Prophesy Deliverance!: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (nonfiction) 1982

Post-Analytic Philosophy [editor; with John Rajchman] (philosophy) 1985

Prophetic Fragments (nonfiction) 1988

The American Evasion of Philosophy: The Genealogy of Pragmatism (nonfiction) 1989

Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life [with bell hooks] (nonfiction) 1991

The Ethical Dimension of Marxist Thought (nonfiction) 1991

Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism 2 vols. [Volume I, Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times; Volume II, Prophetic Reflections: Notes on Race and Power in America] (nonfiction) 1993

Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (nonfiction) 1993

Race Matters (nonfiction) 1993

Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin [with Michael Lerner] (nonfiction) 1995

The Affirmative Action Debate [editor; with George E. Curry] (nonfiction) 1996

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History [editor; with Jack Salzman and David Lionel Smith] (nonfiction) 1996

The Future of Race [with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.] (nonfiction) 1996

Jews and Blacks: A Dialogue on Race, Religion, and Culture in America [with Michael Lerner] (nonfiction) 1996

Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America [edited by Kelvin Shawn Sealey] (interviews) 1997

Struggles in the Promised Land: Towards a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States [editor; with Jack Salzman] (nonfiction) 1997

The Future of American Progressivism: An Initiative for Political and Economic Reform [with Roberto Mangabeira Unger] (nonfiction) 1998

The War Against Parents: What We Can Do for America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads [with Sylvia Ann Hewlett] (nonfiction) 1998

The Cornel West Reader (nonfiction) 1999

The Courage to Hope: From Black Suffering to Human Redemption: Essays in Honor of James Melvin Washington [editor; with Quinton Hosford Dixie] (essays) 1999

The Soul Knows No Bars: Inmates Reflect on Life, Death and Hope [with Drew Leder] (nonfiction) 2000