''Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America'' is a 2000 book by American linguist and political commentator

John McWhorter John Hamilton McWhorter V (; born October 6, 1965) is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. He is currently associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches Amer ...

, in which he argues that some elements of black culture are more responsible than external racial prejudice and discrimination for the social problems faced by black Americans several decades after the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

. Specifically, McWhorter points to

anti-intellectualism Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical, politically ...

, separatism, and a self-perpetuated identity of victimhood as factors limiting them as a group. The book was a ''New York Times'' bestseller and received mixed reactions. McWhorter considers it the work that first made him known to larger audiences and contributed to the perception of him being a conservative commentator.

References

External links

Presentation by WcWhorter on ''Losing the Race'' at Marcus Books, Oakland, California, August 18, 2000

Presentation by WcWhorter on ''Losing the Race'' at the Independent Institute, Oakland, California, March 20, 2001
2000 non-fiction books African-American culture Black studies publications Free Press (publisher) books {{AfricanAmerican-book-stub