Cornel wests challenges for th

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Cornel West's Challenges for the American Youth "Diversity and American Democracy." What does this mean? On September 29th, Cornel West tried to answer that question in front of some very young and naïve Syracuse University freshman. As directed by West, the new Arts and Science students read a packet of information and essays that he provided, but which were extremely misleading. Going into the lecture with a negative and stubborn opinion, I was shocked by the intellect and thought process of Mr. West. This brilliant man quoted everyone and everything from the Bible to Walt Whitman and William Fualkner. Then he posed three challenges to us: deal with the wealth inequality in our nation, utilize the relative rules of caring and nurturing, and have the youth of today continue the democratic tradition for tomorrow. All of his challenges are obtainable and realistic goals if the youth of America band together and make some serious changes.

Mr. West's first challenge was to end the wealth inequality, which although extremely ambiguous, is absolutely possible. Mr. West believes in the old cliché, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Although the government would like to deny such a claim, it seems as though Mr. West is right about this. With the wealthiest people owning all of the property and the businesses, it doesn't give people with fewer resources the opportunity to compete. I doubt that Bill Gates would ever allow any small business competition, even though it would never hurt the billion-dollar monopoly of Microsoft. Gates would just assume that Microsoft has all the technology and finances and that no one should compete with him. West believes that it is "easy to trivialize others suffering." I believe that is what the rich do by not allowing anyone else to join...