Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes Being Honest Isn't The Best Policy
Review: Come on, admit it! This is what we were all thinking, but were too afraid to say. "Losing the Race," by John McWhorter, is one of the most honest, well-researched books I've ever read. It breaks down simply what has simply been one of the hottest "don't touch" subjects of our time: race. I think we should all read it, pass it to a friend, assign it in classes, even if it isn't agreed with, it has done what Rosa Parks did, brought racism to the forefront of our cousciousness. Bravo!
Rating: 
Summary: Just an excuse
Review: People who enjoy this book are just looking for a something to back up their racist thoughts. The author and others like him should be ashamed! The best way for a black psuedo intellectual to become famous is to write an outlandish racist book. Everytime one of these writers do such things they will be featured in every major newspaper in America. Not a bad plan to become famous. I think Blacks don't speak up enough. This country has tried to sweep up the history of racist behaviors. That is why there isn't a national museum documenting slavery. But there is a museum that documents the holocaust when that horrific tragedy did not even occur in this country. We must remember that we are only 32 years removed from Jim Crow. Compare that 32 years with over 400 years of institutionalized racism. Some like to compare the Asian American experience to that of African-Americans when both groups should not be compared. First Asians do not have the history of institutionalized racism , second most asian who arrive in this country are already educated and those who are not usually do not succeed. Blacks do share some blame but the author is on the wrong track. Blacks have not yet figured out how to work the system. Now someone needs to write a book about how lazy rich white boys succeed in Ivy League schools and become President. Now I would buy that one!
Rating: 
Summary: A nice opinion, but...
Review: Losing the Race offers the conservative viewpoint of African American life, but it does little to enlighten and even less to impress readers looking for a non-biased and even handed view of the African American community. While McWhorter does vigorously use real-life situations to support his views, these situations are the extremes, the clips one can find on the evening news and not common for African American life even if they have come to represent that life by the popular media. He fails to base his opinions on the average African American's life and instead relies on generalizations about the entire black community taken from rap lyrics, political demonstrations, and gotcha newspaper headlines. Fun read for conservatives and those interested in researching the conservative view on race relations, but does little more than rehash old arguements with new extreme examples.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Arguments Pointing to New Solutions
Review: The essential hypothesis challenges all traditional thinking about racism. It is that black Americans cripple their progress because they hold a series of critical attitudes. One is victimization (sponsors of this attitude/coalition are led by professional victims of the Sharpton/Jackson ilk). His exploration of this topic shines a totally new light on the creation and implications of this viewpoint and would, by itself, be a reason to read this book. What I found most fascinating was the self-induced requirement that racism be eliminated as a precondition to progress, something that no other group of people coming to these shores and met with hostility has held. Of course, no other group has been institutionalized within the bounds of slavery either. The point, however, is that he addresses the implications of this attitude. He also addresses the post-1960's attitude of anti-intellectualism which is on a collision course with societal requirements for advancement. All in all, this is fresh thinking on a very difficult and critical topic. The views were refreshing, challenging, provocative, clear, and I think everyone of any race should read this book and think about the implications.
Rating:
Summary: The Role of Victim: A Liberal Synecdoche?
Review: I found Dr. McWhorter's, "Losing the Race," to be written with the same integrity of heart that may also be found in the writings of traditional black conservative authors i.e. Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Star Parker, Elizabeth Wright, Ward Connerly, Alan Keyes, etc. This Berkeley linquistics professor wrote with much honesty all the while knowing that he would probably face accusations of not "being black enough" by a majority of the black community; and the answer to the question of why being advanced in terms of an ideological holding pattern which has tended to manifest itself in three(3) ways or "cults". His analogy of these "cults" with a cold virus(a kind of "cultural disorder") which virtually effects most to some degree or other was very insightful. This humble book reviewer can attest to the veracity of Dr. McWhorter's insights from personal experience. His admonition that affirmative action(AA) needs to be brought to an end within academic settings was again very refreshing to read as it speaks volumes to one of many issues facing whites and blacks, at least in my opinion--"liberal race-consciousness". Although he maintains that AA is still needed within corporate america, Dr. McWhorter suggests that this is so not because of racism(institutionalized racism) but because of a need for more time for blacks to develop corportate networks, etc. This at least moves a discussion of AA to the next level which still awaits both black and white alike equally. This book is a must read for those who have the courage to reflect soberly about the past "36 post-civil-rights" years in which neither race neutrality nor affirmative action, as originally envisioned within the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have ever really been given a chance.
Rating: 
Summary: Cautiously Hopeful
Review: Despite its title, McWhorter's book is really rather optimistic and hopeful in tone. He believes that a growing number of blacks are abandoning the self-destructive ideas that are being nurtured in the black community, specifically: victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism. I suspect that many of the reviews of this book will be knee-jerk reactions rather than reasoned responses. Many will refuse to read the book at all. That is a sad shame, for even if one disagrees with some of his conclusions, his book is well worth reading and thinking about. It seems today that the vocal elements of black culture have become subdivided into three main categories. In the first category are those like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who want to pretend that things are not much different today than they were in 1960 or 1950 - or that they are worse (They say this while dressed in $500 suits and eating caviar). These people look for every opportunity to scream racism and are the target of much of McWhorter's book. Unfortunately they fail to take into account that their actions result in a black community that cannot rid itself of being perceived as somehow inferior. They can do nothing else when they consistently insist that blacks aren't up to the same intellectual standards as whites and others, and that all blacks still need affirmative action based school admissions - which is nothing more than the educational equivalent of the special olympics. Blacks need to stop letting these self-appointed leaders shout out to the world that blacks are mildly retarded. In the second category are the ultra-violent hate filled groups like the new Black Panther party, and certain segments of the Black Muslim movement. This group feeds on the failures caused by the first group and nurtures hatred and violence towards whites, jews, asians and others. These men and women should be dealt with as the criminals they are. They are no different than the KKK or the Aryan Nation. The third group according to McWhorter is a growing segment of the black population that wants to realize Martin Luther King's dream to the fullest. These men and women have realized that while affirmative action may have been useful for a while and may still be useful in certain limited (income-based), and temporary situations, it is no longer justified as an across the board permanent solution. These men and women realize that blacks have the same average native intelligence as whites, hispanics, and asians and that if the standards were the same, they could prove it. I hope that McWhorter is correct and that more and more blacks will decide they no longer want to be portrayed as inherently inferior "special olympians" by the established politically correct black leadership - the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, and NAACPs of the world. I hope that most will decide that the alternative proposed by McWhorter and other great black leaders and intellectuals like Thomas Sowell is the path to follow and that they will thoroughly reject the bigoted hate-filled bile of the new black panther party. McWhorter is right that blacks are not that far from Martin Luther King's mountaintop. The problem now is no longer external white opposition, but internal fear and self-doubt imposed on them by unfortunate circumstances and opportunistic "leaders." It's time for black and white and hispanic and asian to stand side by side as the equals they are and to help each other as the human beings they are. The first step for those who aren't sure how to do this would be take this book and read it - not once, but several times. My hat's off to you John McWhorter for picking up the torch of MLK that has been ignored for too long, for calling everyone out of the mud and back to the pathway that leads to the mountaintop.
Rating: 
Summary: His pass is revoked
Review: McWhorter lost me when he found it reasonable that a D.C. representative could innocently use the word niggardly to mean miserly, yet found it unbeleivable that a Stanford Math professor told a young black female blacks were not good in math. Typical sell-out. Anything to sell a book ,eh johnnie? By agree to the stereotypes of white America, and defending some of their ideals as our problems not theirs, you hope to garner support for your book sales. The jewish had a name for your ilk, it was called judenrat...sell out in other words. Only the names have changed
Rating:
Summary: the gender gap in the black community
Review: Dr. McWhorter excluded an important dimension--the gender gap in educational attainment within the black community. In the National Urban League's annual overview of the state of black American, the gender gap in higher education is noted. There has been a much greater percent increase of black women receiving the Associate's, Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate degrees than black men. If there is the cult of anti-intellectualism: a cultural disconnect from learning (see p. 124), then why do black women attain higher education to a greater degree than men? There must be something else in the black culture that causes this differential effect by gender. Do black parents have higher expectations for their daughters than for their sons? Dr. McWhorter does not address this gender gap. The gender gap in educational attainment has implications for marital matching within the black community. To the extent that people mate based on similar educational attainment levels, then the gap suggests that there will be a negative impact on the formation in the number of male and female-headed black households. This point is a concern of National Urban League President Hugh Price who says, "As the economic gap widens, questions of whether black women will find black men who can carry their (financial) share in the household will become more evident." I wonder what Dr. McWhorter's explanation of the gender gap might be!
Rating:
Summary: Time for a sequel
Review: McWhorter is to be commended for this book. But I couldn't help but often thinking that while criticizing African-American culture, he was giving the rest of American culture too much of a free ride. I didn't spot any reference to Richard Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anti-intellectualism in American Life (Knopf, 1963, still in print in paperback) even in McWhorter's chapter on black anti-intellectualism. The truth is that, while whites and Asians perform better in school and on standardized tests, that's not really saying very much! (Ouch.) Only about 25% of American adults have an associate's degree or higher, and an equal number are functionally illiterate. The United States not only is choosing to, but is being forced to, "import" hundreds of thousands of computer scientists, engineers, software writers, various other scientists and graduate students in the hard sciences, etc., etc., from other countries NOT primarily because the science and technology sectors of the economy are growing so quickly (in fact, some scientific and technological fields are static or shrinking) --but because the United States simply doesn't have enough citizens educated in those areas. And that isn't because the U.S. population isn't big enough, or those jobs don't pay well, or that they're not interesting, or that colleges are unaffordable or unavailable; it's because American culture is too anti-intellectual to produce a large number of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, etc., on its own. Most Americans (not those living over Central Park or with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge) need only look around their neighborhoods and the local shopping mall to see how far we are from a truly information-based, high-tech economy. And it doesn't help, as Todd Gitlin pointed out in the Dec. 8, 2000 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, to have an president such as George W. Bush--who did poorly in school, is proudly anti-intellectual, and fudges student achievement statistics in Texas.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Thinking
Review: Too often McWhorter does what many blacks accuse whites of doing--he draws a conclusion from any negative encounter he has experienced with another black person and assumes it is the norm. Bad thinking.
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