Losing the [understanding of the importance of] race, evaluating the significance of race and...

Professor John H. McWhorter inhabits a strange world. Professor McWhorter, one of the leading linguistics scholars in this country, first came to national prominence in the Ebonics debate of the late 1990s. He argued the controversial-but understandable1-position that Oakland schools should make no

accommodation for children who came from homes where "proper" English was not spoken.2 Losing the Race provides a fully developed view of Professor McWhorter's world: it is one of a United States in which African Americans have full opportunity to succeed, unhindered by legally sanctioned segregation. Their income approaches that of whites; they are rarely the victims of police or other state-sponsored discrimination and, when they are, those incidents are usually minor. Yet, McWhorter argues, African Americans are not achieving as much as they could because of a pervasive cult of "victimology" and "separatism," and a pervasive ethic of anti-intellectualism. You might summarize his world in the sentence: IMAGE FORMULA 6

Racism is not holding us back, we are holding us back.3 This essay discusses McWhorter's argument in Losing the Race and addresses the implications of that argument for the growing debate over reparations for slavery.

I. The Structure of McWhorter's Argument

Losing the Race begins with three chapters that establish the basic premises: that there is a pervasive cult of victimology among African Americans; that there is a cult of separatism; and that African American culture is anti-intellectual. A brief fourth chapter, which discusses the supposed origins of the culture of anti-intellectualism, serves as a bridge to the remainder of the book: two chapters applying those three premises to the Ebonics and affirmative-action movements, and a final chapter with a grandiose title but simple plan: "How can we save the African-American Race?" (His answer is to eliminate affirmative action.)

The first chapter, on the cult of victimology, is probably the most important. McWhorter makes the case that African Americans are generally being treated well and that they have constructed in their minds the myth that they are victims of a racist "white America."4 Because how we view African Americans' achievement today is central to where we go from here, I will spend some time on his argument. McWhorter breaks the cult of victimology into what he refers to with disdain as "articles of faith." There are seven "articles of faith," what I call straw arguments:5

1. Most black people are poor;

2. Black people get paid less than whites for the same job;

3. There is an epidemic of racist arson of black churches;

4. The U.S. government funneled crack into South Central Los Angeles;

5. The number of black men in prison is due to a racist justice system;

6. The police stop-and-frisk more black people than whites because of IMAGE FORMULA 11

racism; and

7. Police brutality against black people reveals the eternity of racism.

McWhorter is selective in his choice of straw arguments; not surprisingly, some of them are selected to make his opponents look foolish. There is relatively little discussion these days that the CIA funneled crack into Los Angeles.6 Given this country's shameful history of mistreatment of African Americans, which includes experimentation on poor, sick African Americans,7 as well as the conditionning of public medical assistance on sterilization,8 it is understandable that many might beleive that the givernment infused crack into a minority community. But to say that it represents one of the "articles of faitj [that are] carefully taught and fiercely represented in the black community" is stretching the case.9

All of McWhorter's claims deserve close scrutiny; in review I shall focus on three. beginning with two of his most serious contentions: that African American income is comparable to white income (and the closely related contention that African Americans are now doing well economically); and that African Americans are incarcerated at rates comparable to their commission of crimes. IMAGE FORMULA 15

A. Income Data

McWhorter makes two arguments about the economic status of African Americans. First, he argues that the majority of African Americans live above the poverty line.10 This is certainly true; according to the most recent U.S. Census Department data, the poverty rate for African Americans is at its lowest point ever: 22.1%.11 More than three-quarters of African Americans live above the poverty line.12 Of course, that also means that nearly one in four African Americans lives in poverty-even according to the narrow U.S. Census Bureau standards. Children have it even worse: 30.9% of African American children live in poverty.13 By comparison, a significantly lower percentage of non-Hispanic whites (7.5%) live in poverty; 9.4% of nonHispanic white children live in poverty.14

I find it hard to see how reasonable minds might differ on whether these statistics reveal a crisis that needs serious attention. Of course, things are getting better, as McWhorter is quick to point out,15 but that is by no means a reason to stop doing more now.

McWhorter's second argument is that the median African American household income is comparable to that of whites. Here there is another one of the sleights of hand that make significant differences appear smaller. The median income for African American families in 2000 was $30,439; for nonHispanic whites, it was $45,904, 50% higher than for African Americans.16 McWhorter argues that the appropriate comparison is not the median income of African American and white families, but the median income for twoparent African American and white families. The median income for African American married-couple families ($50,749) and for non-Hispanic, white married-couple families ($62,109) is closer together. 17 While two-parent IMAGE FORMULA 18IMAGE FORMULA 19

African American families may be approaching the income of two-parent non-Hispanic white families (although the median income of two-parent nonHispanic white families is still more than 20% higher than two-parent African American families), I am unclear as to why that should be the appropriate measure. McWhorter uses this comparison to argue that African Americans are paid about the same as whites for the same work. Of course the data cannot speak to that story because they do not control for type of work performed. I suspect he means to argue that there is relatively little income gap between similarly situated African Americans and whites.18

If we take a picture of the economic status of African Americans compared with whites, the data that are important-and poignantly telling-- are the overall median income figures. The most recent data disclose that the median income of all African American households is only 66% that of nonHispanic white households.19 This gap might not be the result of overt racism, but why should that matter? They are indicia of a vast problem that needs attention. They need attention because they raise an equal protection problem: that African Americans are suffering from disparate impact. Even if there were no longer problems with overt racial discrimination by the government, there are problems with the continuing effects of centuries of state-sponsored and state-permitted discrimination. A more expansive-and humane-interpretation of the meaning of equal protection would find such gross disparities in outcome a basis for legislative action.20 IMAGE FORMULA 21

B. Incarceration Rates

McWhorter also questions whether African Americans are incarcerated at a rate higher than is justified based on the number of crimes they commit.21 At points he admits that the war on drugs, with its stiff sentences and mandatory minimums, is an area in need of reform,22 but he concludes that the harsh penalties meted out for drug offenses cannot in themselves be racist, because the "Congressional Black Caucus vigorously supported" the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986.23

David Sklansky's 1995 article in the Stanford Law Review presents a stark portrait of the differential impact of America's war on drugs on the black community.24 Nearly half of all federal sentences are for drug offenses, and many of them are controlled by the mandatory minimums established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986.25 The Act established mandatory minimums of ten years in jail for drug "kingpins," also known as "major traffickers."26 Those with only 50 grams of crack cocaine (instead of 5000 grams of powder cocaine) faced a mandatory ten years in prison. Those who possessed only 5 grams of crack cocaine (instead of 50 grams of powder cocaine) faced five years.27 Crack cocaine is a drug that is found more frequently among blacks than whites. So even if one accepted that blacks are imprisoned at the rate that their commission of crimes suggests, they are imprisoned for substantially longer than whites who commit offenses of similar severity.

But the problem is not limited to the crack cocaine differential, where the burden of mandatory sentencing falls disproportionately on African Americans. Because of differential enforcement patterns, blacks are IMAGE FORMULA 24

imprisoned at a rate greater than they deserve given the offenses they commit. Police commonly look in African American neighborhoods-and at African Americans-with greater scrutiny than they do in white neighborhoods or at whites.28 The cumulative effect of differential enforcement patterns is that blacks receive greater sentences because they have more contacts with the police, and consequently have a greater likelihood of conviction and a longer criminal history.29

I think there is substantial question about the validity of McWhorter's argument that life is getting much better for African Americans, but whatever one makes of his argument on that score, the next part of his monograph turns to a separate set of questions: how do we explain the difference between African American and white performance in school and in the economy?

C. Explaining Differential Academic Performance

The second and third chapters, following the heading of the first chapter, are called "The Cult of Separatism" and "The Cult of Antiintellectualism." Together, these chapters posit the controversial theses that black culture is obsessed with separating itself from white culture, and that such separatism has led to, and is part of, an anti-intellectual culture among African Americans. He employs a few examples of outrageous behavior, such as the retaliatory beatings of innocent people during the Rodney King riot of 1992, to illustrate that African American culture is antiestablishment,30 and that somehow the alienation of African American IMAGE FORMULA 28

culture from white, establishment culture is discouraging blacks from striving for academic and economic achievement.

It is the lengthy third chapter, "The Cult of Anti-intellectualism" that most fully develops the connection between black culture and educational achievement. The chapter takes up the now commonplace argument that black culture is openly anti-intellectual, and it traces that supposed antiintellectualism to black culture-to a disdain for white culture and the educational achievement that it represents. This is in many ways the most disturbing part of the book because it is the most pessimistic-and the most dangerous. Where the first chapter was too optimistic-the gap between black and white economic performance is not narrowing to the extent McWhorter thinks-the third chapter improperly labels black culture a barrier to academic excellence and achievement. It is a pessimistic assessment of black culture based on little more than the author's anecdotes. It is also an open attack on the idea that African Americans can benefit from affirmative action.

Here, as elsewhere in the book, McWhorter has substantial company in his argument. Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom articulated much of the argument-in more detail-in their 1997 book, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible.31 Losing the Race also tracks other recent books, such as those by Shelby Steele.32 In short, we've heard most of this before. What's new is the greater amplitude of the argument that African Americans have brought their problems on themselves.

1. The Black-White Test-Score Gap and the Nature of African American Attitudes Toward Academic Achievement.-The pessimistic, self-- blaming thesis is stark: "As the common cold is caused by the rhinovirus, black students do so poorly in school decade after decade not because of racism, funding, class, [lack of] parental education, etc., but because of a IMAGE FORMULA 31

virus of Anti-intellectualism that infects the black community."33 For McWhorter, the gap on standardized tests between blacks and whites is the result of what he believes is an anti-intellectual ethic among African Americans.34 Yet, just as the income differences have narrowed, the gap in test scores is closing, though we hear little about that in Losing the Race.35

The problem of explaining the difference in test scores between African American and white students is exceedingly complex. The most recent comprehensive study of the black-white gap in test scores, edited by the distinguished education scholars Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, explores the theories that have been advanced over the last several decades, including cultural, genetic, and class differences. Jencks, Phillips, and their colleagues identify a series of factors, including parents' educational achievement, family income, parents' attitudes toward education, and the educational achievement of teachers and their expectations for students.36 The authors explicitly discount single-causation theories like McWhorter's, which lays the blame on black culture and its supposed fear of "acting white."37 IMAGE FORMULA 33IMAGE FORMULA 34

Yet McWhorter treats us to an extended discussion of the supposedly anti-intellectual nature of African American culture. Much of the argument is based on anecdotes from his years of teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. So we have pages of testimony about his experience teaching students of various races in classes offered in the linguistics and the African American studies departments. They are engaging stories about apathetic students, whose emotional state or mental capacity or something else (perhaps arrogance or belief in their own entitlements) prevents them from performing even minimally adequately.38 In one of the most surprising statements in the entire book, McWhorter claims that, "in my years of teaching, I have never had a student... turn in a test that made me wonder how she could have attended class and done so badly, who was not African American."39 Wow. That's an extraordinary record. I could tell similar stories about truly incompetent students, though they would not have McWhorter's racial tinge. Indeed, virtually every professor with whom I have spoken on this issue has similar stories-and they all cut across racial lines.40 lines. IMAGE FORMULA 36

So there is a great deal made of the argument that African American culture is anti-intellectual. This theme has attracted substantial public attention. Yet the social scientists who have looked at this issue seriously have been unable to locate hard evidence that African American culture is, on average, any more anti-intellectual than the rest of American culture.41 It is sad, I suppose, that anti-intellectualism has been such a dominant motif of mainstream American culture that one of this country's most distinguished historians, Richard Hofstatder, made his name by studying antiintellectualism in America.42

2. Mischaracterization of Black Culture.-Perhaps McWhorter's worst offense is his mischaracterization of the evidence surrounding the nature of black culture. He tries to harness icons like Ralph Ellison and claim the mantle of civil rights leaders of previous generations.43 Yet, Ellison and McWhorter have little in common. Ellison recognized that black culture made unique contributions to America-indeed, much of Invisible Man is about ways that there can be a black culture distinct from American culture-that black culture is more than what slavery has done to American blacks. Invisible Man demonstrates how the history of discrimination has important consequences.44 The very people McWhorter claims as his intellectual predecessors-the leaders of the civil rights movement earlier in this century-recognized that it was possible to have a separate black culture. They also recognized the importance of calls for studying African American history and for seeking justice in the courts and at the ballot box. Yet McWhorter dismisses efforts at reconstructing African American history IMAGE FORMULA 39

because, in his view, they "fruitlessly mischannel our mental energies and thus debilitate the [black] race from within."45

Just as the Invisible Man made a bucket of paint whiter by mixing black enamel graduate into it,46 black culture has taught mainstream American culture much, in areas such as music, literature, technology, and, especially, law. One of the unrecognized contributions of the Harlem Renaissance is the idea of equal treatment it infused into American culture and ultimately into American law. A series of editorials in W.E.B. DuBois's The Crisis, for instance, taught Americans about the inconsistency between American rhetoric, which told how we fought a world war for freedom and democracy, and American actions, which denied even basic rights to black men accused of crime.47 These fundamental ideas about equal treatment then emerged (slowly) in a series of United States Supreme Court decisions. Decisions like Buchanan v. Warley48 and Moore v. Dempsey49 built upon the equal treatment ideal discussed in The Crisis.50 As African Americans taught white IMAGE FORMULA 41

America the meaning of equal protection, we as a nation progressed. That progression-and I suspect further development in equal protection law that is coming-is possible because of the brilliant arguments developed in African American culture.51

Losing the Race, then, presents a typically conservative argument: McWhorter admits that at one time things were bad and needed changing. (He even admits that some things-such as the war on drugs and police brutality-are still in need of change).52 But, he argues, we have left the bad old days of segregation behind: Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964,53 the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and some African American movie stars and performers have changed the composition of America. African Americans are just a few steps away from the mountain top and their own cultural attitudes, which reflect a fear that they cannot succeed, prevent them from reaching the top.54 Significant disparities in income do not exist, so if African Americans just worked hard they would get ahead. We even have the typical conservative mantra, said with apparent glee: "Life Isn't Perfect!"55 But racism is gradually disappearing.56 Even the IMAGE FORMULA 43

way the debate is phrased belittles the cause. Given that the argument is so predictable, it should not surprise anyone that he has a predictable solution.

II. A Solution?

After such a sustained attack on black culture, one might expect that McWhorter would have a grand plan to rescue it from the depths to which he thinks it has sunk. Although he promises that he is going to provide a way out, he offers precious little. It is simply this: end affirmative action. Nearly one-third of black children live in poverty and Professor McWhorter says contemptuously to his Berkeley students and colleagues: end affirmative IMAGE FORMULA 47

action. That's the plan, which has virtually nothing to do with those blacks who live in poverty. What, one may ask, does it offer them?

Isn't there a more humane and more effective response for people who have suffered for generations from state-sponsored or at least statesanctioned discrimination in education of all places? Hasn't modern social science, with all the knowledge it has accumulated, devised a better plan than telling the thirty percent of black children who live in poverty that they can succeed if their parents would just set high enough standards for them?

I wonder what purpose McWhorter's book serves in his own mind. I suspect that his scholarship-as is that of many of us-is autobiographical. It is his own attempt to raise his self esteem, to separate him from slavery, to feel good about how far he has gone in life. Professor McWhorter is at the top of his profession; his record of scholarship is the envy of most academics, as is his position as a tenured professor at one of the world's finest universities. Throughout the book are references to how far he, and African Americans generally, have come. Viewed from that perspective, Losing the Race is a positive, affirming volume. It reminds us-as have African American intellectuals for decades-how much African Americans have achieved, in the face of unbelievable hardship. In some ways, McWhorter is the intellectual descendant of those like Ralph Ellison, who celebrated African Americans as more than the sum of their oppression. But do not be deceived. Much of McWhorter's argument relates (at least in my reading) to his pride. He is careful to point out that he comes from a "solidly middle-class home";57 he sees himself as having no relationship with slavery;58 his anger toward affirmative action is partly directed toward how it IMAGE FORMULA 49

has robbed him of the right to say he made it on his own.59 And the appeals he makes are often to things like pride and dignity.60 His conclusion strikes me as a protest against how he has been characterized, rather than about the plight of the one-fifth of African Americans who live in poverty today.

III. Implications of Losing the Race for Reparations for Slavery

There are bigger issues embedded in Losing the Race than the specifics of how black culture operates. This is really a book about affirmative action. And, as such, it is the latest skirmish in the battle over the Great Society and the American welfare state.61 This is, to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson's statement about the abolition of slavery, a debate about property and no-- property, about redistribution of wealth or maintenance of the present distribution.62 Where you stand on that debate will determine how you view IMAGE FORMULA 53

Losing the Race. The fundamental question of Losing the Race is how the government and our society ought to respond to the racial inequality that exists in our country. Some, like McWhorter, think the appropriate response is to tell people to stand on their own, without government assistance.

In a review of Randall Robinson's recent book urging reparations, The Debt,63 McWhorter extended the debate to reparations for slavery.64 Not surprisingly, he found the case wanting. Robinson and others who argue in favor of reparations for slavery point to more than two centuries of legalized slavery in English-speaking North America, when African Americans faced outright inhumane and immoral treatment of the worst sort, received little compensation for their labor, and had no control over their destinies. But the sad legacy of slavery did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation or even the Thirteenth Amendment. For much of the twentieth century-until cases like Shelley v. Kraemer 65 and Brown v. Board of Education 66 and federal legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964-African Americans continued to face state-imposed barriers to equal treatment in schools, employment, and housing, as well as state-sanctioned private discriminatory conduct.

In response to the growing awareness of the role of governmentsponsored mistreatment, reparations advocates like Robinson, Congressman John Conyers, and law professors Charles Ogletree, Robert Westley, and Ibrahim Gassama, are urging a number of policies. First, they seek study of the role of slavery and its effects. Second, they seek a renewed commitment to social programs to help address the continuing legacy of slavery.67 Few speak of direct cash payments to survivors.68 McWhorter interprets the case IMAGE FORMULA 55

for reparations as part of "just another fevered expression of the misguided ideology that the radical left foisted upon black America in the 1960s, a cluster of the beliefs that continue to hobble our progress today."69

In his review of The Debt, McWhorter advances the familiar arguments from Losing the Race that African Americans have made substantial progress since the early 1960s and that racism is declining, particularly in popular culture.70 He also builds on the familiar theme of black self-image-and particularly on the role that Africa plays in constructing that self-image. McWhorter seems little interested in the African heritage of African Americans, and he gives an unduly large role to the barbarous nature of African culture by emphasizing that Africans sold one another into slavery (without noting that it was Europeans who provided the market incentives for destructive wars and capture of slaves).71

Likewise, McWhorter describes a rebirth of interest in African American culture and history, in contrast to Robinson's portrait of an America that has historically ignored African Americans' contributions. As in Losing the Race, there is a frustrating reliance on anecdotes.72 The fact that African American history is currently one of the most vibrant fields in academia does little to alter the balance sheet.73 Just because W.E.B. DuBois's stunning critique of scholarship on the Reconstruction Era was IMAGE FORMULA 57

published in the 1930s74 we should not ignore how history has been taught-- or the way that it is remembered. He also points to other "little things." In March 2001, the Scientific American printed a notation from its March 1, 1851 issue under the heading "open sore": "The population of the United States amounts to 20,067,720 free persons, and 2,077,034 slaves."75 Although the Scientific American's recognition that nearly ten percent of the United States population were slaves in 1850 is admirable, I find it amusing that McWhorter considers that throwaway line suggestive of "a spontaneous consciousness of our country's racial history."76 That story cannot begin to demonstrate that the injustice of slavery-or its aftermath-has been recognized and corrected.77 Like many others who oppose reparations, McWhorter raises a number of issues designed to trivialize the discussion, such as asking who will receive direct cash payments, despite the fact that few reparations advocates speak in terms of direct payments.78 He also asks such stock questions as why should Americans who are descended from those who arrived after slavery ended (or those whose ancestors never owned slaves) have to pay?79

The next step in the debate over reparations-indeed, over race in America more generally-I am afraid will be for the victors to depart the field, citing McWhorter's work as further proof that the problems are of African Americans' own making. Few will pay attention to his apparent concession that at least limited reparations are appropriate.80 Once again, as has happened so often in the past, the losers wil be left to pick up the pieces for themselves. IMAGE FORMULA 59

IV. Conclusion

McWhorter attributes the gap in equality to African American culture of anti-intellectualism, which he attributes in turn to affirmative action. He cites no scientific study that finds African American culture any more antiintellectual than white culture. But even if African American culture were anti-intellectual, there is the question of how we as a nation should respond. The answer McWhorter gives is simple: end affirmative action. This is a central question of the affirmative-action debate: does providing assistance make the people receiving assistance less likely to work hard or does it make those receiving assistance more likely to want (and be able) to participate in the economic, the social, and the educational opportunities that would almost surely be otherwise closed to them? Closely linked to the question of how best to promote educational achievement is the question whether something should be done to help redistribute society's resources.81

There are some costs of affirmative action, as well as benefits. Some of the costs come in the form of political opposition it engenders; other costs come when those whose interests are not favored are denied admission or a job in preference to those whose interests are favored. The legal manifestation of that opposition is the impending undoing of affirmative action.82

There are, perhaps, more effective and potentially less politically charged ways of achieving social equality in this era when affirmative action is declining. Community-based reparations, which seek to repair past discrimination and provide better educational opportunities for children, hold out the promise of moving us towards equality-and towards closing the gap in educational achievement.83 A program of reparations can be justified on IMAGE FORMULA 63

several different grounds: a theory of community-based harm, whereby the community would return benefits for centuries of under- or un-compensated labor;84 on a theory of invoking the federal judicial branch's enormous injunctive power to make people whole;85 or perhaps reparations are best viewed as fulfilling the promise made after the Civil War of providing meaningful help in rising from slavery. While we hear much about forty acres and a mule, the serious discussion about reparations after the Civil War was whether slaveholders would receive compensation for their loss of property. And, in Washington, D.C., they did.86 This is ultimately an argument about property; it will be difficult. Moreover, because it requires expenditure of money and a break from the past, there are strong forces against reparations. What else would one expect, for, as a proponent of the abolition of the property requirement in voting asked in the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1829, "When were men in power ready for reform?"87

We are certainly a ways from such reparations now. The Civil Rights Era seems to have ended, and we are in a period when scholars are following-and giving weight to-the popular belief that racism, and even IMAGE FORMULA 66

its legacy, are things of the past. At some point, I hope we will see the inaccuracies of that story. Then we will view McWhorter's account as a part of that misunderstanding. But for the time being we are left to struggle to find a way for "the future to deny the past."88

The costs of a meaningful program of reparations-and racial justice-- will be colossal, though so will the benefits. Much of our work now requires dealing not with overt racism (though some of it remains), but with the relics of centuries of state-sponsored racism. This is not the easy moral case of rooting out overt racism. It will not be accomplished by a single act of Congress or a single executive order. It is now a battle against apathy and against the evil of neglect. It is important that we care for the thirty percent89 of black children who live in poverty and make sure that they have opportunities for advancement. Reparations, if carefully crafted, hold out the hope of accomplishing two important, elusive goals: correcting an injustice and building something positive for the future. Maybe those goals are still attainable.

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

LOSING THE RACE: SELF-SABOTAGE IN BLACK AMERICA. By John H. McWhorter.? New York: The Free Press, 2000. Pp. xv, 285. $24.00.^^

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Reviewed by Alfred L. Brophy*

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

^ Professor of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley.