Race Matters, 25th Anniversary: With a New Introduction [Paperback]

The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the groundbreaking classic, with a new introduction

First published in 1993, on the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots,Race Mattersbecame a national best seller that has gone on to sell more than half a million copies. This classic treatise on race contains Dr. West’s most incisive essays on the issues relevant to black Americans, including the crisis in leadership in the Black community, Black conservatism, Black-Jewish relations, myths about Black sexuality, and the legacy of Malcolm X. The insights Dr. West brings to these complex problems remain relevant, provocative, creative, and compassionate.

In a new introduction for the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Dr. West argues that we are in the midst of a spiritual blackout characterized by imperial decline, racial animosity, and unchecked brutality and terror as seen in Baltimore, Ferguson, and Charlottesville. Calling for a moral and spiritual awakening, Dr. West finds hope in the collective and visionary resistance exemplified by the Movement for Black Lives, Standing Rock, and the Black freedom tradition.

Now more than ever,Race Mattersis an essential book for all Americans, helping us to build a genuine multiracial democracy in the new millennium.Preface 2001: Democracy Matters in Race Matters

Preface 1993

Race Matters in Twenty-First Century America

Introduction: Race Matters

1. Nihilism in Black America

2. The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning

3. The Crisis of Black Leadership

4. Demystifying the New Black Conservatism

5. Beyond Affirmative Action: Equality and Identity

6. On Black-Jewish Relations

7. Black Sexuality: The Taboo Subject

8. Malcolm X and Black Rage

Epilogue“As moving as any of the sermons of the Rev. Martin Luther King, as profound as W. E. B. Du Bois’sThe Souls of Black Folk, as exhilarating in thló&