He hit the nail on the head, several times. By explaining the nihilistic threat to the existence of the Black Community, he finally gave me words for those feelings of despair that I condemned so often as I was growing up (at the same time as I cursed my parents and myself for having too-light skin): that hopelessness and the constant complaints about the Salvadorean boat-people coming over and taking our jobs, about them not listening to Dad just because he was Black, about having two strikes against us as Black Women, and about how lucky I was to be light-skinned because I would get more job, except that it doesn't always work that way. And my own desperate attempts to make the system work, as the Lt. Col. used to say, but I found that outside of Jr. ROTC, that didn't generally work, either. And now I have the words and the analysis to understand why.
Thank you, Cornel West.
BUT,
I do have to disagree mildly with his statements that there was never much cooperation between Black folks and Jewish folks. Please see my book (ok, yes, it is a short book but a book-sized book, nonetheless) on the subject, with examples, of Black-Jewish cooperation in DC both before and during the 60s: Stayed on Freedom's Call: Cooperation Between Jewish And African-American Communities In Washington, DC

It's so glaringly obvious that Cornel West is the leader fit for this current moment in history, but who will nonetheless be drowned out by a movement that is nauseatingly self indulgent as well as oriented and managed by an entrenched elite media class and their bourgeois lap dogs (ie. mostly white women), who will co-opt racial politics for their benefit, and who divest it of any real meaning and certainly of any power it may have to induce material change.

Although I think Dr. West is an absolute mensch, I wasn't completely blown away by the book, but I think the diagnoses and critiques he offers are perennial truths. I have been interested in reading him for several years now (ever since I read Malcom X's biography) because I think his background as well as his ideological and philosophical commitments are really fascinating, and most importantly, principled.

This is a slim volume of essays, some lackluster in the sense that they deal with seemingly peripheral issues pertinent to blacks in America (On Black-Jewish relations), while others offer incisively powerful conclusions about the rampant spiritual and material destitution in Black America (Nihilism in Black America). Dr. West provides his most important critique by vilifying the reigning market logic and mass culture that invades every niche and crevice of human life, but which is most acutely devastating to the poor, and which ultimately has a fragmentary effect on any and all social, familial cultural, and intersubjective relations. It is capital creating broken human beings, which is capital's teleological destiny, its structural pretension.

It should be pointed out that offering a critique of the deleterious effects of mass culture, that overwhelming, seemingly omnipotent force which generates a deeply ingrained nihilism, that he calls "a disease of the soul" and framing it as something that is spiritually devastating, provides a metaphysical diagnosis whose substance far surpasses any of the contemporary critiques being offered. Media-generated slogans (eg. white privilege etc.) adopted by middle/upper class whites are instruments to psychosocially bludgeon anyone who questions the current discourse or who refutes its parameters altogether. In summation, this is not a movement for blacks so much as it's a vanity project for whites who really relish the idea of eschewing good faith interaction in the name of racial justice. This alone will absorb all the latent discontent within the system.

Cornel West dissects difficult subjects and distills them to their essence in clean prose, illuminating but not simplifying the issues. A quick, provocative read.

Cornel West is a radical. There can be no doubt of that. He has been outspoken during Occupy Wall Street gatherings, Black Lives Matter protests, and far-left conventions. He has called President Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface" and has been almost vociferously critical of the Bush administration and American conservatism. Many of his positions I take much more moderate positions on and many of them I flat out disagree with him on. However, when I think about Cornel West, I think of him less in the positions that he takes and more on why he thinks them. His justification, his commitment to human betterment, the life of the mind, truth, and God, are rock-solid. He is a man of the utmost intellectual honesty and of a true commitment to justice and truth in the face of oppression. That energy is committed in this book to the highest degree.

West points out that, yes, race still matters. He also criticizes both the liberal and conservative perspectives on how to deal with this problem. Liberals are more than happy to change political and economic institutions to fix the racial problems of America but are unwilling (mostly by virtue of political correctness) to address the nihilism which has flooded the black community and to promote strong values as well as institutional reform in the black community. Conservatives on the other hand speak always of values but never point out institutional flaws. Conservatives are willing to reduce the entire racial problem in America down to personal responsibility and individual integrity. While both of these things are important, conservatives fail to take into account the systemic racism in our institutions and the more private, veiled racism hidden in the American psyche as hindrances to black progress. It is here, in my mind, that West sets out a new trajectory to deal with the race problem in America beyond the liberal and conservative perspectives. He takes up a position that promotes strong values within the African-American community that conservatives value but that also keeps in mind the historical and political implications that hundreds upon hundreds of years of white supremacy have reeked on the black community. His solution is a complex one, but again, the problem of race in America is a complex one. Those who wish to boil it down to one or two axioms are missing many facets of the issue. For West and to a large extent, for myself, the racial problem in America boils down to a complex mixture of postmodern values, racism both institutional and individual, poverty, lack of self-love, and a general lack of good philosophical discourse and constructive political leadership on racial issues.

I do disagree with West on a number of subjects. West is a Democratic Socialist and a radical one at that. I am more of a soft libertarian on political and economic issues. Therefore, his solutions of re-distribution of wealth, a radical extension of affirmative action, and expansion of a Socialist state are not overwhelmingly appealing to me. However, even in our disagreements, we have a lot of common ground. I agree with him that consumerist ethos has had a negative effect on the spirituality of communities of color (hey, wasn't slavery a product of a market unguided by morality?), I agree with him that the conservative ethos fails the African-American community in many ways: by claiming that only individual efforts can improve the African-American predicament, we ignore the hand-in-hand relationship that values have with institutions., and finally, I agree with him that a general lack of philosophical thinking on race leads to blind, arbitrary ideas on the African-American experience: this is particularly embodied within black supremacist or separatist ideologies or within black conservatism as well, as when Ben Carson claimed dubiously that "President Obama wasn't raised in a black home". (Ironic that Carson would cite race so viciously when he criticized the President for making race an issue again in America). So in summation, even in our large disagreements, West and I share many profound ideas on the betterment of the racial problem here in America.

In short, West here brings a strong intellectual argument to the table: he writes well on the subjects of black sexuality, Malcolm X and black rage, black-Jewish anger, and issues of black leadership and political conviction. I may not agree with him on everything, but like his intellectual opposite but personal friend Robert P. George, I find him an intellectually honest and understanding man who writes in a prophetic manner on race in America. If all of us thought in the tradition of Cornel West, we would have a much better society.

25 years later it is disheartening to realize that this book is still completely relevant. The current West/Coates feud is explained pretty well, when you realize West is pushing a much more progressive and radical agenda than Coates. Also, West takes a much broader and more accurate approach to issues of race, seeing them as a subset of larger economic and political issues. Economic inequality and corporate power only enable the continued racism and bridging the gap on these larger issues with others equally situated (like most of us) is the only way anything will be different when the book is reissued for its 50th anniversary.

On a side note: West's analysis on the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas debacle is the best I've ever read and it explains much of what happened, even though I lived through all those debates as a baby lawyer.

The thing that struck me the most, considering that this is the "updated republication" of a book published 25 years ago, that there has been no significant improvement, at least in the United States. As far as Italy is concerned, on the other hand, we can clearly speak of a clear deterioration.

La cosa che piú mi ha colpito, considerato che questa é la "ripubblicazione aggiornata" di un libro uscito 25 anni fa, che non ci sono stati miglioramenti significativi, quanto meno negli Stati Uniti. Per quanto riguarda l'Italia invece, possiamo parlare chiaramente di un peggioramento evidente.

"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 are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation-- and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell."
-Cornel West, Princeton, January 1994.

A quarter century later: Ditto?

Some parts didn't age well/are a bit dated, but overall the points West discusses are still at the forefront, 17 years later. Sadly.

There were some amazing and incredible insights about the content of a person's character and the voice of Dr. Cornel West of the past decade was brought to life through this entire narrative. The chapter that was most prevalent was the one on public prejudices and private prejudices and recognizing the differences between how people behave toward each other base on Race.

Reading Dr. Cornel West's book while in a state that has a lower literacy rate than most of the United States was a valiant effort made to reconvene with other readers for the worth of gaining the eventual friendships of the Avid Readers' of our times, especially humans who are a percentage of African-American Descent and who esteem active pride of their African heritage.

Race Matters is brief. So brief that it will probably take you just an hour or two to get through it. But those 2 hours crackle with incisive commentary on a racist nation that, sad to say, really hasn't changed much in the 27 years since this book was published. West defines the racism of America and explores how Democrats and Republicans view this issue and how they propose to go about solving it. He uses specific examples of the Rodney King riots, the appointment of supreme court judge Clarence Thomas, black sexuality, and other flash points to discuss and dissect race matters. He has the fire of Malcolm X in his voice, which made it enjoyable for me, and I like how he points out that there is not one silver bullet approach to solve race matters (Democrats believe more social programs alone will be enough to solve racism. Republicans believe that hard work and a refusal to see oneself as a victim will solve it. Both are nowhere close to the answer).

I do think the current BLM protests are giving Cornel West some hope that the tide will turn; a hope he did not seem to have back in 1993. So this book is worth a read just to see where we have been in regards to race matters, and how much further we have yet to go.

One had two thesis advisors for the M.Div. program at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Mine were Ann Ulanov, representing the Psych Dept., and Cornel West, for Philosophy. Since my thesis was about Immanuel Kant's influence on C.G. Jung, and since my interest in the former had grown while my interest in the latter had diminished, its emphasis was on Transcendental Idealism and my primary concern was in truly understanding Kant. Thus I attended Cornel's class on continental philosophy and employed him as my primary advisor. We hit it off.

At the time I had no idea that Cornel was heading the DSA's division on racial matters. We didn't discuss politics--nor, for that matter, religion. In those days he spoke and acted like a Princeton man, not having yet adopted the avuncular southern black preacher style he employs today. This book, a collection of essays written subsequent to our acquaintanceship, points, however, in that direction.

I read this mostly as an homage to Cornel. His work, particularly his work on radio, in Ferguson and in the two Sanders campaigns, has retained my attention over the years and this work has sat on the bookshelf, unread, for over twenty years. It's quite dated, though having lived through the events he discusses, events like the Clarence Thomas hearings, I appreciated the reminders and Cornel's perspectives. So, too, I appreciate, and recommend consideration of, his efforts herein to bridge the gaps between black and white, conservative and liberal.

Excellent book. I find it amazing how West was able to detail and explain intersectionality before it became vernacular. The word is never mentioned in the book, yet West understood that it was a fundamental necessity for a more civilized American society. Brilliant ideas, especially the one on black sexuality, and fantastically written, great jazz analogies.