“My view is still very much the same as it was in 1982 [when he published “Prophesy Deliverance!” championing “an Afro-American revolutionary Christianity”],” says West. But now “I think . . . there is a sense among . . . Americans that they’re living in a decaying civilization . . . And in such a moment they’re willing to listen to anybody.”
In truth, West has written a book quite different from his early works. “Prophesy Deliverance!” was a Roman candle of erudition wrapped in religious imagery and Marxist jargon. It preached to the choir of fellow travelers and offered such insights as, “The present dilemma of the Afro-American liberation movement is to find its way between the Scylla of bourgeois liberalism and the Charybdis of right-wing Marxism.” With its forays into literature, history and (sometimes obscure) byways of philosophy, it screamed its intention to be taken seriously.
After several books, West can afford to lower his voice. With “Race Matters” be is consciously reaching for a broader audience and has adopted a more soothing tone-one he fears that a public grown weary of divisive racial rhetoric may, in part, misunderstand, and perhaps willfully so. “I’m filled with as much rage as the black nationalist brothers, but my message of multiracial coalitions, and . . . love in action in terms of the struggle . . . is more accessible and amenable to a mainstream audience.” In listening to those comforting notes, he believes, some of his audience may have tuned out his more discordant themes, as if to say, “Oh. We’ve got an amenable brother on our hands.”
Yet if amenable is taken to mean subject to easy manipulation, this wisecracking wise man is anything but. For though his rhetoric may be toned down, his message remains harsh, uncompromising and unconventional. Part of that message is that the values of Christianity and socialism can be reconciled. West spent considerable effort doing so in his 1991 book, “The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought.” He rejected conventional Marxism after acknowledging that some rich black church traditions–embracing “depths of despair, layers of dread . . . and ungrounded leaps of faith”-were “alien” to Marxists. He, instead, endorsed a socialism compatible with Christian thought that “highlights and enhances the plight of the loveless, luckless, landless.” “Race Matters” is devoted less to such doctrinal matchmaking than to kicking butt and naming names.
West skewers an array of villains for helping to perpetuate a “profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair” in much of black America. He attacks self-deluded black conservatives, status-seeking black leaders and white racism. He sees salvation in a renewal of love, empathy and compassion, in a radical redistribution of power and wealth-and in facing difficult truths. He slams black anti-Semites, for instance, but pointedly suggests that “when a neo-Nazi like David Duke can win 55 percent of the white vote. . .in Louisiana, it may seem misguided to highlight anti-Semitic behavior of black people.”
Still, for all its provocative thoughts, “Race Matters” is short on practical solutions. Advocating redistribution, tolerance, love, self-acceptance and faith is not the same as putting forth a serious program for social revolution. But then West-a Baptist preacher’s grandson who counts the Black Panthers and Malcolm X among his early influences-never promised to solve the world’s problems with one book. He instead hopes the slender volume will “expand and extend the public conversation about the crisis in American society,” a crisis he believes is rooted not only in “racial reasoning” but in male supremacy, economic inequality and homophobia.
Looking ahead:His really big book is already taking shape in his mind. It would be “a philosophical work that would probe what it means to be human in black skin in the richest and most democratic nation in the world and yet a nation . . . fundamentally shaped by the doctrine of white supremacy.”
For the time being, however, West-an elegant prophet with attitude and a taste for fancy cars and flashy cuff links–is enjoying his status as the hot black intellectual of the moment. And he is handling it with grace and humor. He merrily compares a debate with author Shelby Steele to Joe Frazier taking on a slow-moving George Foreman and notes that he at least had the decency not to talk about Steele’s “mama.” When pressed to explain his advice about “living against the grain,” West guilelessly sidesteps the trap. What he really advocates is to “struggle against the grain.” Living against it “would require from me that I . . . give up my material possessions.” Coming from West, the statement is totally consistent-if not exactly with socialist orthodoxy, at least with his faith in his ability to resolve the seeming contradiction.
