Dr. Cornel West, one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the last 30+ years appeared on Fox News recently where he debated civil rights attorney Leo Terrell about the movement to defund police departments.
During Tuesday night's appearance on Sean Hannity's program, the Harvard professor explained why he agrees with calls to defund police departments nationwide. “You have to have police who respect the community,” said West. “There has to be some community control, accountability of both citizens and police and recognizing that the deeper issues of poverty, dilapidated schools, housing, shattered families, communities, not enough jobs with a living wage—that generates a despair that the police do have to come to terms with. But there has to be democratic control over the police.”
Hannity responded with the oft-used right-wing talking point that the cities with high levels of crime and underfunded public schools have been primarily Democratic-led cities. Hannity used the example of Chicago under the direction of ex-mayor Rahm Emanuel who also served as Barack Obama's White House Chief of Staff. Hannity then asked Terrell to jump in to buttress his point but the attorney decided to go at Dr. West on a more personal level.
Terrell accused West of dodging Hannity's question and was only providing "old talking points." The discussion took a turn after Terrell's initial remarks. The two men went back-and-forth which resulted in Dr. West telling Terrell, “Check yourself, negro.”
While the "debate" was entertaining for some, the gravity of this topic was clearly undermined by the verbal slugfest that ensued.
Source: instagram.com
