If I could give this book six stars I would! While reading it, I was washed with a wave of mixed emotions. On one hand, I found myself in complete admiration of Cornel West's brilliance and eloquence in laying bare the issues of race, sex, class, and capital in America. I found it amazing that his arguments still hold up 28 years after the book was written. On the other hand, reading it 28 years after it was written and having it still be so relevant was demoralizing. Despite this, West's hopefulness for humanity is contagious, and his words have a certain palpability which is phenomenal. He targets issues such as the nihilism in Black America with what I believe is exceptional accuracy, presenting a clear and cogent analysis of its occurrence. He challenges the ideas of liberal and conservative America, highlighting their failures in appropriately addressing the Black experience and ultimately offers sound solutions which should be considered moving forward. I highly recommend this read!

"Race is the most explosive issue in American life precisely because it forces us to confront the tragic facts of poverty and paranoia, despair and distrust."

Cornel West's Race matters was published twenty-seven years ago and yet it is still relevant today. Unfortunately, not much has changed in those almost three decades. 

Mr. West digs deep into the American psyche and our culture of white supremacy, seeking ways to change. He points out the problems of both the Right and the Left when it comes to upholding systemic racism. 

Most women I've read who write about race issues embrace intersectionality, but I haven't read many men who do. Cornel West, however, consistently reminds us that in any discussion of race issues, we have to see the unique ways in which racism affects different people, such as Black women and those in the LGBQT+ community. (The same is true of feminism - we cannot get anywhere with equality for women if we do not address the specific challenges of Black women, Brown women, trans women, lesbian women, etc.)

Mr. West is a professor and his writing is at times dense and dry. Because of that, this is not the easiest book I've read on race studies - though it is important. I'm not sure I understood everything he was saying, and some parts of the book seem written to and for other Black men.

Does that mean that women or white people shouldn't read the book? No, absolutely not. It is a book for everyone intent on learning and doing the work of anti-racism. There is so much insight in this book and many topics of discussion. 

If you decide to read Race Matters, try to find the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition.  In it, he adds a new introduction. That was my favourite part, as Mr West relates the specificities of the book to current events. He affirms that "America has followed the route of all empires in human history: machismo might, insecure hysteria, and predictable hubris. Like all empires, the American Empire has been unaccountable to its victims."

Trump is both a symptom and a symbol of the meltdown of America. Not the cause. We liberals like to think he is an aberration. He is not. He is "as American as apple pie".

Until and unless we do the hard work of dismantling systemic racism in this country, America will further decline. It's up to liberals to try to fix it because the Conservatives would rather continue laying the blame on the shoulders of people of color rather than where it belongs -- on white Americans. 

As Mr. West asserts, "To engage in a serious discussion of race in America, we must begin not with the problems of black people but with the flaws of American society".

This discussion is long overdue.

The book Race Matters by Dr Cornel West an inside look in the African American World and the issues that blacks have had to face over the years through police brutality hate crimes and racial identity. The book discusses the Rodney king incident that was an example of police brutality and discrimination against African American Men and Women. I would highly recommend this book to all African Americans who may feel that color doesn't matter or have never been through a racial discrimination. The book opens eyes to blacks to let African Americans know that even many years later race still matters in society.

This book may get more attention in the coming year as Cornel West has just recently announced that he is running for US President as the Green party candidate. This book originated in the early 1990s. I am not in a position based on my knowledge and experience to know whether the thoughts and contents of this book are still as relevant as they were nearly 35 years ago. Certainly the times have changed.

This is not an easy book to listen to. Cornel West is an intellectual, and he packs a lot into his words. He has also written quite a few books, although I believe this is the first and only one that I have ever experienced.

For three years, I worked as the grantwriter and public affairs officer for the AAS-C.org, an organization supporting North Carolinians living with HIV/AIDS. My great friend and colleague, who is very active in her sorority (the Delta's), and I used to have great philosophical discussions--in our line of work, it was necessary to try and learn as much about people of all different walks of life. The more we learned and could understand, the better we were able to serve the community. So we would read biographies and essays and a myriad of material to feed our interests. Last year in May, we read Cornelius West's Race Matters (www.amazon.com/Race-Matters-Cornel-We...) in tandem with Ted Nugent's Manifesto (www.amazon.com/Ted-White-Blue-Nugent-...). It seemed like an interesting dichotomy to explore ... and boy, was it.

Talk about a huge gamut of information. I preferred West's essay format to Nugent's, but found that some points in each book resonated with me, while others were off-putting--a fact that both Chermaine and I found to be true for both titles. I found West's observations on Malcom X's legacy and the crisis of black leadership to be especially interesting, and appreciate his efforts to present solutions alongside his criticisms. Nugent, on the other hand, is unapolegetic in his political and social views ... his opinions are vastly different than my own, but there's something to be said about a person who just lays it out there like that, consequences be damned. If I had the opportunity to meet one of the two, I think I'd go with West.

Finished reading this as the George Floyd murder and protests are unfolding…

Preamble:
--The US has the most nuanced propaganda (Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies). How else can the richest and most well-armed empire in human history convince enough people of its “freedoms”, while even at home it literally has the highest incarceration rate/highest prison population (2+ million) and no universal healthcare?
--Freedom for capital, while the surplus population are free to rot... It’s easier to look away with the barriers of race (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness), class (The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap), and historical amnesia (A People's History of the United States).
--While my focus has been on the structures of political economy (where the abstractions of accumulation and dispossession obfuscate systemic power relations), I still try to read other perspectives so as not to rely on a rigid base/superstructure analysis…

The Good:
--For the “superstructure” of cultural analysis, I figured it was time to read West as I’ve followed his many diverse public outreach appearances.
--His chapter “Nihilism in Black America” made the point that “culture” is very much part of the structure, and Liberals (who focus on the structures of welfare reforms) have avoided this because they assume a “rational” selfish individual (thus missing the nihilism in need for social identity/meaning/self-worth) as well as avoiding Conservative’s narrow individualist values.

--A key theme is transcending the Liberal vs. Conservative trap (i.e. Liberals are not Left/radical). West uses this in “Demystifying Black Conservatism”, where he escapes the merry-go-round of Liberals vs. Conservatives by presenting the much more compelling radical structural critique of the failure of Black Liberalism:
a) Black Liberalism was based on the post-WWII Keynesian class-compromise that relied on economic growth for redistribution via welfare.
b) International competition (i.e. Germany/Japan, OPEC) stagnated US growth by the 70s; economic structural transformations to revitalize capitalist profits (deindustrialization and mechanization of Southern agriculture) expanded surplus labor (esp. black).
c) This economic unraveling of the Liberal class compromise combined with the mass consumerism of militarism/sexuality/individualism contributed to the moral breakdown of community.

--Other chapters: crisis in black leadership (need race-transcending), racial reasoning (i.e. black authenticity) vs. moral reasoning, Black-Jewish relations (need for moral credibility instead of ladder-climbing), black sexuality myths, and Malcolm X/Black rage (I found Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention useful to contextualize The Autobiography of Malcolm X).

Next Steps:
1) History of racial bribes:
--The unraveling of Black Liberalism outlined above is a brief snapshot of the US race/class relations, including a long history of divide-and-conquer to prevent mass revolts.
--This includes the creation of "whiteness" during slavery, dividing Populists unity to set up Jim Crow, Nixon's Southern Strategy which set up War on Drugs mass incarceration/dismantling welfare (esp. Reagan and Clinton): The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

2) Financing of racism:
--Systemic power profits from remaining hidden. Much like how much of capitalism's wealth was (and still is) built on violent plunder and trade in narcotics, Wall Street built its wealth on financing the Slave Trade (The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860).
--The wealth of crime is not something that time naturally heals. Wall Street remains embedded in systematic racism, from:
a) The history of segregation and later "redlining" (The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America), highlighted by black families prevented from home ownership (which was the foundation for building the US middle class as part of the New Deal's National Housing Act of 1934).
b) ...To recent predatory lending scams targeting later generations still trying to obtain home ownership ("liar loans", targeting "NINJA" - No Income No Job or Assets) leading to the 2008 Subprime Mortgage crisis (losing their homes, while liars bailed out and profited).
--Understand that the Democratic Party is just as beholden financially to Wall Street and systemic racism, despite the surface-level identity politics they play (which makes them more deceptive). It takes both parties to build systemic racism.

3) Global Context of Anti-racism:
--West mentions the Black Conservative support for US imperialist foreign policy is a reaction to “Un-American” Civil Rights/Black Power movement making connections with global struggles.
--Rebuilding the global context of resistance is crucial. When West talks about the nihilism of the oppressed, this speaks to the global colonies and indigenous in settler colonialism as well. Thus, challenges for self-determination resonate far and wide.
--This was the heights of MLK (connecting racism with US capitalism and militarism, protesting war on Vietnam) and Malcolm X’s internationalism. Of course, black communists (like Claudia Jones, Cyril Briggs, etc.) are further wiped from popular history. This is why the histories of revolts from the perspectives of slaves and the colonized are so crucial and rarely read...

--Vijay Prashad has been trying to make these Global South voices more accessible:
-Civil Rights movement with global decolonization: https://youtu.be/IfQ-zFaAOFk?t=40
-More on global decolonization: https://youtu.be/NZXh2Guebhg?t=106
-In-depth dive into global decolonization’s internationalism: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism
-Russian Revolution and global decolonization: Red Star Over the Third World

--Also:
-Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party
-The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution
-Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution
-Gerald Horne (who West also praises) has much in-depth research on slavery/anti-slavery’s global scope

I had to read this for a doctorate class. To sum it up, white liberals are at fault for treating blacks like kids and thinking they need white taxpayers to support them, conservative whites and blacks are at fault for expecting blacks to take on personal responsibility and get an education, not commit crime, don't get pregnant until married and other acts deemed to be "white" which makes the middle class and upper class blacks who do so Uncle Toms, and being black must be the center of a black person's existence even if it isn't. The fact that slavery once existed over 160 years ago and Jim Crow existed means permanent affirmative action. Oh goodness. Even the parts about black sexuality make no sense. West is the director of the black studies program at Princeton which essentially graduates black students with a useless major- but hey, that's the fault of whites too.

its almost 30 years old, but damn, this book really held up. this really gives perspective on how Dr.West has been here, saying the same damn thing, working to get people inspired, an enduring member of freedom movements, building beloved community... even when it lacked the present momentum. Many of the ideas contained here would have been more contested or challenging at the time of publishing. as someone fully on board with Dr. West's general deal, it was still really enjoyable, inspiring, affirming - the kind of reading that goes quickly and you keep catching yourself saying "yes, YES! exactly" outloud, and are left with feel a hopeful resonance after. it also presents a chance to just bask in gratitude not only for his commitment and work, but also that of the many people he cites or discusses (Malcom X, Bell Hooks, Martin Luther King, ...) If youve been feeling burnt out, bummed, and need a reminder of why the struggle against white supremacy and all forms of subjugation are worth it, recommending this book to you friend.

West is eloquent and insightful. This book is a fast read and it's essential if you're going to engage in race talk in America.

Race Matters, published originally in 1993, is a book of its time, but also greatly applicable to 2011. Cornel West writes a series of essays covering the topics that most affect African-Americans in American culture, such as identity, gender, despair, sexuality, black-Jewish relations, how the political left and right have attempted to bring repair and how they have fallen short, the effects both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X had on the black community and where the African-American community stands today.

There is argument that Race Matters is not a scholarly work. While this may be technically so, West’s treatment of these issues comes not only from his own experience as an African American who has been witness to the difficulties of living as a black man in a predominantly white society, but also is informed by his education as a theologian and as a professor at both Harvard and Princeton.

West covers issues that occupy the minds of both blacks and whites, but often are avoided; from the devastating long-term consequences of slavery, and America’s inadequate attempts from the political left and the right to correct inequities, to the effect white American culture has had on black identity and how crisis of identity has left many African-Americans vulnerable to the viciousness of corporate greed and a market-driven culture.

He writes,

“…most of us remain trapped in the narrow framework of the dominant liberal and conservative views of race in America, which with its worn-out vocabulary leaves us intellectually debilitated, morally disempowered, and personally depressed. The astonishing disappearance of the event (L.A. riots) from public dialogue is testimony to just how painful and distressing a serious engagement with race is. Our truncated public discussions of race suppress the best of who and what we are as a people because they fail to confront the complexity of the issue in a candid and critical manner. The predictable pitting of liberals against conservatives, Great Society Democrats against self-help Republicans, reinforces intellectual parochialism and political paralysis.” (pg. 2)

West, himself, believes unequivocally in the dignity and preciousness of all human life and does not dissolve into hate or rage against white culture to bring healing for African-Americans. In fact, while discussing Malcom X, he does bring up positive aspects of Malcom X’s impact and care for his people, but finds it “incomplete” and lacking in certain areas. He brings a coherent and easily readable analysis of how we got to where we are now in white-black race relations and gives a general prescription for both the white and black community of how to begin bringing repair.

It is clear that discussing these matters openly can feel like a virtual minefield for white people and for African-Americans can touch on pain that is generations old. I am grateful for Cornel West’s work in that he lovingly, but candidly, approaches this extremely difficult topic in a way that allows me as a white woman, to engage in this issue in a more informed and free manner in the future.

Cornel West gives a wonderful introduction to the complex topic of race in the United States. His skillful use of language weaves information into a comprehensible narrative, with every essay exploring another aspect of black opression. At each of the beginnings of his 8 (plus epilogue) chapters West selects beautiful quotes from other authors to introduce the essence of what he means to convey in the subsequent text - a method of juxtaposition that creates a certain dissonance or resonance that I find benefitial and to create a mental space that invites the reader to think around and with the text.
West's strong emphasis on democratic values at times seems scarcely argued. Despite his recognition of some of the oppressive structures inherent to modern Euro-American democractic values and its construction on a foundation of gender, race and class inequality (whilst claiming equal rights), he falls short in backing up his support for democracy. As a reader I would have liked to gain a better insight into what West understands democratic values to be and how he feels that these values could help contribute to an improvement in the fight for black (and feminist) voices.
In line with this I also have to admit confusion with the use of the term "black self-love" that is often referred to. Does West interpret this self-love as something collective, to be executed on a collective level or does he actually request blacks to transcend their individual self-hatred to counter white-hate with black-love?
Lastly, admitting my complete lack of competency in this domain, I would like to question West's negative evaluation of black leadership in chapter 2. Although, as far as I am aware black leadership did indeed gohrough a rough phase in the 80's, I wonder if measuring black leadership by means of old icons is adequate in a time that makes use of different forms of leadership on all levels of society. What I mean to say is that the individual leader West is asking for, may have been transformed into a different shape in regards to its new cultural context. This I say explicitly without clear knowledge of the structure of black movements around the time of genesis of "Race Matters". Yet, for me, it seems like West in this chapter, but also in some of the subsequent ones neglects the aspects of time and space and their constant reconstruction on a societal but also individual level. What strikes me as interesting is that contrasting to the problematic Johannes Fabian describes in his publication "Time and the Other" of understanding the us in the here and now and the Other in a time that lies in the past or the future and a space that lies outside our comfort zone, West seems to assume the opposite - a sort of inverted allochronism. The object (blacks) are placed in a different time, namely the past, granting the subject (whites) the place in the here and now. This evokes many thoughts in me, but mainly questions whether the investigation of allochronism and coevalness as proposed by Fabian can be challenged and re-discussed from a non-European, non-white perspective. Thus questioning the individualistic background of this assumption.
In total, this book gave me a wonderful introduction into the complexity of the subject matter. West is an author that manages to give voice to difficult topics, his usage of metaphors creates imagery that will have a long lasting effect on my understanding of race matters. Although being slightly confused with his interpretation of love, I would like to end with West's own words:
"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and the pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia and ecological abuse on our necks. (...) None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so"(taken from the epigraph)
I thus thank Cornel West for encouraging me to work harder on myself every day to contribute to a society that spreads love instead of racialized hate. I am ready to admit my privilege, faults and short comings and to move forward in the name of love.

Since Cornel West's book is considered a seminal work on race relations, I thought I'd give it a read given the historical period we now live in in 2018. West's recount of the problems African Americans faced in the 1990s following the Rodney King beatings still reasonates today. In the book, he emphasizes a few key points:

1. The market economy and the capitalist ethic weakens the ethic of care and love for others, and is a fundamental barrier to cohesive communities. The focus on hedonism and consumption is a threat to the ethic of care.

"This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience. Addictions and obsessions—centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings—constitute market moralities of various sorts. The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial “high” in body and mind."

"The growing gangsterization of America results in part from a market-driven racial reasoning that links the White House to the ghetto projects. In this sense, George Bush, David Duke, and many ganster rap artists speak the same language from different social locations—only racial reasoning can save us. Yet I hear a cloud of witnesses from afar—Sojourner Truth, Wendell Phillips, Emma Goldman, A. Phillip Randolph, Ella Baker, Myles Horton, Fannie Lou Hamer, Michael Harrington, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Tom Hayden, Harvey Milk, Robert Moses, Barbara Ehrenreich, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many anonymous others who championed the struggle for freedom and justice in a prophetic framework of moral reasoning."

2. It is important for blacks and other minorities to have a spiritual and moral revival that "puts a premium on courageous truth telling and exemplary action by individuals and communities."
3. The moral revival is important since the most pressing threat facing black America is a form of nihilism:

"The liberal/conservative discussion conceals the most basic issue now facing black America: the nihilistic threat to its very existence. This threat is not simply a matter of relative economic deprivation and political powerlessness—though economic well-being and political clout are requisites for meaningful black progress. It is primarily a question of speaking to the profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair so widespread in black America."

"Nihilism is to be understood here not as a philosophic doctrine that there are no rational grounds for legitimate standards or authority; it is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness."

"In fact, the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat—that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle."

"Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one’s soul. This turning is done through one’s own affirmation of one’s worth—an affirmation fueled by the concern of others. A love ethic must be at the center of a politics of conversion."

4. The lack of intellectual and courageous political leadership in black America today exacerbates these problems. West has specific criticisms about why figures like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan failed to live up to the legacy of Civil Rights-era leaders like Martin Luther King Jr.

"How do we account for the absence of the Frederick Douglasses, Sojourner Truths, Martin Luther King, Jrs., Malcolm Xs, and Fannie Lou Hamers in our time? Why hasn’t black America produced intellectuals of the caliber of W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Cooper, E. Franklin Frazier, Oliver Cox, and Ralph Ellison in the past few decades? A serious response to these perplexing questions requires subtle inquiry into the emergence of the new black middle class—its content and character, aspirations and anxieties, orientations and opportunities."

"The present-day black middle class is not simply different than its predecessors—it is more deficient and, to put it strongly, more decadent. For the most part, the dominant outlooks and lifestyles of today’s black middle class discourage the development of high quality political and intellectual leaders. Needless to say, this holds for the country as a whole. Yet much of what is bad about the United States, that which prevents the cultivation of quality leadership, is accentuated among black middle-class Americans."

5. Politically, white (and typically Republican) politicians are very adept at cynically exploiting the stereotypes black Americans face in order to create Catch-22 situations between blacks and other minorities or between black men and women that further their political machinations. He discusses in depth the context of Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings and the Anita Hill testimony:

"Bush’s choice of Thomas caught most black leaders off guard. Few had the courage to say publicly that this was an act of cynical tokenism concealed by outright lies about Thomas being the most qualified candidate regardless of race. Thomas had an undistinguished record as a student (mere graduation from Yale Law School does not qualify one for the Supreme Court); he left thirteen thousand age discrimination cases dying on the vine for lack of investigation in his turbulent eight years at the EEOC; and his performance during his short fifteen months as an appellate court judge was mediocre. The very fact that no black leader could utter publicly that a black appointee for the Supreme Court was unqualified shows how captive they are to white racist stereotypes about black intellectual talent."

"The point is also that their silence reveals that black leaders may entertain the possibility that the racist stereotype may be true. Hence their attempt to cover Thomas’s mediocrity with silence. Of course, some privately admit his mediocrity while pointing out the mediocrity of Justice Souter and other members of the Court—as if white mediocrity were a justification of black mediocrity."

"But if claims to black authenticity are political and ethical conceptions of the relation of black interests, individuals, and communities, then any attempt to confine black authenticity to black nationalist politics or black male interests warrants suspicion. For example, black leaders failed to highlight the problematic statements Clarence Thomas made about his sister, Emma Mae, regarding her experience with the welfare system. In front of a conservative audience in San Francisco, Thomas implied she was a welfare cheat dependent on state support. Yet, like most black women in American history, Emma Mae is a hard-working person. She was sensitive enough to take care of her sick aunt even though she was unable to work for a short period of time. After she left welfare, she worked two jobs—until 3:00 in the morning! Thomas’s statements reveal his own lack of integrity and character. But the failure of black leaders to highlight his statements discloses a conception of black authenticity confined to black male interests, individuals, and communities."

"Thomas claims black authenticity for self-promotion, to gain power and prestige. All his professional life he has championed individual achievement and race-free standards. Yet when it looked as though the Senate would not confirm his appointment to the Supreme Court, he played the racial card of black victimization and black solidarity at the expense of Anita Hill. Like his sister, Emma Mae, Anita Hill could be used and abused for his own self-interested conception of black authenticity and racial solidarity."

"Therefore, even the critiques of dominant paradigms in the Academy are academic ones; that is, they reposition viewpoints and figures within the context of professional politics inside the Academy rather than create linkages between struggles inside and outside of the Academy. In this way, the Academy feeds on critiques of its own paradigms. These critiques simultaneously legitimate the Academy (enhancing its self-image as a promoter of objective inquiry and relentless criticism) and empty out the more political and worldly substance of radical critiques."

"The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis."

6. Understanding sex is critical to the discussion, yet it is a difficult subject to discuss. But many of the racist undertones originate from attitudes about sex. Beauty being viewed through a white supremacist lens can dramatically alter attitudes.

"Everyone knows it is virtually impossible to talk candidly about race without talking about sex. Yet most social scientists who examine race relations do so with little or no reference to how sexual perceptions influence racial matters. My thesis is that black sexuality is a taboo subject in white and black America and that a candid dialogue about black sexuality between and within these communities is requisite for healthy race relations in America."

"Yet there is a “brazen” side—a side perceived long ago by black people. If black sexuality is a form of black power in which black agency and white passivity are interlinked, then are not black people simply acting out the very roles to which the racist myths of black sexuality confine them? For example, most black churches shunned the streets, clubs, and dance-halls in part because these black spaces seemed to confirm the very racist myths of black sexuality to be rejected. Only by being “respectable” black folk, they reasoned, would white America see their good works and shed its racist skin."

"Malcolm X’s notion of psychic conversion holds that black people must no longer view themselves through white lenses. He claims black people will never value themselves as long as they subscribe to a standard of valuation that devalues them. For example, Michael Jackson may rightly wish to be viewed as a person, not a color (neither black nor white), but his facial revisions reveal a self-measurement based on a white yardstick. Hence, despite the fact that he is one of the greatest entertainers who has ever lived, he still views himself, at least in part, through white aesthetic lenses that devalue some of his African characteristics."

7. The alternative must be centered an ethic of community, care, and love. West refers to a "prophetic moral framework" that must be adapted. However, while his criticisms are incisive, the alternative seems vague:

"A prophetic framework of moral reasoning would have liberated black leaders from the racial guilt of opposing a black man for the highest court in the land and of the feeling that one had to choose between a black woman and a black man. Like the Black Congressional Caucus (minus one?), black people could have simply opposed Thomas based on qualifications and principle."