Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America - Paperback

Why do so many African Americans--even comfortably middle-class ones--continue to see racism as a defining factor in their lives?

Columbia University linguistics professor John McWhorter, born at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, spent years trying to make sense of this question. In this book he dared to say the unsayable: racism's ugliest legacy is the disease of defeatism that has infected Black America. Losing the Race explores the three main components of this cultural virus: the cults of victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism that are making Black people their own worst enemies in the struggle for success. With Losing the Race, a bold new voice rises among Black intellectuals.

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Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter, born at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, spent years trying to make sense of this question. Now he dares to say the unsayable: racism's ugliest legacy is the disease of defeatism that has infected black America. Losing the Race explores the three main components of this cultural virus: the cults of victimology, separatism, and antiintellectualism that are making blacks their own worst enemies in the struggle for success.

More angry than Stephen Carter, more pragmatic and compassionate than Shelby Steele, more forward-looking than Stanley Crouch, McWhorter represents an original and provocative point of view. With Losing the Race, a bold new voice rises among black intellectuals.