the second class status accorded African Americans in the United States. West would later be impressed with the commitment of the Black Panthers, and it was from the Panthers that he began to understand the importance of community based political action. A biography of Theodore Roosevelt influenced him as he identified with Roosevelt because both were asthmatic. West followed Roosevelt to Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1973. He took a teaching position as an associate professor of philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1977. He moved on to Yale University in 1984 and to Princeton in 1988, where he received his doctorate degree. He has written many well-received books on race and other social issues (Mocete www.ucc.uconn.edu/~wwwnews/rel96028.htm).
"Race Matters" is an excerpt from West's book of the same name in which he draws together a number of racial and social issues and refers to recent history for evidence of how America treats the race question. He states first that the Los Angeles riot in 1992 "was neither a race riot nor a class rebellion. Rather, this monumental upheaval was a multi-racial, trans-class, and largely male display of justified social rage" (West 663). West further denies the liberal view that more governmental programs can solve racial problems because this focuses o
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