NONFICTION - May 2, 1993

RACE MATTERS by Cornel West (Beacon Press: $15; 105 pp.). Princeton University professor Cornel West--best described by the New York Times as “a young, hip black man in an old white academy, a believing Christian in a secular society (and) a progressive socialist in the age of triumphant capitalism”--has an authentic, breakaway voice that should sound like music to ears ringing from too much banal banter about the riot’s anniversary and the federal trial. Admittedly, West’s voice isn’t lilting enough to harmonize Los Angeles: Suburban whites, for instance, will be mystified by his conviction that white racism traces back to “white fear of black sexuality,” while street blacks will wonder how all his philosophizing about “Pascalian wagers” and “Manichean ideologies” will help them . Still, West’s moderate take on the L.A. riots should have considerable appeal: He condemns its “ugly xenophobic resentments, its air of adolescent carnival, and its downright barbaric behavior,” but acknowledges its “social justification.” Meanwhile, his own, wrenching stories of police harassment should provide an odd sort of empowerment to young black males. For after all, when someone like West, a professor avidly wooed by the top Ivy League colleges, can be arrested on false charges of trafficking cocaine, and can be told, when he mentions he’s a professor, “Yeah, and I’m the flying nun. Let’s go, nigger!,” then it becomes clear that what’s being persecuted is skin color , not sin or soul or self.