Race Matters. - book reviews

Black Enterprise, July, 1993 by Tonya Bolden

In his introduction to Race Matters, Cornel West, director of Princeton University's Afro-American Studies program and professor of religion, contends that "What happened in Los Angeles in April of 1992 was neither a race riot nor a class rebellion," but rather "an expression of utter fragmentation by a powerless citizenry that includes not just the poor but all of us." It is this fragmentation - rooted, he believes, in spiritual bankruptcy - that West addresses in eight selections, which make up Race Matters. The pieces, most previously published in various places, cover a range of topics including African-American political conservatism, affirmative action, black/Jewish relations, black sexuality, nihilism in black America and other matters of race.

"Nihilism in Black America," stands out as the most rousing piece and the most demanding. In it West exhorts us to first acknowledge "the monumental eclipse of hope, the unprecedented collapse of meaning, . . . the incredible disregard for human (especially black) life and property in much of black America" and then to combat it with what he embraces as the most potent weapon of all: love - of self and others.

For those preoccupied with status and means, the most angry-making and condemning essay will be "The Crisis of Black Leadership." Here, West mourns what he sees as the black middle class' virtual abandonment of the resistance ethic and its dissoluton into decadence.

Race Matters may be a slim book, but it's not puny. Although most of the pieces by themselves are long enough to intrigue but too short to really satisfy, collectively they make for a memorable and moving call to repentance. Repentance not only from such infamies as greed, hatred and materialism but also from faith in both traditional liberal and conservative proposals for change, and in politics usually devoid of moral imperatives.