Cornel West\'s Race Matters in the Mid-1990s,

¶ … Cornel West's Race Matters

In the mid-1990s, Cornel West published a series of essays in a collection titled Race Matters. The title is a play on words, as West points out in his Preface. On the one hand, the word matters serves as a synonym for issues. West notes there have always been issues about race in the United States, throughout its history. On the other hand, matters is used as a verb. Race matters -- it means something to be white and quite another to be black. West's point is that it matters how one is perceived and treated in our society, depending upon the color of one's skin.

West begins his Preface with a 1963 quote from the writer James Baldwin. Race relations were in turmoil at the time of Baldwin's writing. The civil rights movement was gaining momentum and caused tremendous strife throughout the nation, particularly in the South. Baldwin refers to "the value placed on the color of the skin" and issues a challenge to the "relatively conscious" people of both races to do what they can to eradicate prejudice and "end the racial nightmare."

Thirty years later, the nightmare still existed. West describes his futile attempt to flag a taxi on a September afternoon in New York City. Nine drivers passed him by; the tenth stopped, but only to offer his services to a white woman. The scenario is shocking for several reasons. The first is because of what we know about West from his description of the day's activities to that point. He had traveled to New York City from affluent Princeton. He is obviously a learned man, and one whose expertise in his field is recognized, because he references his university lectures. Ironically, he taught courses in both Afro-American Cultural Studies and European Cultural Studies. West parked his "rather elegant" car in a good neighborhood so that he could take a taxi to Harlem, where presumably his car would not be safe. He was on his way to be photographed for the cover of his book. It is clear that this is not an average man. He is highly intelligent, highly educated and highly accomplished. One assumes, because he was coming from a university lecture, because he was prepared to have his photo taken, and because he was planning an evening out with his wife, that he was well groomed and well-dressed. None of that mattered as he sought a taxi on a New York afternoon -- the cab driver only saw the color of his skin.

The anecdote is shocking not just because of who West is, but where the event occurred. He was not a black man trying to get a taxi in Birmingham or Biloxi in 1963; this was New York City in the 1990s, a sophisticated, racially and culturally diverse metropolis where one might be surprised that such racial prejudice existed. Yet, West experienced it.