African American Self Sabotage - in Depth Analysis of Losing the Race by John Mcwhorter

In Losing the Race, John McWhorter speaks about the “disease of defeatism that has infected black America.” In the novel he explores in detail three aspects of modern day black American cultural mentality, or "cults," that hold African Americans back. First, is the Cult of Victimology. In it, victimhood has been transformed “from a problem to be solved into an identity in itself.” Then there is the Cult of Separatism, in this cult, the uniqueness of our history is used as a justification to exempt us from the rules that govern the rest of American society. While in the Cult of Anti-Intellectualism, an affinity toward education is seen as running counter to an "authentic" black identity. In trying to explain these three cancerous aspects of black American cultural groupthink, McWhorter also addresses how these three “cults” have led African Americans down a destructive path of self-sabotage thus birthing such damages as Affirmative Action and Ebonics. McWhorter believes that blacks are suffering from a “cultural virus” which has made them “their own worst enemies in the struggle for success.”
Booker T. Washington once said, "There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs." This statement exemplifies one of the problems with African Americans. Often individuals will call attention to the hardships that they (or their ancestors) have endured as a means of fostering and nurturing “an unfocused brand of resentment and sense of alienation” rather than for forging solutions. According to McWhorter, Victimology stems from a lethal combination of an “inherited inferiority complex with the privilege of dressing down the former oppressor”, and so African Americans find it necessary to highlight the inadequacies of others in order to detract attention from the

Bibliography: McWhorter, John. H. Losing the Race: Self Sabotage in Black America New York: The Free Press, 2000. Success: Coping with the Burden of ‘Acting White,’” Urban Review 18 (1986) Froomkin, Dan: Affirmative Action Under Attack