I love Cornell West primarily because I admire his use of language. The difficulty with this book is that as it progresses the theme doesn't grow and become either more complex and encompassing or examined and revealed at it's most basic levels. Each chapter seems to me to be a rehash of the previous chapter.

However, the topic is so important and West's ability to structure an argument makes it an important if somewhat studied read.

The more I read on the issue of race in America, the more I realize my presuppositions are rooted solely in the Southern conservative Christian ethos and not in anything approaching reality. I've often wondered what I would have done if I was alive during the Civil Rights Movement; I now recognize the need to ask what I will do, as that Movement is far from being concluded.

I take issue with many of West's points in this book, but the overall thesis is irrefutably logical and West's superior intellect is apparent on every page. Having just finished David Brooks' latest book, The Road to Character, I was struck by how much alignment there is between the thesis' of these seemingly unrelated works.

This was Cornel West back before he was most famous for calling people who get paid to go on MSNBC and cape for Barack Obama house negroes. Even people who have been critical of his rhetoric for the past few years, who find his last several books to be hot garbage, admit this was on point (except maybe Leon Wieseltier). I read quasi-sequel Democracy Matters on an airplane back when it came out and liked it well enough as a 25-ish year-old kid, but I was a little bit on the young side when this came out back in 1994.

I was surprised to find that, aside from some of the more "topical" aspects, this holds up pretty well. Little, it seems has changed, in the past 20+ years... if it wasn't already clear from watching the news. When this came out, the LA Riots and the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings were still somewhat current/relevant. They might be unfamiliar to anyone who wasn't fortunate enough to be able to watch them unfold in real time. (Alas, the OJ trial was just kicking off when this hit shelves.) But what you realize reading this is that we live in a world where it's all LA Riots and Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings all the time. You could take this text and sub out those two things for any number of asinine debates currently being held on Twitter and release this as a new book.

Given West's track record as of late (to hear Michael Eric Dyson tell it, at least), he might actually consider that.

I first heard Cornel West on a JRE podcast about a year ago and enjoyed hearing him speak, however, this book was quite a disappointment. I was hoping for a book to give me more understanding and a feeling of connection. Instead, West used the “blame game” the entire time. While some points were very powerful, his views were a bit too opinionated for me with not much research. I really had to force myself to keep going to finish this book.

Cornel West has been a presence in American culture for as long as I can remember. I was one of the few in my friend group to recognize him on the Zion council in the Matrix sequels, but as I became interested in Black history at the end of college and throughout grad school he was always a presence at the edges of my reading, but never someone I engaged with directly.

I was in awe of Ta-Nehisi Coates talent and insight when he published "The Case for Reparations" and "Between the World and Me."(I may not be as in awe now?) I was fascinated by the article that West published calling Coates a neoliberal hack (I'm paraphrasing) and Michael Eric Dyson's response "The Ghost of Cornel West," which is one of the more thoughtful and even affectionate intellectual take downs I've ever read. I still have hadn't read West.

This book is dated. It's references points are very 90s. Like really identified with the 1990s, but it's also amazing. West's writing has that ecstatic prophetic tone that is so unique, at least to me. The essay on Malcolm X and Black Rage is excellent. I learned a lot. Regardless of what West may have become in the wake of Obama, Occupy, and Trump his classic texts should be read with enthusiasm and discussed with vigor. Recommended.

This was a book that I obtained after I had the privilege of listening to a presentation by Cornel West. He is a breathtaking speaker and writer. Although this book is an older one - it is essential for those who are taking a closer look at Race within the United States and how it continues to be a challenge for those who are discriminated against. This book was inspiring and engaging! In my opinion, a must read for older high school students/college students.

This book is quite emotionally challenging. West talks very honestly about race and its impact in the United States. Unfortunately, it is a truth that many are not wiling to hear. I greatly appreciated West's honesty, even when it made me uncomfortable. Although the entire book is quite powerful, i found myself particularly taken by the last chapter -- particularly the end of the last chapter -- and the epilogue.

Sabbath Book #6 for 2018.

For me, reading West's Race Matters a few decades after it was written was like dropping in on a conversation already in process and leaving before its conclusion. I didn't have a full sense of the context, and the conversation wasn't really directed to me. Still, watching good sense applied to deeply-felt tensions is a heartening experience.

West has a public image as a political purist and provocateur, a thinker willing to open public feuds with Obama and Ta-Nehisi Coates, but in this collection of essays from the early nineties, his voice reads as plainspoken, nonpartisan, and fair to those whose views differ from his own, ranging from black conservatives to Malcolm X.

As in many other popular-market books on race and justice, West states his ideas concisely rather than exploring them in depth, but his views here are resonant and compelling.

He sees oppression as a landscape that encompasses race, gender, and economics. From this perspective, his vision of empowerment, healing, and justice contains depth and power ahead of its time.

His refusal to accept contemporary limits on thinking about race in America yields the possibility for a greater sense of scope in approaching challenges that faced Americans in regard to race in the nineties. The landscape has changed, but most of what West has to say here is still counter-cultural and transcendent in 2018.

Cornel West is my hero. This book is an interesting read 15+ years after it was written. All the issues West addresses are still relevant today, but some in slightly different ways.

This book was West's wake-up call to America at the time, presented with a scholarly-bound-love that has become West's calling card.

The challenges and analysis presented are worthy of review now, to see where we've gone since then and where we may be going in terms of race-relations in America.

It is a good book and I'm glad that I read it. It brought to light many things I was unaware of, but is in this that I ask if it could be for more people. The book consists of 8 essays that do shed light some prominent matters in America, but I fear that the only reason I have enjoyed the revelations of this book is because I have set myself up with certain knowledge which allows me to more readily agree with its contents. This reason is twofold, I, like Cornel West, am a Leftist, the extent of which is not necessary for this place, and that I am aware and familiar with some of the more intellectual terminology that West uses in this book. So, it is for these reason that I questioned its merits beyond those already of a like mind.

In essence, my concerns are of the lackadaisical attitude of the benefit of the Freedom of Speech. In this I fear that something's just being available in the opposite opinion of some other that it would just have a benefit. So with regards to this book, while it covers Malcolm X, Black Conservatism, Affirmative Action and more, the ideas are presented, the impressions that give to us those ideas and opinions of them are not as strong. I'll admit that I am using the language of Hume to express this acquisition of new ideas and impression, but there needs to be a difference in kind to demonstrate how, if we wish to keep and uphold freedom of speech, we can understand these ideas without a preemptive poisoning of the challenging idea. Take this section from the book,

"Unfortunately, and ironically, [Glenn] Loury deploys the very rhetorical strategies he denounces in his liberal adversaries. For example, he casts black conservatives and neo-conservatives like himself as victims--victims whose own failings to gain a fair hearing and broad following in Afro-America he attributes to a black liberal conspiracy to discredit them in an ad hominem manner." (pg. 50)

The idea is present that the Black America contemporary to this book had a consciousness set as victims, and that these were the points that conservatives and neo-conservatives were denouncing as weakness while also partaking in them to bolster themselves. This chapter comes from an Essay that West published in 1987. That was 6 years before I was born. The reason I bring this up is simply to state that I can agree with what is said, but what is said is lacking in context. Yes he does mention Glenn Loury by name, as well as others like Thomas Sowell by name, but as a reader I had no frame of reference for these references. The only one I readily knew was Thomas Sowell, but even then I find Sowell's work abhorrent enough to know that when I am confronted with it that it is utter trash. But this comes to the point I'd like to make. In order to keep the book contemporary it would be beneficial not only to call out that they are wrong, but to explicitly elucidate why they are wrong. West does give the reader patterns to look for to which one can apply his critique, but unless you already agree with that critique I don't believe it will convince those that would side with Sowell. Is it too much to ask that a book incline those who read it challenge their preconception that the author is attacking? This doubles back to the point about context because there is no direct challenge or fight against those he mentions aside from the exposition of rhetorical devices.

Now, I mentioned earlier that this is a short book composed of Essays from Journals and such, so it could be said that what one truly needs after reading this book is to expose their self to other sources that cover each topic in greater detail. But this comes to a problem that I have with the book as a book, as a piece of higher thought processes. There are no sources or citations to speak of in the book. As the book is, I cannot hold that against it for the type of pieces it has written in it. It does not call for specifics about any sort of thing. The most specific it typically gets in mentioning the dates around Malcolm X. But what West focuses on is not the state of affairs, per se, in the book; rather, he focuses on the events and the power structures that enforce and surround them. When he speaks of Black Sexuality, it mentions the White Supremacy inherent in how America has raised Black people. When he writes of the demystification of black conservatives, he speaks of the liberal structuralist attitudes and the conservative motivation of moral values. I agree with West on both examples, but if I were to hand this to a conservative, then I doubt it would be life changing.

Basically, as I was reading this book I was constantly asking myself, "Who is this for?" "Who is this beneficial for?" I definitely found it useful as it has informed me of thoughts that I am honestly blind to. There is an aspect of Meta-Ignorance in these works that are beneficial. That is to say, the things I was ignorant of were unknown to me as being ignored. So, in that aspect this book is for people like me to raise that awareness so that the ignorance is no longer ignored. But this book in itself is not enough. I would say that this book is great for preliminary consciousness raising, but it needs to be followed by sources that have more depth. The chapter that interested me the most was the one on Black Conservatism. This is due to, for example, Ben Carson; I'm baffled at how he justifies his decisions while being Secretary of HUD. I won't, however, get the answer for that from this book, but this book does show me that the answer is out there. That isn't to say this book gave me nothing. No, this book gave me a map and a compass which to direct myself and others to more. And that is the big takeaway. I do not think that if a conservative person reads it that it will raise their consciousness; however, I do think that if a left minded individual, not a corporate liberal like the ones in congress, read it, then they will have access to tools to find the right ways to orient their life.

This book is very insightful and provides Dr. West's opinionated comentary on issues that were effecting the world just a couple years after Rodney King and the pandemonium that followed that event. It still has powerful relevance in todays world with the increase in coverage of fatal shootings by police of minorities and the poor. The only problem I had with it is that it was very short and I wanted Cornel to go more in depth about the issues that he speak of in the book, but besides that I give it a big ol' 10 out of 10.

Cornell continues to be one of the most brave, and poignant intellectual freedom fighters of our time. People from every background must read this and re-start discussions about morality, race, and the future of humanity in these two contexts. Cornell's discussion is intense and thought provoking, and is needed now more than ever as each generation becomes increasing disconnected the struggle for equality [that continues today:] and forget upon whose shoulders we stand today---Well written.