Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (2000) John McWhorter
The Cult of Victimology, Separateness, and Anti-Intellectualism
This manifesto written by black linguist John McWhorter at a mere 34 years of age has both stood the test of time and remains incredibly relevant as his new book Woke Racism is about to debut; it could have been written yesterday. If one cannot see that McWhorter writes out of a love for black people and a desire to actually try to help his fellow people, given the inability to wave racism out of existence with a magic wand, they are being willfully ignorant. There exists a three-pronged cultural set of beliefs and practices in the African-American community that winds up holding the race back in what the author purports to be an act of “self-sabotage.” He argues that the set of beliefs are nothing other than what one would expect to emerge from a formerly oppressed minority all of the sudden thrust into society as it was in the 1960s; these sets of cultural beliefs are “not black people’s fault,” but they are nonetheless holding them back. “Centuries of abasement and marginalization led African Americans to internalize the way they were perceived by the larger society, resulting in a postcolonial inferiority complex. After centuries of degradation, it would have been astounding if African Americans had not inherited one...” “I do not want to brand black American culture “guilty” of its own academic failure, but simply as the locus of it, so that we can more effectively solve the problem. It is not the fault of black Americans that they have inherited Anti-intellectualism from centuries of disenfranchisement, followed by their abrupt inclusion in American life before they had time to shed the internalization of their oppressors debased view of them...” Black beliefs incorporate 1. victimology 2. black separateness and 3. anti-intellectualism. The cult of victimology maintains that all black people are victims, across time and space and class. “I will show that black America is currently caught in certain ideological holding patterns that are today much, much more serious barriers to black well-being than is white racism, and constitute nothing less than a continuous, self-sustaining act of self-sabotage.” McWhorter says the entire black community suffers from an inferiority complex, and that playing the victim feels good, egged on by race hustlers like Al Sharpton. In contrast, MLK, “...was not having a good time” in contrast to Sharpton who “is having parties” and revels in “the cheap thrills of getting to stick it to whitey.” “Insisting that black Americans still lead lives of tragedy forty years after the Civil Rights Movement is a desecration of brave and noble black Americans who gave their lives for us. Martin Luther King did not sit in those jail cells so that black professors could make speeches about the hell they live in and then drive to their $200,000 homes in Lexuses and plan their summer vacations to Antigua.” “...much black academic work is not assessment of facts and testing of theories, but chronicling victimhood and reinforcing community self-esteem.” He points out that the majority of black people are actually middle-class or better, and that most do not live in “the hood”, most do not sell drugs, and most are not poor. He acknowledges the existence of racism, but says that it must not be the primary focus, particularly if one is black and is not in that lower 20% of black people. “Every time a black person outside of a ghetto calls herself oppressed because of scattered inconveniences as opposed to the brute horrors that our ancestors lived with daily, she is saying that Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King didn’t accomplish anything but get some signs taken off some water fountains... That, if you ask me, is sacrilege.” Victimology gives “failure, lack of effort, and even criminality a tacit stamp of approval.” Victimhood moves “from a problem to be solved into an identity in itself.” It does “nothing to enhance the upward mobility” of black people. It involves, “...wielding self-righteous indignation less as a spur to action than as a self-standing action in itself because it detracts attention from the inadequacies we perceive in ourselves by highlighting those of the other.” -- the tattle-tale. Secondarily, black separateness, similar to the Cornel West “closing-ranks" of black people argument (Clarence Thomas confirmation example), means that black people are only interested in things which are “black.” Likewise, one must always have solidarity with other blacks, and cannot pursue those things which black culture looks down upon. It offers “escape from the vicissitudes of making our way into realms so recently closed to us.” This segues into the third prong, anti-intellectualism, where black culture, he argues, does not value education, curiosity for its own sake, and a general affinity for learning. One does not read “white books” like those written by Tolstoy. “Black Anti-intellectualism can often seem like a jolly and even healthy alternative to sterile nerdishness, but it is also, as I have noted, the main reason blacks underperform in school.” Echoing Sowell, there is a disdain for “Acting white” which can lead students who might become otherwise curious to instead become intellectually un-curious in their high school and college years. He points out the insult, “Yeah, well, you’re still black” as if to mean someone can never out-intelligent or achieve their way out of their inferior black status. “The black person who, for one reason or another, sheds cultural blackness is viewed with ire in the black community because it is automatically assumed that the person considers herself not simply different from, but better than, black people.” This would not happen amongst the Jews, he says. Echoing Sowell, he cites numerous personal examples of solidly middle-class African-American college students who continue to disappoint him with their subpar work and substandard effort. He also states this is the case amongst other professors he confers with. He says the way forward means acknowledging that progress has been made; “Because black Americans have obviously made so very much progress since the Civil Rights Act, to adopt victimhood as an identity, a black person, unlike, for example, a Hutu refugee in Central Africa, must exaggerate the extent of his victimhood.”. Thus, “...depicting black American life as an apocalyptic nightmare when except for the quarter who are poor, it would, warts and all, be the envy of most people on the planet, is plain.” (Emphasis mine). He says people keep harping at victimology due to insecurity. There has been “a miraculous social revolution” yet African Americans maintain a “professional pessimism” “out of sync with reality.” “As cancer eats away healthy tissue, this Victimology cult, obsessed with what the Man did last week, expends energy that would be better devoted to moving ahead and figuring out what we are doing to do next week.” He points out that there is no one more American than a black person; they have been here just as long as everyone else; he has no ties to anywhere else, yet he is always considered first and foremost to be “black.” He points out that the black Congressional caucus was a sponsor of crack-crackdowns, which were aimed at “the murderous culture that was decimating blacks young and old in the inner cities.” (In a more recent NYT op-ed, he advocates ending the drug war, acknowledging points made by Michelle Alexander, and that the violence surrounding crack is no longer an issue). He argues, “...in certain areas where certain kinds of crime are rampant, a police officer can, quite reasonably, stop more young black people, especially males, than any other type of person without being racist at all; on the contrary, to do so is often the only logical way to effectively fight crime.” He recounts his own run-ins with the police as a black man, saying, “I felt that what had happened was a sign that the black underclass is America’s greatest injustice, and that I ought take it as a call to action to do as much as I can to help rescue the underclass so that such encounters with the police won’t be necessary.” He questions, “When is the last time Maxine Waters convened a group of thinkers and activists to work out a plan to spark entrepreneurship in South Central...? Instead, Waters chases a mythical CIA crack conspiracy like Ahab pursued Moby Dick... Victimology hinders black leaders from lending significant and creative energy to breaking cultural patterns that those born into them are largely powerless to change. Victimology, focusing attention on pointing fingers at whitey, blinds us to the potential for inner-city residents to take part in changing their lives, thus making failure look much more inevitable than it is.” Of whites, “Often under the impression that they are working on behalf of the oppressed, they fail to realize that they are feeding hatred against themselves, which also in turn discourages blacks from helping themselves to be helped, by infecting them with the idea that they are hunkered behind a barracks against a barrage of outrageous racism.” He points out the injustices suffered by the Chinese and the Jews in America, but that has not begged a lower bar for them. He says black authoritarian parenting styles discourage the development of outside the box thinking, as well as questioning the way things are done. The cultural patterns, “This frame of mind is so deeply rooted in these people’s very souls that to let it go would entail a massive sociopsychological dislocation few human beings are capable of or willing to endure." Change is hard, and people like McWhorter and Kmele Foster are trying to lead the change. “The person who one considers incapable of coping with any hardship whatsoever, who one considers capable of achievement only under ideal conditions, is someone one pities, cares for, and perhaps even likes, but is not someone one respects, and thus is someone one does not truly consider an equal.” “But indulging the resultant chronic self-righteous doubletalk, ironically we are now blocking the integration the Civil Rights Movement sought.” McWhorter rightly points to the lower 20% of black people as suffering in a true state of victimhood, but that it is the role of other blacks to not steep in victimhood, but to pull the race forward with strength and initiative. “Cognitive dissonance and unfocused resentment are handicaps to emotional health and being all that one can be... posture over action... regardless of the historical reasons... doomed to remain America’s poster-child race apart.” McWhorter argues it is time to take off the training wheels of Affirmative Action, as raising the bar is the only thing that will force black achievement to go up.
“This dwelling upon a mere subset of possible views is not deliberate; black culture puts a mental block on even conceiving that other views might have any validity. The black person who takes issue with the basic assumption that white racism is omnipresent in all black lives is met with the torrid indignation rained elsewhere upon the Holocaust denier.”
Black people dismiss any black person who speaks out against affirmative action for any reason. “Such a blithe dismissal of the legitimacy of differing opinions is unexpected from someone trained in the law—unless he is a black American, because Victimology blinds the sufferer to any perspective outside of the Victimologist box.”
“Victimology seduces young black people... an easy road to self-esteem and some cheap thrills...”
“Only when the victimhood one rails against is all but a phantom does one have the luxury of sitting back and enjoying the sweet balm of moral absolution undisturbed.”
“...the black academics and journalists who dwell in Separatism do not know any other way to think... [it] is much more psychologically deep-seated than a mere political pose... it is... difficult to imagine being culturally “black” without.”
“...there is no tighter in-group definition in America today than blackness.”
“Law firms have to choose from dozens of interviewees for summer positions, and if a white person interviewing one of these men decided that she would rather hire the white guy she interviewed that morning because he laughed at her jokes, seemed like he would be more fun to have around, and in general did not give the impression of hating her, this does not make her a racist, it makes her human.” “The two black students were snubbed not because of racist bias, but because of their immersion in a Separatist sense of whites as malevolent aliens.” “people black, white, yellow, and brown would rather not spend time with people who have something against them.”
“...the person who cannot be taken to account is not an equal” of Separatism excusing bad behavior
“I spent a long time resisting acknowledging something that ultimately became too consistent and obvious to ignore, which was that black undergraduates at Berkeley tended to be among the worst students on campus, by any estimation. I tried my very best to chalk up each experience I had to local factors and personalities, but as one episode piled upon another, it got to the point where pretending that there was not a connection among them all would have required a suspension of disbelief beyond my capacity.”
“… I join legions of other black people who have reported in myriad articles and books that they were teased for being “smart.” Reports of the strong tendency for young African Americans to discourage one another from doing well in school are numbingly common both on paper and in oral anecdote form... black children are disengaged form school several years before they even confront tracking.” Other kids get called “Oreos.”
Theresa Saunders, black principal in Berkely, “The peer culture is such that it doesn’t acknowledge or reward academic achievement.”
“... the black person who chooses to truly embrace school has indeed had to all but leave the [black] culture.”
“Namely, a race preferring to reaffirm common wisdom rather than innovate, and distrusting prevision as “white,” is in a poor position to formulate strategies for its own advancement.”
“Good, concerned white people: Do not turn human beings into pawns in a sociological experiment that will not personally affect any of your nearest and dearest."