Race Matters by Cornel West

First published: 1993

Type of work: Essays/cultural criticism

Form and Content

Cornel West seeks in Race Matters to revitalize the United States’ discussion of race. That discussion has become mired in a polarized debate between liberals and conservatives that fails to examine the complexities of the issue. Through a series of eight essays, West creates a new discourse around race. Each essay follows the same structure: A problem is presented and analyzed, and a solution is offered. Three themes emerge throughout these essays: the power of market forces in shaping African American culture, the absence of African American leadership, and the challenge of Black Nationalism to black America. West argues that the first two factors have contributed to the collapse of institutions that create community among African Americans, while the third factor threatens potential solutions to that collapse by isolating the African American community.

Three of the book’s essays focus on market forces and their effects on black America. In the first, West argues that “nihilism,” by which he means living with a sense of hopelessness, threatens the survival of the African American community. This nihilism was avoided in the past, because society’s institutions were able to provide community connections. However, these institutions have been threatened by market forces that encourage individuals to seek personal pleasure at the expense of love and service to others. In contrast, West calls for a “politics of conversion” guided by a “love ethic” to generate feelings of self-love and agency among African Americans.

In the second essay, West claims a new black conservatism has emerged in the United States as a result of market forces. The emphasis placed on individualism by conservatives and neoconservatives such as Glenn Loury leads them to conclude that individual behaviors have led to a moral breakdown of American society. While West acknowledges the effects of these behaviors, he charges that conservatives ignore the power of market forces to stimulate behavior. While conservatives conclude that eliminating welfare will end American society’s moral breakdown, West concludes the opposite: Maintaining welfare programs is essential, even though they will not prevent cultural decay.

His concern with market forces also leads West to write an essay defending affirmative action programs by arguing that progressives have always advocated for redistribution of wealth. Race-based affirmative action was the best compromise that could be struck to prevent discrimination against women and racial minorities, but it was a reactive measure. It could not bring about such positive goods as an end to poverty or full equality between the races or the sexes.

Two essays in Race Matters center on the role of African American leadership in the contemporary African American community. The first essay provides West’s analysis of the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill controversy, sparked when Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. He argues that “racial reasoning” led African American leaders into debates about the racial authenticity of Thomas and Hill and created pressure on them to “close ranks” and subordinate the interests of one part of the African American community (Hill and other women) to the competing interest of maintaining solidarity. West argues that “moral reasoning” rather than racial reasoning should guide African American leaders. He sees this as a “prophetic” approach that measures issues by an ethical standard of black self-love.

In the second essay on African American leadership, West argues that the recent expansion of the African American middle class has led to a decline in collective consciousness and in moral commitment to the larger group beyond individuals and families. Without such a collective moral identity, however, leadership cannot emerge, and contemporary leaders thus lack the authentic anger and genuine humility that earlier leaders possessed. This lack of national African American political or intellectual leadership led to the nihilism outlined in the book’s first essay and created a vacuum that Black Nationalism was able to occupy, creating feelings of cynicism among African Americans and discouraging local leaders from emerging as well. West concludes by arguing that “new models” of leadership are needed.

Three essays complete the book by focusing on issues related to African American identity. The first discusses African American-Jewish relations, arguing that black anti-Semitism threatens to sacrifice the moral credibility of struggles against racism. The second essay discusses black sexuality, referring to societal changes that have brought white and black people together around such cultural elements as music and sports heroes but have done little to demythologize the “taboo” subject of black sexuality.

West concludes with an essay on Malcolm X, arguing that he sought a “psychic conversion” for African Americans. West argues that those who, like Malcolm X, reject black religion and music as misdirections of black rage away from white racism miss the “hybrid” nature of each. This hybridity has the potential to forge important links between African Americans and whites. West employs the metaphor of jazz to argue that individual African American contributions to religion or music can coexist in creative tension with other elements of the hybrid.

Critical Context

The publication of Race Matters sparked the discussion West wished to begin, and for that reason alone the book is an important contribution to the literature on race. Two of West’s earlier publications, Prophecy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (1982) and Prophetic Fragments (1988), examine the intersection between religious tradition, Marxism, and race. West followed these works with The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989), which analyzed philosophical pragmatism as it relates to race. Shortly afterward, his Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991)—coauthored with Bell Hooks—called on intellectuals to engage in political life and address the plight of the African American commuity.

While Race Matters avoids direct reference to religious traditions, as well as to Marxism, one can hear echoes of both in West’s discussion of African American communities and the “progressive” agenda he recommends. Many works have followed Race Matters, including Keeping Faith (1993), which uses “prophetic criticism” to examine issues of power and race and further explores the philosophical issues raised in Race Matters. Cornel West may be that rarest of species, a “celebrity” intellectual, but the former term should not, and does not, diminish the latter.

Bibliography

Allan, Kenneth. Contemporary Social and Sociological Theory: Visualizing Social Worlds. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2006. This analysis of sixteen seminal social theorists places West alongside such other thinkers as Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Pierre Bourdieu.

Delaney, Paul. “An Optimist Despite the Evidence.” The New York Times Book Review, May 16, 1993, p. 11. Notes the optimism of West’s work, even as that work chronicles the problems West describes. Concludes with West that leadership is a key to the future of African Americans.

Hentoff, Nat. “Preaching in the Streets and in the Academy.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 1 (Autumn, 1993): 96-98. A largely positive summary of West’s position with emphasis on the success of the book in raising issues of race. Ends with a reflection on the role of the press in keeping silent on race.

Kulman, Linda. Review of Race Matters, by Cornel West. The New Leader 76, no. 12 (October, 1993): 18-19. Notes the intersection of West’s religion with the argument in Race Matters and draws positive conclusions about the moral message the book is designed to deliver.

Loury, Glenn. “Race Matters.” The Wilson Quarterly 17, no. 3 (Summer, 1993): 80-83. Provides a neoconservative reply to the argument of West’s book. Loury’s defense of capitalist ideology and critique of West’s progressive policy agenda is worthy of attention.

Pinsker, Sanford. “What’s Love, and Candor, Got to Do with It?” Virginia Quarterly Review 70, no. 1 (Winter, 1994): 174-181. Calls Race Matters an “extraordinary” book and praises West’s intellectual powers, humanism, and analysis of the market forces that shape contemporary African American culture.

Puddington, Arch. Review of Race Matters, by Cornel West. Commentary 96, no. 2 (August, 1993): 62-65. Strongly critical review, especially on issues relating to black conservatives and African American-Jewish relations. Puddington claims West’s observations on black conservatives are driven by leftist politics and that his conclusions on African American-Jewish relations are based on errors.