Losing the race: self-sabotage in Black America / PDF
Preview Losing the race: self-sabotage in Black America /
NEW YORK r/MES BESTSELLER SING THE RACE SELF-SABOT^E inBLACKAMEllbA "Losing the Race is a sincere call to face the unpleasant truths behind black underachieve- ment. If these debilitating trends are ever to be reversed, [McWhorter'sl call must bft heeded." -Wall Street Journal With a new afterword by the atjtho i ^"<^ 1 BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY Copley Square MA 021 16 Boston, • - %' 1,.. ... Losing THE Race Also byJohn H. McWhorter The Missing Spanish Creoles: Recovering the Birth ofPlantation Contact Languages Spreading the Word: Language and Dialect inAmerica Towards a New Model ofCreole Genesis The Word on the Street: Fact and FableAboutAmerican English Losing THE Race SELF-SABOTAGE IN BLACK AMERICA McWhorter John H. Perennial An ImprintofHarperCoW'msPHblishers Ahardcovereditionofthisbookwaspublishedin2000byTheFreePress,adivisionofSimon & Schuster, Inc. Itis herereprintedbyarrangementwith Simon & Schuster, Inc. losiNGTHE RACE. Copyright©2000, 2001 byJohn McWhorter.Allrightsreserved. Printed intheUnitedStatesofAmerica. Nopartofthisbookmaybeusedorreproducedinanyman- nerwhatsoeverwithout written permission except in thecase ofbriefquotationsembodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1230Av- enue oftheAmericas, NewYork, NY 10020. HarperCollinsbooks maybepurchasedforeducational, business, orsalespromotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, NewYork, NY 10022. First Perennialedition published 2001. Designed byLesliePhillips LibraryofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McWhorter,John H. Losingthe race self-sabotage in BlackAmerica/John H. McWhorter. : p. cm. Originallypublished: NewYork The Free Press, 2000. : Includes bibliographical references (p. ) andindex. ISBN 0-06-093593-6 (pb) — — — 1.Afro-American—s Psychology. 2.Afro-—Americans Socialconditions 1975-. 3.Afro-Americans Education. 4. Success Psychologicalaspects. 5. Self-defeating behavior. I. Title. E185.625 .M38 2001 305.896'073—dc21 2001024092 02 03 04 05 /rrd 109 8 7 6 5 4 2 Contents Preface vii 1 The Cult ofVictimology 1 2 The Cult ofSeparatism 50 3 The Cult ofAnti-intellectualism 82 4 The Roots ofthe Cult ofAnti-intellectualism 137 5 African-American Self-Sabotage inAction: TheAffirmative-Action Debate 64 1 6 African-American Self-Sabotage inAction: The Ebonics Controversy 184 7 How Can We Save theAfrican-American Race? 21 Afterword 263 Notes 277 Acknowledgments 285 Index 287 Digitized by the Internet Archive 2013 in http://archive.org/details/losingraceselfsaOOmcwh_0 Preface In January 1999, David Howard, the white ombudsman to the newly elected mayorofWashington, D.C.,AnthonyWilliams, casuallysaid in a budget meeting with two coworkers *'I will have to be niggardlywith this fund because it's not going to be a lot ofmoney." Niggardly is a rather esoteric word meaning "stingy" Its resemblance to the racial slur nigger is accidental. It has been used in English since the MiddleAges, when black people ofany kind were unknown in Eng- land, and had been imported to the country by Scandinavian Viking in- vaders in the 800s, in whose tongue nig meant *'miser." Howard's coworkers were a white person and a black person. The black coworker immediately stormed out ofthe room and would not lis- ten to Howard's attempt to explain. Shortly thereafter, Mayor Williams curtlyaccepted Howard's resignation, his official position beingthat in a predominantly black city with a history of racial tension, Howard's choice ofwords was grounds for dismissal, akin to being ''caught smok- ingin a refinerythat resulted in an explosion." Blacktalkradiowas abuzz with indignation, almost unanimously in support ofWilliams's decision. A former president of the National Bar Association, a mostly black group, was uncompelled by the fact that the word is not a racial slur, fuming, "Do we really know where the Norwegians got the word?" Meanwhile, David Howard was contrite, considering his dismissal de- served. "You have to be able to see things from the otherperson's shoes," he explained, "and I did not do that." Niggardly is, to be sure, an awkward little word. Its chance resem- blance to niggeris such that manyofus might quitejustifiably choose to avoid it —in favor of stingy, parsimonious, or penurious. There are words like that the original meaning of horny was "rough or calloused," and one formerly had this word at one's disposal in describing, among other things, voice quality. In the twentieth century the word happens to have acquired the slang meaningof"sexuallyaroused," though, and as such it is now gracious to avoid using it in its original meaning. Yet it was difficult not to ask whether a man deserved to be cast into unemployment because ofthis innocent and passingfauxpas, especially VIII PREFACE • a man who had dedicated his career to a troubled, predominantly black administration, and who had never shown any sign of racist bias. For many black observers, however, this was beside the point. **How would anotherethnic group react ifyou came close to the linewith aphrase in- appropriate to that group?" asked the former National Bar Association president. That rhetorical question cut through the whole issue in its way, be- cause in fact, there is no other ethnic group in the United States today whose sensibilities would lead to someone's summary dismissal for a mere unintended allusion to aracial epithetapplyingto them. IfHoward had made the equivalent slip-up in aJewish, Asian, Latino, or even gay association, he would have been dutifully taken aside and informed that such awordwas not the most felicitous choice and that hewould be best advised not to use it in the future. He would then have been allowed to continue in his efforts to do good work. Whatever our opinions on what happened to David Howard, only in anAfrican-American context is the image ofa man cleaningout his desk for such an evanescent little flub even processible. In other words, the firing ofDavid Howard was "a black thing." Like Howards gaffe, the niggardly episode in itself was a minor flap, which will surely be all but forgotten by the time this book is in your hands. Yet it was symbolic of larger things, whose significance comes through in a thought exercise. In the 1970s, an anecdote used to circulate in which a man is killed in a car accident but his son lives and is taken to a hospital where the sur- — geon says, "I can't operate on him he's my son." Most people were more likely to puzzle over how the boy's father could be both the doctor and dead than to even consider that the surgeon was in fact the boy's mother, and thus a woman. Now, keeping that in mind, imagine if a Martian came to our planet and asked to interview a representative member of several leading na- tions, and the representative ofthe United States was chosen by lottery, and that the person who came up was anAfricanAmerican. The fact is that for most ofus, this would require the same polite ad- justment needed to spontaneously imagine a female surgeon. We know that, theoretically, black Americans are "Americans." However, its a rather intellectual point for both blacks and whites. When writers like Shelby Steele and Stanley Crouch wax eloquent about black people be- ingAmericans and perhaps even the mostAmerican ofAmericans, they
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