The bourgeois model is, in some fundamental and ultimate sense, more part of the problem than the “solution” in regard to black intellectuals. Yet, since we live our lives daily and penultimately within this system, those of us highly critical of the bourgeois model must try to transform it, in part from within the white bourgeois academy. For black intellectuals – in alliance with nonblack progressive intellectuals – this means creating and augmenting infrastructures for black intellectual activity.

Cornel West, The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual