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Volume 80
Book
Review Colloquium: Alfred
L. Brophy, Losing the [Understanding of the Inportance of]
Race: Evaluating the Significance of Race and the Utility
of Reparations, 80 TEXAS L. REV. 911 (2002) (reviewing John
H. McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
(2000)).
Abstract: In
Losing the [Understanding
of the Importance of] Race, Professor Brophy reviews
Professor John H. McWhorter’s book Losing
the Race:
Self-Sabotage in Black America.
McWhorter labels outdated the idea that racism is the
root of the gap in academic performance between African American
and white students, and argues that this gap is due instead to a
persevering black culture which embraces the concepts of “victimology,”
“separatism,” and “anti-intellectualism.”
McWhorter’s solution to this continuing societal
problem is to end affirmative action.
Professor
Brophy looks to income data, incarceration rates, and
differential academic performance in positing that McWhorter’s
view of the world is unrealistic.
In recognizing that there are both costs and benefits of
affirmative action, Brophy posits that a more effective and
potentially less politically charged way of seeking social
equality is community-based reparations.
Although reparations present the hope of correcting
social injustice as well as building on the future, Brophy notes
that society is a long way from implementing such a system. |