Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America

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Summary: Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
Review: This book is highly recommended for blacks, whites and others as it assists the readers in understanding the articles of faith or myths that we hear in the media. It also urges the readers to think about many of the socially accepted policies such as affirmative action and their true impact on performance and achievement. Many readers believe in truths such as black poverty, teacher's bias, under-funding in black schools, tracking etc. as no counter evidence has been presented in the past. The author's persuasiveness is totally based on the extensive research he conducted over the years. The main outcome is that this book forces all of us to think critically about these issues regardless of whether we agree with him or not.

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Summary: Many weaknesses, but nevertheless an important book
Review: Reading this book wasn't easy, for few reasons. For one thing, John McWhorter is very articulated; he might object, saying I wouldn't have written so if he weren't black. However, I would have claimed so even if he were green with purple dots. His rich language and complex sentences have their beauty, but be prepared to slow down. It was not easy to be shared with the experience of black people with true and apparent racism. It was also provoking to read what some black people think some white people think; I, for one, don't. Some of the experiences he brings as sign for racism against black may have different explanation. I, a white woman, have matching stories and I'm still looking for something to blame (not myself, I hope). Which leads to the problem of objective presentation: Sometimes research is being quoted (though I frequently disagree with the interpretation), sometimes anecdotes combined with logic, which may or may not be enough. John McWhorter, I was informed, is a brilliant linguist, but obviously he is an amateur in behavior sciences. Regrettably, he did not incorporated work that could have shed light on the subject and suggest possible ways to correct and improve the social stand of black Americans (see The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Rich Harris). Then there is the problem of organization; arguments are scattered all over.

And yet, with all the above, it seems that there is a lot of important truth in his observation and understanding. He should be appreciated for to making his opinion public, which, as you (I hope) will read, took a personal toll. Maybe it is the job of social and cognitive scientists to continue from where he stopped, to check his explanations and to suggest new ways in light of their findings. As for the rest of us, this books open new windows which we would care to look through, whether we are black, know black people whom we care about, or just frustrated with the tear in society between people of different colors.

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Summary: Excellent! A Must Read for Every African- American
Review: I am a 38 year old African-American woman who had never heard of John McWhorter prior to this year. While perusing books at a local bookstore, I picked up a copy of ''Losing the Race'' in which someone had defaced the cover with the inscription: "This book is a must read!" Two pages into the preface and I was hooked! No other author has ever written a book that so articulated and validated the beliefs of many ''silent'' blacks who truly feel that our fate and our future is within our own control. John McWhorter presents such a compelling thesis regarding the cult of victomology, seperatism and anti-intellectualism that explains, exceptionally well, why so many African-Americans fall short. He has brought to light the discussions many blacks have in the privacy of their homes or only in the company of other blacks and he has done it in a manner that is poignant, eloquent and thought provoking to say the least. As some critics have charged, he does not deny that racism is alive and well in America nor does he minimize the struggles of African-Americans, but what he does do is present a challenge. Buy the book, read it and make up your own mind about it!

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Summary: Fulfilling Martin Luther King¿s Dream
Review: As many of the previous reviews demonstrate, John McWhorter has his share of vehement detractors. As many others prove, he likewise has a teeming cadre of admirers. Yet after absorbing his trenchant and well-researched book, honest readers on both sides of the spectrum will agree that he is an intelligent and brave individual.

The tired mantras of "sell-out" and "Uncle Tom" have been generously applied to the Berkley Linguistics Professor, but most of his critics do not even attempt to refute his meaty arguments, resorting to defamatory attacks instead. One of the most scurrilous (if disturbingly common) charges is that his ideas are somehow demeaning to black people.

In fact the author's politics are not easy to pigeonhole. John McWhorter is certainly anathema to the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but despite his detractors' denunciations, he is not quite a clone of Thomas Sowell or Joseph Perkins either. He see traces of racism as persisting in many American police departments and advocates gossamer sensitivity training as a way to alleviate this alleged conundrum. He feels that at its origin affirmative action was an imperfect but necessary means to serve a banausic purpose. He also believes that leftist-loved cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal is likely innocent---curiously disregarding mountains of dooming evidence--and identifies as a hero communist-leaning, philandering Adam Clayton Powell.

Mr. McWhorter is obviously living a very fulfilling life--a blessing denied to many of his fellow black Americans who are trapped in--what he aptly terms--the cult of Victimology. Sounding the tocsin to let all black Americans join in his quest for the full American Dream is hardly a racist move. While he does grant that black culture is held down today largely by its own doing, his message is one of realistic hope; "there are millions and millions of people on earth who would kill for the lives of all but a few black Americans today and there have been untold billions of people who have triumphed amidst conditions unspeakably worse."

With generous supplies of imperative research, poll data, and personal anecdotes, the author lays out a broad assessment illuminating three major impediments to the advancement of the black race today. None of them involve racism. While he acknowledges that it still exists, he documents how the scourge has deteriorated to such an insignificant degree that it no longer impedes black progress. He sites a near obsession with victim status, self-imposed separatism that blocks access to many avenues of advancement, and an anti-intellectualism or the devastating fallacy that studious blacks students who obtain high marks are traitorously "acting white." While his comprehensive argumentation is certainly open to debate, a better-presented line of reasoning would be difficult to find. Were John McWhorter a lawyer, the opposing attorney would cringe at the prospect of countering such an eloquent and erudite dissertation.

Perhaps the strongest refutation of the specious charge of racism concerns his many references to African and Caribbean immigrants. These newcomers--unshackled by victimology's shibboleths--are much better able to reap the bounties America offers. He writes with dismay about the many black students in his college courses who fail to meet his standards, and his consternation is enhanced by the blatant truth that their lack of success is generally not due to diminished capabilities. Rather he sites the tragic anti-intellectual strains that detrimentally permeate much of the modern day American black community. This restrictive weight does not hold down those from Africa. Conceding that reductive teaching methods are often needed in his predominantly black classes, he adds "students of African immigrant parents, ... rarely have required these 'special'' methods." Additionally, he states, "in my classes that Caribbean and African students usually perform at the same level as whites, something also supported by studies." Regarding the substandard performance of back schoolchildren, he insightfully queries "what are we saying about black children to assume with such confidence that they are incapable of doing what poor Asians and even poor Haitians and Jamaicans and Ethiopians are doing right alongside them everyday?"

Unquestionably the book's most poignant section features Mr. McWhorter's struggle with the acceptance that affirmative action--which he feels has long outlived its usefulness--played a small role is his success. Witnessing his impressive mind as readers do, it is safe to say that he would have achieved great prosperity with or without favors, but as he veraciously admits, on a few occasions he was slotted into a minority set-aside ahead of somebody more qualified. The fact that a middle-class, brighter-han-average, individual could derive benefits from a program initiated to help the disadvantaged is an unsubtle testimony to the bankruptcy of this worn-out policy. So burdened is he by this unpleasant fact, that he has decided to pursue operatic training (theatric pursuits have long been an avocation) to prove to himself that he can master a field based solely upon his qualifications.

From the book, I learned that John McWhorter's tenure as a Rutgers undergrad overlapped mine. How I wish I had met him. Although we would have disagreed on numerous issues, from the reasoning employed in this treatise, it's easy to see that any conversation with him would prove very stimulating. While affirmative action may have given him an unnecessary and perhaps unfair break here and there, it is safe to assume that had he lived before the Civil Rights Movement, he would have accomplished just as much. In the not-too-distant future, crowds should enjoy watching him perform at the Met.

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Summary: Good; Insufficiently Technical
Review: I understand that this man was trained as a linguist, and I can forgive the shallowness of some of his statistical points. But it would be nice to have seen some correlation coefficients when he talked of this and that as being correlated. There are also more detailed things that I might like to have known/ seen verified in the discussions of black income, such as differing average ages and an adjustment for the fact that 56% of blacks live in the South, where there is a significant income differential.

Kudos to him for his description of differences in BEHAVIOR as accounting for differnces in output. Thomas Sowell has written on this point exhaustively, especially in his "Race and Culture" trilogy, but he deliberately used other examples to show that in different places, similar mentalities will lead to similar results. Really, very little that has been shown here (in the way of data) is different to what has been shown before. It's just that the writing in this piece makes for lighter reading--at the sacrifice of some details.

With this qualification, I will rate the book 5 stars not because of its analysis, but because of its willingness to confront some of the garbage that one hears in black studies departments across the country and some of the lines of reasoning/ refrains that one hears from black students that are so identical as to make one believe that Black Studies departments are second only to the Chinese government in terms of propaganda.

One thing that might have helped the book would have been the theme: "I see this trend, here is Citation X in support of that." On the one hand, he did better than do most people who write about this by giving specific examples of what he was talking about (especially the study patterns of black students), but on the other, it is sometimes very hard to believe everything that people claim to have witnessed, no matter how smart they are. It is for this reason that I am partial to authors who use examples that are at least confirmed by a third party.

Kudos again to him for showing some of the distorted thinking processes that go into perpetuating things such as Afrocentric interpretations of history. Without restating the whole book, I must say that he is a far cry from the writings of people like Carter G. Woodson. Read this and you'll not be disappointed.

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Summary: A lot of gold, but you have to mine for it.
Review: I am a white male who attended black schools from kindergarten to college and I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. McWhorter's arguments. Like the author, I was a nerdy kid (and still am) and my black friends who were also well-spoken, intelligent and mild-mannered children (that is: nerdy) were constantly harangued, teased and ostricized by the other "cool" black kids because they were "trying to be white". Sadly, to gain acceptance by the oppressive black zeitgeist a few of them began to falter in their schoolwork and adopt the trappings of ghetto culture. When I read McWhorter's similar experiences in his neighborhood it felt painfully familliar to me but at the same time there was an unmistakeable sense of vindication. I think he was brave to have written this book and I look forward to it spawning critical and profound debate.

I thought the reading of the book was very laborious, and it didn't need to be. The author obviously has a wonderful grasp of vocabulary but the latin terms made it sound like a legal brief. The anecdotes were too involved and tangential. I can appreciate his sharing of personal stories as he is addressing a complicated and personal issue but one must stay teathered to the thesis of his arguments lest he loose his way and finds himself having to go back a few pages.

In conclusion, his arguments require some serious consideration by the black cogniscenti who claim to be speaking out on behalf of their community. However, the vehicle in which they were delivered needs a new transmission.

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Summary: Understandable, but short-sighted position
Review: I anticipated that I would be included in McWhorter's audience. Unfortunately, I felt left out. He wrote this book for academics and their apologists and I don't think he takes his context (Berkeley, CA) into account adequately. More later...

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Summary: A thorough eye-opening view of race relations in the U.S.
Review: The author does a wonderful job of examining the myths surrounding the state of race relations in the U.S. He makes a good case against so-called black leaders in America who perpetuate racism by portraying everything that happens in America as a race issue.

The detailed and philosophical analysis of why blacks tend to do poorly in school is impressive. It's the first time I've heard anyone take such a principled approach to understanding the true causes of why blacks perform so far below the average in education. McWhorter identifies the cause as a cultural disconnection with intellectual pursuits within the black community. He takes it a step further and gives numerous examples and first hand accounts of how it happens from childhood on in the black community.

It's rare to find a piece of non-fiction that grips you and then does such a complete job of educating you on an issue. This book does that.

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Summary: Well written, informative, and most of all bold
Review: It takes great courage, intelligence and passion to write such a book. McWhorter does a tremendous job in presenting his research to support his claims as well as dispelling the tired and patronizing notions of so many of today's black leaders and other 'experts.' His examples and own experiences are compelling and paint the real story of black America today- both the good and the bad. This is a must read for those of any color concerned with the real remnants of racism and the gaps in educational achievement in the U.S. today. Mr. McWhorter is to be applauded for breaking through the terribly politically correct line with this book. It's long overdue...

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Summary: This could have been so much better with some more effort
Review: ...Now, having read the book, I have to review it on two levels. First, as was implied by his interview on [the radio], there are a lot of important ideas expressed in these pages. McWhorter has gone into great detail in exploring the ways that many culturally-defeating behaviors evolved and why they are sustained--even through the good intentions of blacks and whites alike. For readers who can open their minds to a different view of our current dilemma, there is much that can be learned here. I fear, however, that many readers will reflexively react with defensiveness, and dismiss McWhorter's opinions without really confronting the implications. That would be too bad; there is a lot of textured thinking in this book which should be carefully contemplated. Regardless, perhaps Losing The Race will stimulate some very worthwhile debate.

I do have to criticize McWhorter for one major thing--at best, this book reads like a rough draft. I am a writer myself, and this manuscript needed at least three more rounds of polishing. On the macroscopic level, I suspect that the material could have been better organized to eliminate some of the conceptual reduncies. This would have made the reading experience a lot more efficient. The biggest problems, though, lie at the microscopic level. McWhorter seems to write as though he is speaking to himself--simply expressing his thoughts out loud. He does not seem to contemplate the need to write for his audience. Simply put, he does not write with clarity and this is clearly evidenced by his chronic tendency to write laborious, run-on sentences. I consider myself to be a fairly sophisticated reader, but I frequently had to puzzle over McWharter's inadequately punctuated and overly pregnant sentences. Sometimes I would have to read a sentence four or five times to adequately 'diagram' its serpentine, tangential clauses. It didn't have to be this way--the complexity of the material did not demand it. Was McWhorter's editor asleep at the switch? A good editor would have demanded that these passages be repaired before going to press. Of course, a truly good writer wouldn't submit a manuscript in this form in the first place--it really needed a lot of work. What makes this reality even more peculiar, is that McWhorter is a linguist.

In the end, I give Losing The Race an A for courage, an A- for the concepts expressed, but only a C+ after factoring in the state of his writing. This could have been a much better book--and should have been given the importance of its subjectmatter.