Book Review:

Lino A. Graglia, Do Racial Preferences Cause Rather Than Remedy the Black Academic-Performance Gap? 80 TEXAS L. REV. 933 (2002) (reviewing John H.  McWorther, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (2000)).

Abstract:

Losing the Race argues that that road to equality begins with ending racial preferences because the exemption from competition infects the psychology of a race: the academic incentives of blacks are blunted. Professor Graglia praises McWorther’s claim that racism is an obsolete explanation for the black/white academic performance gap as insightful, candid, and courageous.  While expressing empirical reservations about the ability of the blunted- incentives theory to fully explain the gap, Graglia asserts that McWorhter has rendered an extremely valuable service by insisting that nurturing victimology, separatism, and anti-Intellectualism present major obstacles to black advancement. Graglia finds implausible the claim that the performance gap was once partly attributable to racism and opposes McWorther’s defense of racial preferences in higher education at an earlier time.  The review also faults McWorther’s treatment of fellow commentators and alternative theories.  Graglia condemns the “unsupported” attacks on The Bell Curve authors and their open discussion of the possibility of a genetic component in the performance gap.