well, welcome to the crowd Professor West.

Latinos have voted for Obama, talked until we are blue in the face (is this possible?) to no avail particularly in the area of immigration reform.  Where Professor West sees Obama’s turning away from communities that supported him as disloyalty (remember he called Obama a traitor) we see it as business as usual for a president.  We wanted the migra raids to stop and Obama increased them 25% per month over the Bush Administration; we wanted the DREAM Act and he appears deaf to our pleading; and, we wanted a pathway to citizenship for undocumented folks and he says the same thing but puts no weight behind it.

¡Por favor profesor!

What do you expect from someone who raises millions and millions of dollars from the corporate sector to win the presidency?  What do you expect from someone who appoints bankers and conservative economists as keepers and protectors of our nation’s financial system?  Professor West, don’t be disappointed so suddenly.  We’ve been that way for awhile, and it seems given the alternatives, we have no choice.

Dr. Henry Flores is a professor of Political Science and Dean of the Graduate School at St. Mary’s University, in San Antonio, Texas.