‘Race Matters’ Review: For White Liberals?

“Race Matters” is one of Cornel West’s most well-known and acclaimed books, published first in 1993 with numerous reprints and anniversary publications. It is a fairly accessible text, especially for those who are not entrenched nor familiar with politics in the U.S. For those who are, it relays politics and insight into 1990s political landscapes, but isn’t necessarily possessive of any outlandishly new, evergreen or refreshing takes.

In the 25th anniversary copy of “Race Matters,” West notes that he penned this book to reinvigorate race discussions in the 1990s, which is incredibly valuable at any time in the U.S. public domain. In 2024 the U.S. is a country that has banned the mention of words such as slavery, LGBTQ and other symbolic words of “discord.” Many Americans find it rude to raise the issue; bring race into a political discussion, and you are the racist. Matter of fact, you are the anti-Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. for judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

West’s work squarely discusses race and, to be specific, Blackness, in relation to American politics. His work also includes more interior debates about the Black middle class, the role of Black leadership, where are our leaders(?) and Black sexuality.

This short but passionately written collection of essays gives insight into debates in the 1990s, as well as ongoing and personal issues of institutionalized racism. The book encourages the reader to disengage from what he states as the biggest threat to progression, nihilism.

‘Race Matters’ Summary: Incisive and of the 90s

“Race Matters” is a seven-chapter collection of essays that examine the role of race in the dysfunctional reality of the American political and public system. Cornel West writes from the point of view of an analyst, as well as someone of grassroots solidarity and as a prophetic thinker. As a series of essays, the book reads fairly quickly, and the language is detailed but not cumbersome.

West begins “Race Matters” by diagnosing what he views as one of the greatest threats to meaningful progression, and that is nihilism. He defines nihilism within the context of Black people’s experiences in America: coping with a life of “horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most importantly) lovelessness.” Nihilism is posited as the thing that can collapse all meaning. West highlights needed efforts for Black people to realize themselves and continue to struggle for justice in a country created and sustained by anti-Black racism, slavery and genocide.

The first chapter addresses nihilism by laying out an argument, critiquing the two major camps of thought that try to address the progression of Black people. Those camps are liberal structuralists and conservative behaviorists.

The structuralists are people who advocate for more government, more targeted aid like that of the New Deal, specifically for Black folks, and overall investment in institutions: schools, hospitals, etc. This approach is informed by, as West says, a “subtle” analysis of slavery, Jim Crow and the legacy of discrimination. The behaviorists, on the other hand, are a camp that advocates for the upward mobility of Black folks through improved behavior and respectability politics: hard work and frugality in the realm of family building, employment and religion. West points out that both schools miss the biggest threat to Black people, and that is the nihilistic threat to Black people themselves. Neither of these schools accounts for the reality of *feeling* and *being* Black.

He calls his approach to meeting nihilism the politics of conversion. Conversion relates to the conversation of the soul, centering an ethic of love and care that goes beyond belonging or restorative justice. Cornel West’s proposal of a practiced love combats and addresses the inclination of meaninglessness formed by the atrocities committed against Black people. As such it differs from the behaviorist approach because it accounts for what has happened, and differs from the structuralists because it goes beyond simply the institution for restoration, but includes the feelings and non-market or institutional realities of Black peoples’ lives.

“Race Matters” progresses as a series of popular and political conversations that seem more directed at other Black people. For example, West discusses the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill case to argue how Black women are used and abused in the face of Black patriarchy. He also addresses the pitfalls of the Black middle class in America and how the incorporation of more ‘diverse’ faces into the wheels of capitalism has not yielded great results, but further entrenched individualism and made politics of ambiguity and superficiality all the more prevalent.

West spends a significant amount of time discussing government, that being failures and successes of Black leadership as well as the need, in his eyes, for racial coalition building and stronger solidarity movements among Black people. West critiques Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign and asks where are the Fannie Lou Hammers and James Baldwins of these times? He suggests that strong Black leadership is failing due to nihilism, a growing middle-class liberal mindset of Black people that doesn’t firmly facilitate strong Black communities or institutions, and a growing censorship around issues of race, class, gender and sexuality that keep universities more and more insular and drive media markets to be more and more saturated with capitalism and sexual content.

West spends one chapter of “Race Matters” discussing Black and Jewish relations, where he gently critiques Israel, but spends a great deal of the chapter discussing how and why anti-semitism can be appealing to Black Americans as people who still live under conditions of indignity. Very little time is spent on the anti-Black racism perpetrated by white Americans, inclusive of white Jewish Americans, seeming to put more onus on Black communities to shift and change to build solidarity across ‘aisles.’ Overarchingly West focuses on building power and finding solidarity across targeted violence.

“Race Matters” ends with a surface-level critique of Malcolm X’s rage and encourages a politics of love and morality to inform a political ethic, and wage the Black struggle into a meaningful place, without ever really describing what that place is.

“Race Matters” doesn’t necessarily translate into the contemporary landscape, but it must be read within its own context. “Race Matters” importantly declared that racism and imperialism plagued America, and also didn’t shy away from issues within the Black community that undoubtedly persist.

However, some structural problems weakened this book. A great deal of the analysis Cornel West makes centers on pointing out the pitfalls of two opposing sets of thoughts on governance or a racial matter. After that analysis, he offers his insight, which is that the opposing schools of thought both lack a love and moral ethic, foreclosing any opportunity for people to truly see one another.

While a moral ethic and a practice of love that can combat nihilism can sound compelling, West doesn’t really identify a means of applying this strategy in this contemporary setting. Some specificity on his ideas of how a moral and love ethic would affect Black leadership in government could be illuminating.

Or should it be applied to white leadership? Who needs to practice it, who needs to be presented with conversion, and what facilitates that process? Is changing the hearts and minds of white people a viable goal and a good use of time? This is where the text and arguments fall short.

Additionally, the case studies he offers are the usual suspects, that being MLK and Fannie Lou Hammer, and a few other civil rights stalwarts, again leaving one to wonder what this kind of leadership (that is highly romanticized) looked like in the 1990s.

‘Race Matters’ Audience and Genre: 101s, Liberal-Leaning People and White Liberals

At first, one could imagine the audience to be Black Americans, as most chapters are concerned with issues inside our community. But, as the book progresses, it could be understood to be more directed to white people or voyeurs, given that whiteness is centered at varying times of “Race Matters.” One of the indictments of the George Floyd era was that American news organizations sought out Black talking heads that could translate the rage of the streets to ‘the public sphere,’ AKA a white, mostly conservative population. Chapters about Black sexuality concern themselves greatly with whiteness and how whiteness has viewed and undoubtedly mangled perceptions of Blackness, translating into intra-Black realities of desire and self-love.

Cornel West speaks mainly to the dichotomy of whiteness and Blackness, where issues of indigenous or immigrant populations are not in his analysis. Overarching, the “Race Matters” audience may be a beginning white liberal audience keen to understand some of the footing of Black issues in plain language.

Another audience for “Race Matters” could be university students, particularly those within the humanities of political science or race studies. “Race Matters” lays out in plain words some of the major contentions within the Black community and what struggles the Black community face in regard to justice and the future of the US.

Three Cs: Compelling, Clear, Concise

Editorial Note: We believe these three factors are important for evaluating general writing quality across every aspect of the book. Before you get into further analysis, here’s a quick breakdown to clarify how we’re using these words:

• Compelling: Does the author consistently write in a way that would make most readers emotionally invested in the book’s content?
• Clear: Are most sentences and parts of the book easy enough to read and understand?
• Concise: Are there sections or many sentences that could be cut? Does the book have pacing problems?

Compelling: Well-Written and With a Desire for a Better Tomorrow

The writing of “Race Matters” is compelling in that it is not heavy with academic jargon, and Cornel West argues on a political level but compels readers to go beyond that, and to consider a moral, ethical, loving place that can facilitate conversion into a less deathly world. West cites great writers at the top of most chapters, including bell hooks, Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison. These references add a useful notion of conversation where West speaks to or cites contemporary or past greats. West also accurately and in plain words can capture the landscape he is speaking about; he diagnoses political parties, growing capitalism that continues to exploit the mind and labor of more and more people, or how conservative ideology hasn’t captured a majority of Black people, but it has indeed captured those who rise through ranks of power.

Cornel West speaks on a broad scale and without a particular focus on Black people. He spends a few sentences here and there discussing the impact of patriarchy on Black queer people and Black women. But what is missing from these few sentences is connecting these biases of homophobia and sexism to the larger and central issue of white supremacy. Sexism and homophobia in West’s analysis are very peripheral to the issues of power, class and social hierarchy in the Black community, which ironically are deeply intertwined with the social biases of homophobia and sexism. West’s analysis is mostly about race and class, leaving intersectionality as a bit of an afterthought.

Clear: Like You’re Having a Conversation

Perhaps one of the most notable aspects of “Race Matters” is Cornel West’s ability to make a clear argument from the beginning of the essay. He often identifies the subject at hand, the dominant ideology or ideologies surrounding the topic, and then introduces his ideological stance, which tends to come back to a politic of morality and compassion. The need to disengage from nihilism is evident across the social areas he addresses, including:

• the failures of Black conservatism as well as Black liberalism
• the loss of Black life to violence, greed, inward fighting and less inward building
• affirmative action and that status of it in the 1990s
• sexuality

What isn’t clear is any of West’s solutions to lovelessness or a definition of what ‘morality’ is.

“The fundamental crisis in black American is twofold: too much poverty and too little self-love.”

“What is at stake here is not simply black-Jewish relations, but, more importantly, the moral content of Jewish and black identities and of their political consequences.”

West writes about a need for love and soul and something to work against nihilism that seems to lead to consumerism, destitution, conservatism and liberalism, but it’s not too clear of an intervention, as much of a diagnosis.

Concise: Keeps the Page-Turning, But Too Brief in Some Chapters

This book is incredibly concise for all of its topics reached. The chapters are readable and digestible, making it an engaging and quick read. However, the brevity of certain chapters, like “Beyond Affirmative Action: Equality and Identity” work against the book’s strength.

Affirmative action, which has been widely dismantled in 2023, is a policy that has always seemed to have an ambiguous tone in the political American media. On conservative sides, it is admonished and resented. On liberal sides, it often is too flimsily endorsed and enforced, with the idea of restorative justice via the state largely benefitting white women in many arenas of educational and professional opportunities.

Prose Style: Half Sermon, Half Political Science

The prose style of “Race Matters” reads as guided, and the content doesn’t require too much prior engagement with political work. It is truly an accessible text that flatly lays out a number of issues that pertain to Black Americans. These issues also are entangled with whiteness and white power.

What often doesn’t work is the fairly shallow referencing of certain authors to springboard an argument. Most chapters begin with an excerpt or quote from a fellow Black author or artist. For example, in making an argument about the need for love and self-love, Cornel West cites Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” as an example of this. There is a surface-level engagement here that frames “Beloved” and Toni Morrison’s work solely about love.

Often Morrison wrote about all the other kinds of things Black people had to find and redefine in the face of the utmost cruelty. In “Beloved,” the main character is haunted by the spirit of her child, whom she killed to refuse her a life of slavery.

The call for morality in West’s writing often requires extreme sacrifice from everyone, especially Black women. There is not always a strong connection or integration of cited texts into West’s argument.

‘Race Matters’ Cultural and Political Significance: Timely at its Time

As mentioned in the introduction of this review, there is immense value in naming race and class issues explicitly as stratifying forces in the United States of America. The proliferation of racial capitalism, free market capitalist ambitions, deregulation and neoliberal policies all attempt to flatten out systems of inequality that ensure these economic and social systems are heralded as providing “choice.” Tracing back these systems of slavery, anti-Black racism, and exclusionary, conditional and fundamentally faulted ideas of ‘democracy, freedom, and choice’ is often a needed clear stance in the sea of weaponized identity politics.

“Race Matters” was published in 1993, two years following the extreme assault of Rodney King by LAPD, which was caught on camera and sold to a local LA television station. The televised footage of the extreme force (beat more than 50 times with batons, sustaining multiple facial fractures as well as a leg fracture) and verbal violence (slurs) led to multiple protests (described as riots) around the country around issues of racism and police brutality. By consequence of the United States being a settler colony founded on genocide and slavery, brutality enacted by those deemed as ‘other’ is a recurring reality. Race has always mattered and will continue to.

Cornel West’s interventions critique the more hushed realities within the Black community, namely class and how that stratification affects a sense of ‘unity.’

While West is indeed broad in his analysis, he applies power analysis that leads to homophobia and sexism often. It is often tacked onto other analyses, but there is a significance to the recognition of the internal diversity and internal homophobia and sexism that is persistent and can lead to the death, perhaps, most recently, the murder of O’Shea Sibley last year.

West discusses sexuality as an aspect of Black life where injustice also persists, although the major focus seems to be how power relations get perverted and upside down in the sexual arena when it comes to how white people can or cannot negotiate power.

“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.”

The cultural significance of “Race Matters” is located firmly in its accessibility and gesture toward a love ethic that includes the most marginalized within Black communities.

Critiquing the Critics: They’re Right; He Doesn’t Present Enough Evidence

Perhaps one of the greatest critiques Cornel West has received throughout his career, in regard to this kind of writing, has been a lack of references. West states, diagnoses, prophesizes and dubs issues as lacking morality or contributing to nihilism, without any measure or with substantive evidence. West’s critiques, particularly of Black middle-class class behaviors and the attitudes of white people toward Black sexuality (whatever that is), are notably unfounded and far-sweeping; both are culprits of the lack of progress.

An incredibly thorough review of West’s career, written by a former friend and peer, Michael Eric Dyson, can be found here. His critique evaluates West’s long career, and where their friendship bloomed and soured. In specific reference to “Race Matters,” many scholars agree that this book was a refreshingly clear take on a landscape overwhelmed by exclusionary and respectable lexicons. West writes with an energy that relays passion and translates even more when he is speaking.

However, I agree with critics when there is a discussion of how repetitive and exceedingly hollow West’s solutions are. He offers a great deal of critique of Jesse Jackson and his presidential campaign (as well as a very public disdain of Barack Obama nearly 15 years later) and continues to ask where good leadership is and faults its absence heavily upon an increasingly disenfranchised Black population. Further critiques about co-authoring every proceeding book, as well as murky at best definitions of ethics and prophets, will be expanded upon in our review of “Democracy Matters” and “Black Prophetic Fire.”

‘Race Matters’ Reviewer’s Personal Opinion: Worth It to Have an Informed Opinion on Cornel West and Understand Where He’s Come From

It’s perhaps unfair to say something as plain as “Race Matters” holds its merit and its test of time. “Race Matters,” when it was first published and in certain aspects even today, is a well-written piece of political text, and Cornel West cut through Black public intellectual ranks with clear writing about its purpose and stance.

However, as a reader of Black and African feminist thought, “Race Matters” felt incredibly surface-level, while being hailed as new or brilliant. If anything, West shallowly engaged the legacy of chattel slavery that informs the landscape of today, both within the Black community and the prevailing structures that mimic slavery today, such as mass incarceration or an incredibly racist child welfare system, like that of the one in New York.

One of my biggest qualms with this book was how much of an afterthought women and queer people were. West would spend paragraphs discussing the Black masses and Black leadership and add on how Black women or Black queer people have either held up these grandiose movements or been silenced in them. In Chapter 2, West spends a great deal of time analyzing the Clarence Thomas Case, illustrating how Black men routinely abuse Black women in the name of power and patriarchy. How readily and easily dismissed Black women are, based on numerous stereotypes.

In the next chapter when discussing “The Crisis of Black Leadership,” West points out that “well-to-do black parents no longer sent their children to Howard, Morehouse, and Fisk to ‘serve the race’ (though often for indirect self-serving ends), but rather Harvard, Yale, and Princeton ‘to get a high-paying job’ (for direct selfish reasons).” He goes on to say there is a weakening in tradition among Black people driven by selfishness and middle-classness. He also offers that this problem is difficult to fight or place blame, given the nature of American society that emphasizes individualism and ‘choice.’ However, these kinds of arguments not only put onus on Black people to upend American ideology as a minority in an incredibly violent and armed country, but demonstrate a complete lack of nuance to the women he cites as continuously dismissed in the Black community.

Oftentimes, Black women are put in positions of having to hold together a family or community through silence and abuse in the name of the community, which is why various races so brutally attacked Anita Hill. To pen an essay that diagnoses the crisis in Black leadership as a lack of willingness by parents, including mothers, to invest in communities where Black women and queer people are berated for existing let alone speaking out, is beyond tone-deaf.

In the era of 2020 lockdown lectures, one with Dr. Angela Davis and DreamDefenders came to mind while reading this chapter about West’s indictment of Black people’s own lack of commitment to our institutions. Dr. Davis said, with a chuckle in her voice, “I know there are calls for Black unity. And I would prefer to say Black radical unity. I would prefer some other adjective there because there are Black people I definitely do not want to unify with.” I perhaps shouldn’t have to say, but I don’t wish to build a community with people whose homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, classism, ableism and much more are so deeply lodged in their politics. The call to do just this or the judgment for not doing so demonstrates a lack of insight.

West’s arguments around morality and an anti-nihilistic future read like common sense to people on the left or generally persuadable, but to those outside of these thoughts, solid arguments or case studies are not widely made.

Lastly, West spends a great amount of time talking to and with white people, particularly around reinvigorating Black and Jewish coalition building (while lightly critiquing Israel). However, there is little mention of indigenous politics or leaders or race coalition solidarity, leading me to understand this book as a truly American book, unable to make solid critiques of imperialism or race dynamics that can connect with other contexts america so obviously borrowed and shared when it came to tactics of slavery, segregation, land expropriation and so on.

‘Race Matters’: Race Can Matter

“Race Matters,” as a read, is worth knowing. It’s quite easy to dismiss a figure like Cornel West, and perhaps it’s useful to read his work rather than solely consume the present. There is a respect and a well-readness one can gain from having some insight into his thoughts, his writings and his yearn for a big, boisterous transformation.

West’s care for Blackness — where it goes, where he will go, who are the great prophets, will justice ever come — is evident in his writing and career.

There are, however, several blind spots, as well as surface-level arguments, that weaken the book significantly. Most significantly, West thoroughly analyzes several political issues and when offering a solution of sorts, it is not clear or unpacked. West’s greatest point in Race Matters is fighting against nihilism or a kind of hopelessness that facilitates the extractive, violent power-dominated world we live in today. However, when suggesting that a sense of love, self-love, and stronger solidarity can solve problems without explaining what it could look like feels very lackluster.

Read our full “Democracy Matters” review. Then, read our in-depth “Black Prophetic Fire” review.

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‘Race Matters’ FAQs

Who wrote ‘Race Matters’?

“Race Matters” was written by philosopher and activist Cornel West.