Cornel West shares a laugh with Brown University President Ruth Simmons before his lecture on Martin Luther King Jr.

The Providence Journal/ Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE — If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, Cornel West mused, what would he do, what would he say, what would he love and hate?

“I don’t know exactly what brother Martin would say about present day America. I know it would bring tears to his eyes,” West said.

He wouldn’t like all the “salacious bodies” moving on the Black Entertainment Channel, and he’d deplore the jewelry, and especially the chains, that young black men wear.

But more importantly, he would weep at a nation where more than 20 percent of its children grow up in poverty, where they are educated in “dilapidated schools in these chocolate cities, and where there is lack of great leadership in the black community to push for this change.”

West, a Princeton professor, author, and now also a rap artist, came to Brown yesterday as the 11th Martin Luther King lecturer, part of a group that has included former New York City Mayor David Dinkins and author and Department of Justice Civil Rights Division head Lani Guinier.

West delivered an hourlong address that seemed a rehearsed stream-of-consciousness, leaping from topics such as the life of King to the Socratic method to ’70s funk to black spirituals to Jesus Christ and the Roman Empire.

“You can’t talk about Martin without talking about the whole tradition,” West explained.

And he truly did mean the whole tradition. He spoke of all of white America understanding the black experience through the fear, anger, and sadness caused by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He spoke of the toppling of Saddam Hussein, quoted the Greek playwright Sophocles, and talked of how corporate America’s need for access to Chinese markets prompts the U.S. government to tacitly condone a lack of democracy in China.

And from time to time, West got back to the man himself, the late King.

West spoke less of King the reverential figure, the one we lionize every January, and more of King the man, the inspiring but human and flawed leader who did not seek the fame he found and questioned himself for the choices he had made in his life that at times endangered the lives of his wife and children.

“He’s a human being, he’s flawed like anyone else.” He had his “patriarchy challenges,” he said, referring to King’s infidelity.

But he also spoke of King’s love for the church, of his “love affair with a first-century Palestinian Jew named Jesus,” and of King’s own piety, a reverence for his forebears.

“What is piety? Piety is what? Acknowledging your indebtedness to those who came before you. Those who allowed you to make your way from womb to tomb,” he said.

And he spoke of King’s family and his upbringing, and the great love of his parents, which enabled him to be the courageous man that he was.

And he loved, and lived, through music, a theme that runs through the black-American experience, West said.

“Martin couldn’t survive without the music,” West said. “Can you imagine black folks without the music? There’d be suicides just running amok.”

Throughout his comments on King’s humanity, West tossed out life lessons to the packed house of several hundred Brown students at the Salomon Center for Teaching — have the courage to think critically, have the strength to stay out of the mainstream, don’t be conformist, question the status quo.

“It is so difficult nowadays to engage in critical reflection,” he said, challenging students to “radically call into question complacency, to call into question conformity.”

Those who are well adjusted to the status quo, he said, are well adjusted to injustice.

West also took questions, and promoted his upcoming spoken-word rap album.

He also took a look at the state of black leadership in America, saying that his personal jury was still out on the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama for president, but that he had cautioned him that he’s going to see an entirely different side of the nation and its people as he runs for the nation’s top job.

“I told him, running for president isn’t the same as going on a book tour. You’re about to have your Christopher Columbus experience. You’re about to discover America.”

And he defined the leadership group of modern-day black America as “mediocre.” He said he appreciated the contributions of leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but said that they need to move on and bemoaned the lack of a young, strong core of leaders to replace them.

“Jesse is running out of gas — he needs to acknowledge that,” he said.

dbarbari@projo.com