Introduction Few black intellectuals in the United States today command as much attention as prolific author, critic, and activist Cornel West (b. 1953), professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Focusing on race, class, and gender, West is an outspoken critic of contemporary American society in the name of decency and dignity, freedom and democracy. In this essay, West is concerned about the viability of democratic society in America, which he believes is threatened by “a lethal and unprecedented linkage of relative economic decline, cultural decay, and political lethargy.” What does West mean by this diagnosis? Why does he say that democracy necessarily concerns itself with “the role of the most disadvantaged in relation to the public interest”? What does he mean by “cultural decay” or by “the market culture”? Citing specific examples from the text, explain why he thinks our culture is in decline. What are “nonmarket” values, and why does West think they are crucial for democratic societies? What is the difference between a “hood” and a “neighborhood,” and does this difference matter? Does the music we listen to affect who we become? What does West mean by saying that “to be part of the democratic tradition is to be a prisoner of hope”? One of the fundamental questions of our day is whether the tradition of struggle can be preserved and expanded. I refer to the struggle for decency and dignity, the struggle for freedom and democracy. In Tradition and Individual Talent (1919), T. S. Eliot claims that tradition is not something you inherit—if you want it, you must sacrifice for it. In other words, tradition must be fought for. . . . In any discussion about race matters it is vital to situate yourself in a tradition,

tradition is not something you inherit—if you want it, you must sacrifice for it. In other words, tradition must be fought for. . .

What is the difference between a “hood” and a “neighborhood,” and does this difference matter?

It’s difficult to earn a position on a college team.

If salaries were given, then these college student-athletes would have to pay taxes.

Student-athletes are the ones working hard out on the court and field.

College football and men’s basketball programs earn far more than any other athletic program, so these athletes would likely earn more as well.

Since student-athletes also bring in revenue for their team and college or university,

Being a college student-athlete is a full-time job, bouncing between the weight room, the court/field, classes, and film sessions.

People who think college student-athletes should be paid often say the students’ names and images are used on products and in advertising, among other things, so they should receive some of the profits

The only universities with the moral authority to say that they truly cannot afford to compensate athletes are the ones who are not paying their coaches more than $200,000 per year

Athletic departments pay six and seven figure salaries with money earned from the jerseys of their athletes.

Coaches get rich by forcing athletes to wear a certain brand of sneaker.

If the NCAA were not making money, they would not be paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the building of elaborate stadiums, the purchase of luxury homes for their coaches, or the massive compensation packages of marketing and promotional teams. 

When it is time to negotiate the complications of getting a $4 million dollar per year coach onto campus, the NCAA finds a way to get the deal done.

He mentions the high cost of college tuition

I don’t want to get into a back and forth with him or anyone else on this topic, since I am not sure how productive that would be.

“saving is like a choice between spending money today or giving it to a stranger years from now.”

Present bias shows up not just in experiments, of course, but in the real world. Especially in the United States, people egregiously undersave for retirement—even when they make enough money to not spend their whole paycheck on expenses, and even when they work for a company that will kick in additional funds to retirement plans when they contribute.

Most of them have focused on money. When asked whether they would prefer to have, say, $150 today or $180 in one month, people tend to choose the $150. Giving up a 20 percent return on investment is a bad move—which is easy to recognize when the question is thrust away from the present.

In Turkey, experts and academics need special permissions from an advisory council whose members have been sworn to secrecy in order to access COVID-19 data.58And in Moscow, tens of thousands of cameras with facial-recognition features were supposedly installed to track contagion, but risk remaining in place even beyond the pandemic.59 In Israel, the Knesset authorized the domestic security agency (Shin Bet) to support contact tracing at the request of the prime minister.6

French doctor Didier Raoult provoked a global controversy by proposing that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could effectively treat coronavirus — a hypothesis that became a political belief for some.

Faced with a threat of epic scale, countries have adopted radical and previously unthinkable policies to counter the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.