abstract:Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America is a 2000 book by American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter in which he argues that not external racial prejudice and discrimination, but elements of black culture are more responsible for the social problems faced by black Americans several decades after the Civil rights movement. Specifically, McWhorter points to anti-intellectualism, separatism, and a self-perpetuated identity of victimhood as factors limiting black Americans as a group.