MIAMI - Cornel West, one of the nation's most prominent black intellectuals, told black professionals yesterday that they must have the courage to keep fighting for members of their community still trapped by poverty and injustice.

Telling about 100 executives participating in the two-day Impact Marketing Retreat that "you can take off the masks you wear during the week," West said he recognized that many middle-class blacks are caught between "a calling and a career. We walk a tightrope."

Nevertheless, "I can't emphasize enough how important the work you do is in relation to keeping alive the struggle for freedom," said the Princeton University religion professor, the keynote speaker at the conference held at the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza in South Beach.

"There is a war declared on the young working class and poor, who are disproportionately black and brown," West said. "There's an inability to form a strong enough armor to make it through with a sense of dignity and integrity."

West said black professionals shouldn't rest on their laurels.

For the past 25 years, he said, black America has been beset with "conformity, cowardice and complacency. ... Where's the courage? What's fascinating to me is that in urban America these days, there is an unbelievable thirst for courageous leadership and thinking."