Losing the Race: Self-sabotage in Black AmericaIs school a "white" thing? If not, then why do African-American students from comfortable middle-class backgrounds perform so badly in the classroom? What is it that prevents so many black college students in the humanities and social sciences from studying anything other than black subjects? Why do young black people, born decades after the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, see victimhood as the defining element of their existence? In this explosive book, Berkeley linguistics professor John McWhorter reports from the trenches of today's college classroom to offer a daring assessment of what's plaguing the children of yesterday's affirmative-action babies. The Civil Rights revolution was the pinnacle of American history, freeing African Americans from centuries of disenfranchisement. Yet, as McWhorter shows, it has had a tragic side effect. As racism recedes as a serious obstacle to black advancement, most black American leaders and thinkers have been misled into a self-destructive ideological detour. Victimhood is exaggerated and enshrined more than constructively addressed. Following from this, young black people are shepherded into a separatist conception of"blackness" defined largely as that which is not "white." This in turn conditions a sense, embedded in black American culture as a whole, that academic achievement is a "white" realm that the "authentic" black person dwells in only for financial gain or to chronicle black victimhood and victories. McWhorter addresses these problems head-on, drawing on history, statistics, and his own life experiences. He shows that affirmative action in university admissions, indispensable 30 years ago, is today an obsolete policy that encourages the counterproductive ideologies of what he calls Separatism, Victimology, and Anti-intellectualism. Most perniciously, it prevents black students from demonstrating the abilities our Civil Rights leaders gave them the opportunity to nurture, and it deprives them of the incentive to strive for the very top. Racism is not dead -- but as McWhorter so persuasively argues, dealing it a death blow will require a reinvestment in the strength that allowed black Americans to triumph and survive this far. His pathbreaking book is certain to shock, inspire, and ignite debate among all those who care about race and education today. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - gopfolk - LibraryThingA place to start... Dr. McWhorter is simply a great writer. He describes realistic experiences that prove that this is not a "black thing" but a culture thing. After reading this book I immediately ... Read full review
LOSING THE RACE: Self-Sabotage in Black America
User Review - KirkusAn impassioned but meticulously argued plea for African Americans to address the three basic problems—identified by the author as separatism, anti-intellectualism, and "a cult of victimology ... Read full review
Contents
The Cult of Victimology | 1 |
The Cult of Separatism | 50 |
The Cult of Antiintellectualism | 82 |
The Roots of the Cult of Antiintellectualism | 137 |
How Can We Save the AfricanAmerican Race? | 212 |
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Common terms and phrases
achievement admissions admitted affirmative action affirmative-action African African-American Afrocentric Al Sharpton Anti-intellectualism Asian asked black academic black American black American culture black children black community black culture Black English black kids black person black scholarly black stu black students black-white campus Civil Rights considered Cult culturally black dents Derrick Bell despite dialect Ebonics episode example fact factor feel ghetto grades graduate inner city inner-city issue language Latino learning less linguistics lives mainstream middle-class black minority students never number of black O.J. Simpson Oakland parents percent performance police brutality poor problem Proposition 209 question race racial racism Ralph Wiley reason SAT scores sense Separatism Separatist Shaker Heights Sharpton Shelby Steele simply Simpson standard English stereotype Stereotype Threat story sure teachers teaching test scores things thought tion undergraduate universities victimhood Victimology white students words York young black
Bibliographic information
| Title | Losing the Race: Self-sabotage in Black America |
| Authors | John H. McWhorter, Professor of Linguistics John McWhorter |
| Editor | Free Press |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster, 2000 |
| ISBN | 0684836696, 9780684836690 |
| Length | 285 pages |
| Subjects | › › Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |