Wall Street Opinion Journal ARCH PUDDINGTON Thursday, January 5, 2006
John McWhorter ponders how to resolve black America’s crisis.
In the wake of last year’s rioting in France–centered in Muslim neighborhoods near Paris–we Americans may feel tempted, understandably, to congratulate ourselves, noting our superior capacity to bring into the mainstream people of different nationalities, cultures and skin colors. But the self-congratulation should go only so far. Yes, various nonwhite immigrant groups continue to find a place in American society and to do well, but there remains, in more than a few instances, a wide gap–in income and cultural identity–between America’s white and black citizens. Indeed, the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy to have a large, racially distinct underclass where unemployment, criminality and fatherless families are too often the norm.
Why this is so and what we are to do about it is the principal theme of John McWhorter’s splendid “Winning the Race.” In particular, Mr. McWhorter examines why the optimism that defined the years of the civil-rights movement has been replaced by defeatism and alienation in the black community–even as America’s racial attitudes and policies have changed so dramatically for the better.
