The Tight Rope

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As we navigate the balance between hope and uncertainty, we invite you to join Dr. Cornel West & Professor Tricia Rose on The Tight Rope, a weekly program where we welcome listeners and guests as thought collaborators. The Tight Rope is rich in creative, unfiltered dialogue on topics ranging from culture, art, and music to the contours of systemic racism, philosophy, the power of Socratic self-examination, and the possibilities of a peaceful and just world. Our innovative and interactive format will highlight the professors’ combined expertise to encourage critical thinking, self-reflection, and human connection as we navigate The Tight Rope.

Episodes

Thursday Aug 20, 2020

George Lipsitz: The Eminem of Black Studies

Thursday Aug 20, 2020

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose nail down issues of white allyship, undoing invisible racist ideologies, and the hallmarks of possessive investment in whiteness with their beloved guest Professor George Lipsitz. They provide commentary on the leadership of the Black freedom movement of the past and present as well as the “slow violence” of racism rooted in power, interest, and property. Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose hold office hours to offer their takes on the removal of racist monuments and its role in the larger work of dismantling systemic racism. This is an episode of The Tight Rope you will want to return to again and again.

Cornel West

Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.

Tricia Rose

Professor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.

George Lipsitz

Professor George Lipsitz is an American Studies scholar and Professor Emeritus of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D in History at the University of Wisconsin, and his current studies focus on social movements, urban culture, African American music, inequality, the politics of popular culture, and Whiteness Studies. Lipsitz has authored numerous books including The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, How Racism Takes Place, Midnight at the Barrelhouse, Footsteps in the Dark, A Life in the Struggle, and Time Passages. Lipsitz also co-authored The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights and the Ethics of Co-Creation. He serves as a Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African American Policy Forum and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Fair Housing Alliance. Lipsitz is an intellectual pioneer and respected figure of the Black freedom movement.

Insight from this episode:

Questions we must ask ourselves about self definition as the Black freedom struggle and crisis of the current movement passes to another stage.
A reframing of “white allyship” and “white fragility” in the context of George Lipsitz’s scholarship on the possessive investment in whiteness.
Details on the coordinated crimes of the Pentagon, Wall Street, and the police, specifically the connection between violence abroad and violence “at home.”
A call to move beyond symbolic victories when structural changes are needed.
Reflections from George Lipsitz on teaching in the prisons and the deeply cynical but astute critics he met there.
A behind-the-scenes look at the origins of both Dr. West’s Race Matters and Professor Rose’s Black Noise.

Quotes from the show:

“There’s a lot of spinelessness that goes with the polarization and gangsterization of our society. We need people to stand up. Not because they can do it alone, but rather because by doing it, they can inspire others to do it. And so we get enough folk [...] to create countervailing structures, countervailing institutions, along with the countervailing voices and the countervailing examples of the kind of decay and decadence we’re dealing with in the U.S. environment.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #11
“It’s important for us to make sure we develop the courage and the clarity and the conviction to move the struggle along. This is a hard time for lovers of freedom. This is a hard time for lovers of social justice. This is a hard time for lovers of decency and dignity of humans. But the table is shaking, and the boat is rocking. We have meaningful work to do.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11
“It’s too easy to think about saving white souls or soothing white psyches and neglecting saving Black lives.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11
“You can’t have decent relations when the structure in which you’re operating is already a rigged game, is already meant that one party to this relationship has the power of denying, condescension, pity, and sympathy and the other person is scrambling for rights, recognition, and resources. So first of all it has to be about power and not just about prejudice.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11
On the leadership of the current Black freedom movement: “What we have today are people who are proud to be themselves. These queer, transgender, non-normative young people on the streets of Ferguson and elsewhere are resisting ruinous form of classification and insisting on an expansive and democratic notion of affection, sexuality, romance but also social membership. We have to applaud that. On the other hand, good intentions and spontaneity is not going to be enough in the face of a relentlessly oppressive and powerful, well financed, military, economic, and political system.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11
“Many will be seduced and bribed into thinking that if they’re visual their politics are viable.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11
On institution building and making bridges for people: “This happens because people choose to take their time and put that kind of energy into each other.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #11
“If we get too preoccupied with these symbolic gestures, they do become distractions. And the status quo says, you know what, you all change the monuments you want, but the class hierarchy, the gender-based hierarchy, the imperial hierarchy is just going to stay right in place.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #11
“It’s hard to think of any human being who really deserves a monument.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #11
“The monuments become monuments to ideas, and monuments to power relationships, to celebration of domination.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #11