How can Gates say that his criteria are somehow more justifiable? Clearly the blind acceptance of all texts of difference would be a syllabus writer's nightmare, but don't the very structures an institutions of acceptance and denial ensure that some people will remain voiceless?

Gates' answer would be something like: Only if they are very bad writers. His ideal for a canon formation committee would include "a diverse array of ideological, methodological, and theoretical perspectives." In this manner, he hopes to achieve a larger conversation among many voices about what we should teach.

Ultimately, that teaching is paramount. Gates tosses out the relativism that would refuse to teach anything to our children and appears willing to accept--or, more precisely, unwilling to acknowledge--that any standards will leave some people out, even if those standards are drawn up by the most diverse bunch available.

Instead, Gates says "we've got to borrow a leaf from the right, which is exemplarily aware of the role of education in the reproduction of values." Gates just wants to reproduce the "correct" values. And why not? The alternative is the teaching of the present "aesthetic and political order," composed of the subjective experiences of white men, reconstituted in the texts of the canon.

Institutions will always exist, Gates tells us. It must be our task to change them and shape them to include the reconstituted subjective experiences of a broader range of people. "The choice is not between institutions and no institutions," he says. "The choice is always: What kind of institutions will there be?"

Denying women an people of color the ability to evaluate their voices and shape their own canon "leaves us nowhere, invisible and voiceless," Gates believes. Thus, Afro-American studies. Practically, multicultural programs can decrease some of the alienation found on college campuses among minority students. But this cannot be the only goal. Ultimately, our incomplete canon leaves academics with an incomplete view of the world. Ultimately, to reject multiculturalism is to reject intellectualism.

Finally, Gates' request is a limited one, and it's a dismal comment on the state of academia that he has to pose it. "Equal access to the arts and the humanities, broadly reconceived, is the most important cultural project upon which we can embark." Gates simply wants equal access to the institutions which perpetuate human culture. there's no call for separatism in his writing. He doesn't give an inch to Jeffriesism, which can only "drown out critical inquiry."

There are two major problems here. First, the pace. According to Gates, we have no choice but to work for the opening of literary (and political) institutions to people of color and women. We have no choice but to attempt to change them. While some college curricula are becoming more inclusive, how long will this take? Gates has no answer.

Second, because of the time, people will grow impatient. While Gates insists that Blacks should study their heritage only as part of the larger whole, the urge to separate and essentialize may well dominate.

Gates' only remedy for alienated Black youth is expanded federal aid for minorities to attend college, new job training programs and renewed attention to America's cities. Exactly right. But how, in the meantime, do we deal with the pain of once-silenced voices struggling to speak? He isn't sure, which may explain why that student told me that Gates was not in touch with Black youth.

In the end, Loose Canons is required reading for anyone who seeks to understand the politics of identity in America. This book doesn't provide all the right answers, but it raises all the right questions. And in the end, Gates' is a moderate voice, and one that must be heard by both right and left. As he says, the goal has to be exploration of "the hyphen in African-American," not simply one side or the other.