SOURCE: “Symbolic Politics and the Hill-Thomas Affair,” in Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 23, No. 3, May, 1994, pp. 346-9.

In the following excerpt, Lamont offers a positive assessment of Race Matters.

The three books reviewed here usefully canvas public debate within the African-American community, and between it and American society at large. The main point of convergence between these books is the “mobile social laboratory,” “the referendum on our most cherished values,” that was the Hill-Thomas affair. These books offer a repertory of stances taken by a number of public intellectuals on the most poignant and divisive televised collective drama that American society has witnessed since the Watergate hearings. …

Some of the contributors to Court of Appeal [edited by Robert Chrisman and Robert L. Allen], such as Beverly Guy-Sheftal from Spellman College, conclude their essays with a call for action to respond to the spiritual crisis of the black community marked, among...