To hear him talk about the 'skinny guy with the funny name' who is the first African American poised to take the helm of the nation as the 44th U.S. president, you'd never know that Dr. Cornel West, initially, was skeptical of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

The Princeton University dynamo with the unmistakable persona, replete with a funky afro and distinguished black-rimmed glasses, had been invited to Chicago by Rev. Michael Pfleger to bring the gospel message Sunday at his St. Sabina mass.

But West ended up doing so much more.

From the St. Sabina pulpit, West told of a nation entombed in an era that he said is marked by a loss of sensitivity to the plight of the most vulnerable citizens.

"We have been living for 40 years in a political, moral and spiritual ice age," he told the congregation that included a number of candidates vying to take or retain office in the Super Tuesday elections.

But a melt down, a phenomenon West, 54, said he didn't think he'd witness in his lifetime, is on the horizon. The professor of Religion called for a new world order, one that would begin with the election of Obama.

He continued his ardent push for Obama, talking to a crowd of volunteers and supporters at a downtown Obama campaign office Monday.

West greeted the crowd by thanking them for "wisely choosing the right side of history."

He went on to tell the diverse gathering, "Because we're here not just to make history, we want to change history. We want not just to change history, we want to change it in a certain kind of way. And Barack Obama is the leader.. .And what we will see is a change that involves what Sly Stone calls 'everyday people.'"

But West wasn't always a staunch Obama supporter.

"Intially I was very suspicious of my brother.. .because it looked as if, early on, he was such a darling of the mainstream media. And anybody who is a darling of the mainstream media warrants deep suspicion from me," the acclaimed author and noted academe said.

But after having a conversation with Obama that West said delved into, among other things, the Senator's regard for the plight of Black people in the U.S. and the trailblazing strides made by Negro forefathers, West was sold.

Now, like so many who have cleaved to the freshman senator's message of hope, West is one of Obama's most outspoken, prolific supporters.

"I had a chance to look more closely at his record," West said of his double-take of Obama.

He was struck by Obama's work for ex-offenders, the legislation he championed.

"That was just my ignorance. I had to learn about the brother," the Democracy Matters author said of his initial Obama assessment.

As West pointed out to the Blacks, whites, Asians, women, men, young adults and baby boomers in the campaign office, Monday, Obama's support cuts across many social, ethnic and gender divides.

In the Iowa Caucuses, a convincing number of white Americans propelled the mixedraced Harvard graduate to victory.

While women gave Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY.) a win in New Hampshire, the close race (39 percent Clinton; 37 percent Obama) showed that Obama was not a long shot.

Nevada's primary, which was a win for Clinton in voting percentage, further substantiated that Obama was the first viable Black candidate for the presidency. Obama walked away from Nevada with 13 of 25 available delegates there.

Then came the Jan. 26 South Carolina landslide defeat, furthering the Obama campaign's bite. There, Obama won with 55 percent of the vote to Clinton's 27 percent.

The Illinois senator garnered 52 percent of the non-Black vote in South Carolina, according to election data.

And following the 21-state election day Tuesday, Obama remains in a tight heat, trailing marginally in the delegate count.

Having experienced the tragedies of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, enduring the war in Iraq, and having to rebuild and restore major metropolises in the wake of the ravaging Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, West said the nation is looking for change.

"People see the country is in deep decline. People are hungry and thirsty for a hope and a uniter. And Io and behold the candidate who emerges is a Black man," West said, rousing the crowd.

Obama's message, called one of hope and unity, is credited by some with breathing life back into the Democratic Party.

A registered Independent, West's support and vote for Obama is telling.

He cautioned against being pro-Obama for race sake.

"There are some people actually supporting the brother for the wrong reasons. But I'll take em," West said, only half joking.

To support OBama simply because he is Black, "well that's not a good reason," West said. "I'll take the vote and educate later."

It is not clear whether his support -of Democrats begins and ends with Obama, but it is unquestionable that West is all aboard what has become Obama's vessel of hope.

[Author Affiliation]

by Rhonda Gillespie

Defender Staff Writer

On Tuesday, Illinois voters and voters in another 21 states will go to the polls to help choose a Democratic nomi-nee for president.

While the major Democratic candidates are beating up on each other and telling everyone that they deserve the vote, this election is not about their policies or their personalities, or even their name recognition.

This election is about change, and the change is not going to be limited to Washington. The reason so many young people are energized about the Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) candidacy is because they see an opportunity for change, away from the same old order to a New National Order. The New National Order is less about Democrat and Republican, or Black, white and Hispanic, than it is about American.

It is a new order that recognizes that a new generation is ready to take the reins of this country and is not willing to wait far the same old group of older people (who have made a royal mess of eveiything) to get out of the way. That generation of baby boomers (like me), are children of the riots, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and former President John F. Kennedy assassinations, and Watergate and Vietnam. They still carry those scars and those biases.

That means that same older group of Black leaders will have to either move out of the way, or get moved out of the way.

The New National Order will require a whole new view of the world, espe-cially a new view of where Black people see themselves in that world. It will require a pooling of intelligence and resources. It will make the Congressional Black Caucus obsolete as long as it insists on being the Congressional Black Democrat Caucus. It will make old-line civil rights leaders and old-line civil rights organizations extinct if they cannot apply themselves to the new/old reahties of failing schools and increasing neighborhood death tolls and burgeoning prison populations.

It is not just Obama. It is a new generation of progressive people who, to be sure, need some history lessons. But they should not have to wait for those history lessons Jo retire, to move Out of the way, to become the griots -instead of clutching their positions of authority until death snatches it away from them.

It will also require a new sensibility about race and gender in the Black community. This election has exposed a schism within the Black community as some Black women were unabashedly backing Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), excited about the possibility of having a woman in the White House.

They seemed to want to regard themselves as female Blacks, rather than Black females, ignoring the fact that before any X- or Ychromosomes aligned themselves to form their gender, their Black great-grandfather and great- grandmother set their race for them.

What promise would a Clinton presidency bring to Black women? Probably less than the Condoleezza Rice ascendancy to secretary of State has meant, yet Black women aren't rallying around Condi because of the company she keeps. She's got the right chromosomes AND she is Black and brilliant. Oh, that's right, she is Republican, so that old order determines that she has forfeited her Blackness, or her femaleness, or both.

The election results in South Carolina showed that quite a few Black female voters in that state saw that former President William J. Clinton sees them as Black first. They-jmoved away from Sen. Clinton in droves and handed Obama a stunning and convincing win. Bill Clinton immediately dismissed their vote as a "Black thang," comparing Obama's win to Rev. Jesse Jackson's in 1984 and 1988.

President Barack Obama may turn out to be a bust. He may botch some Wrings and make some mistakes in dealing with the economy and may underestimate just how difficult it will be to dislodge the grip the old order has on the bureaucracy of government. Still, it is hard to imagine him being worse than President George W Bush.

But four years of Obama will bring four years of the New National Order transforming this nation, perhaps even in spite of Obama. Those four years will see all these new voters and new volunteers and new activists moving into city councils and state houses and Congress. They will be less impressed with party labels and more impressed with collective vision. They will demand that certain things be fixed - public education system, immigration, urban crime - and some things be broken - treaties with nations that could care less how many of our children die defending them, dependence on fossil fuels and powerlessness in the face of the health care industry.

We defy that New National Order at our own risk. If we don't become a part of it, it will roll right over us.

[Author Affiliation]

Lou Ransom is executive editor of the Chicago Defender. He can be reached at 312-225-2400, ext. 130, orlransom@chicagodefender.com