Hope on a Tightrope-Reflections

The challenges to a restored hope can be seen in what philosopher Cornel West has often referred to as the “nihilism of Black America” – where a certain nothingness, meaninglessness, lovelessness, and hopelessness seems to have pervaded and permeated much of our society – particularly in the urban context. The backdrop for Dr. West’s reflections on nihilism, in his book Race Matters, is the Los Angeles riots of April 1992, which followed the acquittal of the police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King. Recently, there seems to be some renewal of hope among many with the election Barak Obama as the first African-American president of the United States. In his most recent book Hope on a Tightrope (2008) West cautions against a false sense of security in such hope. West points out that real hope is grounded in a particularly messy struggle and it can be betrayed by naive projections of a better future that ignore the necessity of doing real work. For West, real hope is closely connected to attributes like courage, faith, freedom and wisdom. It comes out of a history of struggle, and points to a future filled with the possibilities of promise and progress.