(born 1953) Considered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who brought him to Harvard University’s Afro-American Studies program in 1994, the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our time. Author of the bestselling Race Matters (1993), and collaborator with bell hooks, West has blended religious homilies with loose-fitting Marxist analysis. His criticism of the black middle class for being “decadent” resembles that of E. Franklin Frazier, and his discussion of the “psychic pain” inflicted upon the urban poor fits with current views that the “underclass” is dysfunctional. He has criticized hip-hop culture for being nihilistic, in contrast to intellectuals like Robin D.G. Kelley and some of the practitioners themselves, who have emphasized its deep politicization.