Crisis of the Black Intellectual

Provides critical analysis on the public commentary of Black intellectuals. It argues that Black intellectuals are not as critical in their thought and analyses of Black, Whites, and Americans as they are capable of being and should be. In the book's introduction, Wright states: "The Black historical experiences is one of the greatest and most complex experiences of human beings or humanity..."

Dr. Wright closes his "Introduction" with the following statement: "A hope of this book is that it will get even more Black intellectuals to hear the historical beckoning by Blacks and America, and to hear what might also be called 'the beckoning of the times.'”

Black History and Black Identity

This study contends that historians and intellectuals failed to understand the difference between race and ethnicity, which has in turn impaired their ability to understand who Black people are in America.

Dr. Wright argues that Black Americans are to be distinguished from other categories of black people in the country: black Africans, West Indians, or Hispanics. While Black people are members of the black race, as are other groups of people, they are a distinct ethnic group of that race.

This conceptual failure has hampered the ability of historians to define Black experience in America and to study it in the most accurate, authentic, and realistic manner possible.

Racism Matters

This work offers a new discussion of racism in America that focuses on how white people have been affected by their own racism and how it impacts upon relations between blacks and whites. This study draws attention to how racism is distinctly different from race, and it shows how, since the late 17th century, most Whites have been afflicted by their own racism, as evidenced by considerable delusional thinking, dehumanization, alienation from America.

White people have created and maintained a White racist America, which is the antithesis of liberty, equality, justice, and freedom; Black people continue to be the primary victims of this culture.