First, I apologize for the way I personalized this post with my original rhetoric. My serious disagreement with you here has nothing to do with my general respect for your work.
Having said that, I simply think you're wrong to claim that "no one" criticizes Cornel West. Exactly the people one would expect to criticize him, white and black, criticized him in print and loudly around the Million Man March, and given his rather low relative importance, the fact that relatively few people-but well more than zero-have gone out of their way to criticize him in other contexts is not surprising. Its no secret that his support comes mostly from the Lerner types, who are the "left hates religion" folks. I don't have anything in common with them. It's just that I also don't have anything in common with those who think there is an essence to religion, or to people who go to church.
In this context, you will perhaps understand me if I make the following claim: it is your perception that the black church gets a free ride in leftist conversations that struck me, and strikes me, as consistent with the way white people deal with African American Studies in general. In fact, in personal conversation among white leftists, and in print, African American religions come in for the same sort of defenses, and the same sort of criticisms, that white religions do. Nothing remarkable. However, whenever anyone criticizes African American religion-and this is especially true of whites, though Reed is the most public example of someone who does it-they immediately claim that what they are doing is unprecedented, unusual, unique, worthy of special respect.
In a white supremacist world, I simply jump every time someone says that African Americans (or African American institutions) are getting a free ride. 'Taint true.
Kenny
Kenneth Mostern Department of English University of Tennessee
"Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage."
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