on this edition of "our world with black enteríw%m:ur @& talk to cornell west about his new book, "politics and being an activiat intellectual." he's our headliner. plus, a man giving us sjut doctors of color.sa he's our slice of life. all that, up next.loñç captions made possible by the u.s. department of education and central city productions, inc. ♪ our world our world ♪wtç

welcome, everyone. i'm ed gordon. q turns the microscope on himself. i recently sat[[ down with the present university professor at a bookstore in harlem to talk about his road to becoming ax= devout christian and activist for the underserved and why he'÷ unapologetic about confronting issues. cornell, always good to see you. >> it's a blessing to see you. you're looking well. >>w@ç i try. indeed.ñiñ indeed. want tom$y talk to you a littlet about why the sense of giving the microscope to yourself now when you could have either not done it or done it much earlier. but i suspect there was some calling to say it's >> well, it's true, you know. brother tavis, dialogue, said it would be nice to have a stzq of your i4sñlife. i said, man, i hadn't thought about that really. but part had tooç do with my

near-death struggle with cancer. my dance with morality isr intensifying. maybe i should stop. and if i could tell my story and affect somebody, help somebody, cultivate capas3au to love, deal with the funk in their own life, because everybody got some funk now. wrestle with it, come out stronger, then maybe i could be of some service. i started looking at different corners, dark corners of it.án man, i was a gangster when i was small, got kicked out of school in thirdñi grade. harvard,÷princeton, struggle for freedom. i ñisaid, wow, i have one of th most blessed lives)8 ó[çimagi. it's amazinamazing. that's why the last chapter is about gratitude. >> how much of it really wasfi cathartic in the sense of having to deal with the darkest ñcor r corners? because those are thecpç harde for all of us to see and more

difficult to deal with. >> it's painful because -- beckett said try again, fell try again,!pñ fail again, fail petter. keep trying to get up, bounce back and so forth. but also for the young brothers and sisters who have like i had how do you transform that rage or channel that#fr rage into positivefm

tail, pulled the nape of your neck at times and said, no,n@ this way. this way. of what we know of society today, would cornell west have survived and thrived had you been born at this time? >> it would have been difficult. it would have been difficult, very difficult, because i can'to conceive of my life without my father. and i'd never be half the person he was. i mean, the world might not know, but i know the truth. see what i mean?]y and i know i wouldn't be the same person%.ráhout my mother. she's still stronger than ever. i'll never be half the person she is. but also my brother and my sunday schoolteacher sara rae, co mr. poñ"peters. harvard épe(rq)s, princeton teachers. always tried to be like. and my sister. so, here i come out of this thick well of love and i'm a love child. and i still had the rage. so, you figure if i grew up with my father drifting, my mother

overworked andj5 underpaid, without jesus y' be a dead up gangster. there's no doubt about that, because all of that rage would not have found a positive way. and that's one of the reasons why we need to intervene in the lives of our young people. not just mentor at aç distance this book is about the ways in which hmderu p÷ generations ens that my rage was channelled in such a way that ixd could be of service to both black folk and rusp'ity before i die. so, there's a sense that this book shatters the myth of being self-made. i'm not a self-made man at all. shaped,ço molded, çloved, car for, attendedñi to. people put me in the right kind of frame of mind. martin killson, my teacher at frame of mind. i had white professors at princeton. wonderful,ç you know. bill mahan, my cross-country coach. thy played f;kndispensable rol. no doubt about it.

>> i want to ask you about what may have been the] biggest challenge, and that's facing cancer. soç many in our community face it. talk to me about how you were ablecz to face that and not goe route of woe is me. because clearly when you hearñ that, you suffer with that no matter who you ókare. >> it does. it does hit you. the doctor told me youurtu a fex months to live, the last days are the most aggressive form, i said, lord, have mercy.+idñ that's disorienting, you know what i mean? but it was surprising, too, because i saidoquz myself, i hae been invited to the banquet of i have an abundance of blessing. it might be1qñ time to make roo for somebody else.ñr so, in that sense i wasn't going to allow death to be like a thief to5lob me of my joy and love i already experienced. because mom and dad, my life, i wouldn't have that much to complain about if i did that at 48. you know what i mean?

but i did want to live. and thank god went through the surgery and everything, everything was fine. so, each day is a form of all time. each breath is a breakthrougpqu and each moment is a gift. and each life is aéímiracle. >> let me do this, take a break. we'll be back with more with cornell west right after this.]v >> d this can inspire people o  themselves, inspire people, don'tru up on love and justice, inspire people to be a prisoner of hope, that is a ♪ - lafayette, what're you doing? - ( music playing )

i'm not gonna lie. definitely not easy. hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa... lafayette: just got to get through the day. how do you stop this? being used to doing something with a cigarette makes it hard doing it without one. but if i can re-learn to get through my workday without cigarettes, - man: easy. - i can re-learn anything without cigarettes.

announcer: re-learn life without cigarettes, free, at becomeanex.org. a new way to think about quitting. announcer: re-learn life without cigarettes, free, rob, what's up? how's it going? how's it going? guys, this is my cousin rob from michigan. whazzup! he's a teenager. totally. hey, what's up? rob: all right. whoa. hey, you wanna slow down? no. really? huh. hey! do you know what a beautiful animal is? a horse. a horse. yeah. beautiful mane. unbelievable muscle tone. when it runs, it looks like poetry in motion. it's the most beautiful thing on earth. and sometimes when you feed a horse, its lips will tickle your hand. just, just tickle it just a little bit. it makes me giggle sometimes. i don't know. i guess what i'm trying to say is, if you don't slow down, i'm going to bite into your head like an apple. and thanks, guys, for listening to my horse stories.

i could talk about ponies all day long. ♪ our world >> back with more of cornell it was interesting when you talked about obama. >> yeah. >> because there is a real internal struggle with black ame+ica right now going on as to how to prod this man toaexñr ma sure that the game doesn't change now. i've told çeverybody, politics has always been and always will be quid pro quo. >> that's true. >> and it should not change now. >> yes,ss yes,ty yes, because b that way all the time, more like will be that way. >> soç if, in fact, now it's o turn to reap those b;%qm1ñ because clearly more than any otherq group of people,,÷ african-americans put this man in office. >> absolutely. 96%. >> there has to now be a sense

of return to thu3 community. talk to me about how you and others should and must make sure that that benefit is paid. >> i mean, that's why we haveço make sure brother barack -goba president obama, first he has to be protected, including his precious family. secondly, he has to be é respected. he's got to get thecs respect president. there's noç doubt about that. at the same time, we have to begin the÷

afghanistan?rpñ disproportionately, working ce people, workingrjñ young people black and brown. well-to-do not sending their kids to afghanistan at all. so, we have to say, look, our dear brother, we want to protect him, we wantxd to respect him, t accountable. because politics is about goods and services. you see? >> you talked about the idea that if he wants to be the black lincoln, which forth those images!v- during th campaign, that there is a need for protagonists and antagonists, a frederick dougla douglass, if you will, and owe see yourself to a great degree like that. >>+ñ9 ought of us ought to as douglass, the truth,h/ justice. abe raham lincoln thought slave would exist forever. how come? he was an opportunist. he became a great president by

1963 by the emancipation proclamati proclamation. '65,ç supporting the war, that was a different lincoln. the abolitionist put2q5 preshì& sureñi on him. wendell phillips put pressure, charles sumner put pressure. harriet beacher stowe, uncle tom's cabin. we need to put that kind of pressure onñi obama. if obama thinks3"ñ he can be a lincoln by looking for the middle ground in a superficial dialogue6 rather than the truth beneath the dialogueñr -- becau thenmn dialogue is hiding and concealing the truth, which is people. choose between the health care plan, the bonanza for the companies on the one hand, maybe some small little thing with public option. oh, we can only get 20 million. that means 19 million still not going to get it? what percentage of 19 million is large percentage. there is no health care reform. they'll have a party. we're still catching hell. what is going on here? lincoln's greatness had to do

with the push from the organizeó attacked slavery andñi policy. with obama on the war, got a peace priz+o% and aá war presid? what does that look like? you see what i mean? you gott! a=ñ peace prize.z where is it for the poor people? you gott! a=ñ peace prize.zñ h progressiv if iive instincts, b people around him do not haveñi progressive instincts at all. >> and that has been seen and played itself out whenever this administration dealt with race, there has been ag÷ want -- and always understood in thet! from race at times. >> that's right. from race at times. >> that's right. beyond theg speech that he gave the brilliant speech he gave -- >> race is an issue i believe to ignore right now. >> -- that with the buldoá pult you have to interject the idea to america that race doestn pla part often in what we face. this eadministration, this

president, hasko not done that& my opinion in the way he should. your thoughts. r(& i think you're absolutely right. i think that he's got people whispering in his ears saying arm's length and only talk about it when there's a crisis, some symbolic anniversary. naacp gathering, martin luther king's birthday or something like that. same true on the south side of chicago.x÷ national security in afghanistan, now, we need national security in] v chicago. the albert family. that's the peak of an iceberg of all these precious young brothers and sisters with ñ flying, no jobs, you know, mediocre education. what is it, 75% of young brother dropping out in detroit? that's a national crisis.ç where's the urgency? where is the sense of emergency? you see what i mean? when you look at the schools and the jobsxd and the psyches andx forth, we know that the crisis is deep, but we turnç ouróo eyo

celebrities. we turn our eyes to electedl officials. we turn our eyes to self-medication, addiction to whatever it is. it could be addiction to -- >> this stems from a sense of amqotency, you think? >> a sense of not really knowing how to get traction in a ok market-driven society with a 24/7 cycle of news and the preoccupation with v]ççright-w talk show hosts and so on and sd forth. we wonder how do we accent our crisis? i think people are frustrated how you go about it? that's the role of éeim!%a1ñ and it's one of the reasons why this book for me is very important because you get one example of a person who is an extension of a peoples, of a tradition, of a struggle that suffering and tell truth about it and see what we can do38z rar than a lot of the superficial glitz that creates the noise in our culture that doesn't allow

us to really hear the cries of ffering. >> for those of us who know you and have spent time privately with you, the sense of being positive has always been there through youxd and has taught ma we'll be ablexd to grasp that sometimes too often we don't. >> yes, ;xyes. >> talk to me about what you want people to walk away from when they read this book. there. the wisdom you have given to so many of us privately, but now othersxd get to peek behind tha curtain. >> to me, d greatist gift a person can give to another person is háinspiration. if this can inspire people to think for themselves, and inspire people don't give up on love and fyyjustice, inspire pee to be a prisoner of hope, that is açó beautiful thing. aretha inspires you. sara vaughan inspires you. that's a form of deep giving.

and the irony is the more you 8ñ went we return, a program increasing the number of minorities performing biomedicañ research.x individu . >> individuals come into these environments and feel tlek be whoe ♪

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intensive healing for lasting relief. ♪ our world >> dr. jerry[b guiden is teachi more than high-levelóy researchn the life sciences. more importantly, he's instilling confidence in college students of color looking to gain access toç challenging medical fields. dr. guiden is this week's "slice of life."2dy the opportunities for african-american students to succeed in theç medical field growing thanks to a nationwide ?o8m run by the8;a national institu$kñ$jrqp&th.u"sir(t&háhp& the program is called rcmi. the research centers in minoritç institutions. dr. jerry guiden is the director of the program at the city college of newyork in harlem, where he teaches cell and molecular biology.&lyç

>> individuals come into these environments and they feel like they can be whoever they want to be. so, whatx$ my program has done allow people who look like me,ñ look like the vgg;yçstudents, participate in science. >> the goal of the program is to increase the presence off% minorities in biomedical research. students ranging from undergraduate through doctorate levels participate in the program. in a foreign area. when you come into science, all they've heard about is that>ú minorities don't do well in science. >> dr. guiden is attributed with helping more than 60 students successfully complete the program. he reflects on one of his many successfulk1zñá students. >> stephanie is a student from nigeria. she came from one of theñpvorst

high schools in new york city. i used to give a talk up there. stephanie was so shy and so unable to believe that she was in a position to achieve success when i came into the lab. stephanie's in her second year in medical school zó'2know. phew. that's what we do. >> many of the students go on to become physicians or clinical researchers, studying diseases affecting their communities. dr. benson reed currently specializes inurgical oncology and head and neck surry in new york. he attributes his success to dr. guiden and theéñ rcmi progr. >> i became a part of jerry's family. he took me on. iñi lived in his house. so i had multipletpybenefits, n just the benefitç of working i the labs and, you know, him mentoring me as a student in the lab. wdir got that personal benefit of him being a father figure.

>> dr. michael sands also excelled in the program under the guidance ofç dr. guiden an now helps manage the lab as a senior postdoctoral fellow. >> i think dr. guiden, what he has done probably without knowing it is that he ha&o established a model of excellence. >> the rcmi program is offered in several other notable colleges and universities, including moorehouse, howard, and jackson state universtp. for more information on the rcmi program and the national center for research resources, visit4÷ www.ncrr.nih.gov. >> wll bback r [ female announcer ] new real fruit smoothies from mccafé are real fruit, as in strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and bananas, which makes them really delicious. ♪ that's what we're made of. ♪

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that does it for this edition of "our world with black enterprise." until next time, i'm edñ xdgor. and thanks for making our world your world. [ female announcer ] living with foot pain? get new gold bond pain relieving foot roll-on for maximum-strength, mess-free relief. gold bond. fast relief for painful feet. with new gold bond intensive healing cream. it targets the underlying causes of itch and irritation. new gold bond. intensive healing for lasting relief.