Winning the Race

John McWhorter's Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America follows his earlier book Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black Americawhich I read last year .

I picked up Winning the Race expecting McWhorter to offer solutions to the problems stated in his first book. While there are some implicit in the book, this book continues to identify and explain the problems McWhorter sees which hold African American's back. He's very logical and thorough as he picks apart ideas he doesn't agree with so the book's a good model for argumentation, and boy do people need that. He writes with intelligence and style, and that's always welcome. Yet I suppose I wanted more hope, say a program that will change things, but that's not here. I realize my hope was naive and that to a large degree change can come from people who read the book and decide to change themselves. Yet how many kids dropping out of high school, for example, will pick this up at the library?

This is an intelligent, novel book, but if you've read Losing the Race you probably don't need to read this book as well.