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Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (Routledge Classics)

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Cornel West (born 1953) is a Professor at Princeton, a philosopher, magnificent speaker, best-selling author (e.g., Race Matters, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Wisconsin Project on American Writers), etc.), and preeminent "public intellectual."

He writes in the Preface to this 1993 book, "How then does a black philosopher keep faith as he, or she, focuses on the pain and paranoia in America's chocolate cities and on Africa's sense of impending catastrophe? What are the sources for brave thought and courageous action in this frightening moment of global cynicism and fatalism? My feeble attempt to put forward a prophetic criticism for our times is a direct response to these grave questions... the decline and decay in American life APPEARS, at the moment, to be irreversible; yet it may not be. This slight possibility---the historic chance that a window of opportunity can be opened by our prophetic thought and action---is, in part, what keeping faith is all about."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"I call demystificatory criticism 'prophetic criticism'---the approach appropriate for the new cultural politics of difference---because while it begins with social structural analyses it also makes explicit its moral and political aims." (Pg. 23)
"The tragedy of black intellectual activity is that the black institutional support for such activity is in shambles. The quantity and quality of black intellectual exchange is at its worst since the Civil War. There is no major black academic journal; no major black intellectual magazine; no major black periodical of highbrow journalism; not even a major black newspaper of national scope. In short, the black infrastructure for intellectual discourse and dialogue is nearly nonexistent." (Pg. 70)
"And, to be honest, black America has yet to produce a great literate intellectual with the exception of Toni Morrison. There indeed have been superb ones---Du Bois, Frazier, Ellison, Baldwin, Hurston---and many good ones. But none can compare to the heights achieved by black preachers and musicians." (Pg. 73)
"The Marxist model, despite its shortcomings, is more part of the solution than part of the problem for black intellectuals." (Pg. 79)
"The synoptic vision I accept is a particular kind of prophetic Christian perspective which comprehensively grasps and enables opposition to existential anguish, socioeconomic, cultural and political oppression and dogmatic modes of thought and action. I do not believe that this specific version of the prophetic Christian tradition has a monopoly on such insights, capacities and motivations. Yet I have never been persuaded that there are better traditions than the prophetic Christian one." (Pg. 133-134)
"I simply cannot conceive of an intellectually compelling, morally desirable and practically realizable prophetic social vision, strategy and program that does not take certain achievements of liberalism as a starting point." (Pg. 202)
"Liberalism is not the possession of white, male elites in high places, but rather a dynamic and malleable tradition, the best of which has been made vital and potent by struggling victims of class exploitation, racist subjugation and patriarchal subordination." (Pg. 223)
"I hold that Marxist theory as a methodological orientation remains indispensable---although ultimately inadequate---in grasping distinctive features of African American oppression." (Pg. 258-259)