BOOKS
143
Anti-Matters
RACE MATTERS. By Cornell West. Vintage Books.
$12.00
ONE
OF THE SILLIEST BOOKS
of the
1990S
is back in print, adorned with
a new preface. Cornell West's
Race Matters
does for
resentiment
what
the Harry Potter books have done for broomsticks. Millions of children
now imagine themselves flying over Quidditch fields properly mounted
on a Nimbus
2000,
but dozens of resentful writers have soared aloft on
Mr. West's Firebolt. The unfortunate trend in titles he initiated is worth
considering in its own right, but first things first.
Race Matters
argues-or perhaps
asserts
is a better word-a kind of
African-American exceptionalism. The new preface begins, "Black peo–
ple in the United States differ from all other modern peoples owing to
the unprecedented levels of unregulated and unrestrained violence
directed at them." Really? Is there a way to read this sentence that
excludes the history of Bosnians, Kosovars, Tutsis, and Cambodians, to
mention only a few of the contemporary peoples who have some expe–
rience of "unregulated and unrestrained violence." And the Jews?
Things do not improve beyond the first sentence, as Mr. West blandly
reels out one whopper after another. With regard to a democratic gov–
ernment's aim "to curb the use of arbitrary powers," he says, "the his–
tory of American democracy in regard to black people from
1776
to
1965
was a colossal failure." But Mr. West does not pause with this
breathtaking dismissal of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments to the Constitution. He is in a hurry to greet the "one gen–
eration" that has accomplished something significant, the generation
that has embarked on "a multicultural democracy," and forced dis–
crimination "to become more covert."
Alas, Mr. West finds that experiment only reveals deeper troubles.
"The legacy of white supremacy lingers," and even as the black middle–
class grows, "wealth inequality" and "unaccountable corporate power"
increase too. What is needed, he writes, is a "structural transformation"
of the type "best represented by the forces of Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton,
and Dolores Huerta."
But black exceptional ism remains central to Mr. West's vision. He
approves Stanley Crouch's view that "fifty years ago black communities
were the most civilized and humane in America," and laments that this
nurturing tradition has been blasted by "market forces." Nevertheless,
