I almost agree totally with Scott McLemee responding to the criticisms of his post expressing disappointment with Cornel West's latest work:
The most important premise being that no white writer can say anything critical about a black writer without having vile and probably violent motives. This axiom is typically nested, in turn, within an assumption that American life is best understood as having two distinct cultural complexes. One is coded white and the other black. They are accessible via distinct (and well-guarded) entrances, and obey incommensurable zoning codes. You are supposed to stay in your proper matrix.
A system of internal colonies, between which a spirit of mutual disinterest prevails, is not my idea of a good society. As a basis for cultural criticism, “separate but equal” is not that appealing a principle. Nor do I feel deeply accountable to any “tolerance” found choking on its own stifled aggression. My sense of life owes a lot to the work of C.L.R. James, who thought that the multiracial crew of the Pequod was what made Moby Dick such a touchstone to understanding American possibilities.We should leave racial essentialism to the stand-up comedians who finesse it best. This is a hybrid culture. That is perhaps the one good thing you can say about it. I don’t intend to give that up.
I'm wondering looking at America with some distance (though with adoring eyes) whether the fact that it has a hybrid culture means that it can become a society where racial essentialism isn't in fact its essence. I have come reluctantly to the realization that America is a country, which accepts that origins, race define who people are and acceptable to criteria to form legitimated communities. The American societal model is one where every single member of society has to choose a group, a community to become to avoid marginalization at the best and castrating powerlessness at the worst.
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