Losing The Race by John H Mcwhorter

Losing The Race by John H Mcwhorter

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.

At Columbia University, John McWhorter teaches linguistics, Western civilisation, music history, and American studies. He is a CNN.com columnist, a regular contributor to the Atlantic, a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC, and the host of Slate's language podcast, Lexicon Valley. He is also a New York Times best-selling author and TED speaker. The Power of Babel, Our Glorious Bastard Language, Words on the Move, Talking Back, Talking Black, and The Creole Debate are among his linguistic works.