dr. glaude: he was doing all the footnotes by memory. so-- >> brown: excuse me? >> dr. yeah, he was-- doing all the-- >> brown: memory. >> dr. glaude: --footnotes by memory. right. and so he asked me to go get a book, because he wanted to check a footnote. and so i went to the library and i got the book and i brought the book to him. and he kept looking at the book and he was confused. he turned to the page. he couldn't find-- turned it over. "oh, it's the wrong edition." >> brown: the wrong edition. >> dr. glaude: the wrong edition. i went and got the right edition. turned to the page. there it all was. >> brown: in 1993, west wrote his seminal book, "race matters." a provocative examination of how race affects the lives of americans, just as the country was transfixed by the rodney king trial. the book catapulted him on to the national stage and into popular culture. so how much does race still matter, twenty years on? what's the current state of race in america in your mind, dr. west? >> cornel west: we're in bad shape. we're in bad shape. for the upper middle classes