SOURCE: “The Fire Down Under,” in New Leader, August 9-23, 1993, pp. 18-9.

In the following review, Kulman offers a positive evaluation of Race Matters.

The national discourse on race relations deteriorated into intellectual ambulance-chasing this past April while Americans awaited the outcome of the “second Rodney King trial”—in which four police officers previously acquitted of beating the motorist now faced Federal charges of having violated his civil rights. As long as the violence that had leveled parts of Los Angeles following the initial decision a year earlier threatened to recur, talk-show hosts and Op-Ed-page columnists flocked to address the race issue. Once the jury delivered split verdicts and the city remained peaceful, the subject began to drop from sight.

The publication of Cornel West’s Race Matters also coincided with the first anniversary of the April 1992 upheaval. Far from merely reflecting the headlines, though, the book aims...