“Everyone ends up cowardly, but elected...Everyone ends up denying the pain, but elected,” he said.
Dismissing personal advancement as unimportant in the face of concrete social change, West encouraged action to eliminate the pains of the common man.
Mirroring the language of Malcolm X, West said if America does not accept the existence of society’s past sins and attempt, once and for all, to atone for them then “let’s see if the chickens won’t come home to roost.”
Among these problems, he said, are racism and infringement upon civil liberties.
“Anti-Arabism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism—they all must die in order for America to live,” he said.
Third-year Law School student Michelle C. Yau said she found West’s speech inspirational.
“It’s rare to hear someone really talk about something in a very real way,” she said. “I’m a survivor of child abuse. And that’s not an issue that we talk about in law school. But he triggers the feeling that you have a right to talk about the unspeakable.”