The next writer I would like to address is the youngest we have examined so far. Dr. Sowell was born in 1930 and Dr. Steele was born in 1946. John McWhorter is the first of my subjects who is younger than myself. But, even as the youngest member of my growing pantheon, he is in no way subordinate, in academic credentials or in the passion of his beliefs. As has been my habit, I will leave certification of his credentials to a more thorough online site. I will merely summarize to say that Dr. McWhorter has a doctorate in linguistics, speaks Spanish, French and German fluently and has a "decent working knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Swedish and Hebrew. Clearly, Dr. McWhorter is an exceptional scholar.

As for his contributions to the public discourse, I will rely - by way of introduction - two anecdotes from his youth that will give you a sounding of the depth to which the waters of his soul flow:

Exhibit A:

From a speech covered in the Washington Post, "McWhorter says his "very first" childhood memory is of being surrounded by a group of black neighbors, none older than 8, who demanded that he spell the word "concrete." Although he was only 3 or 4 at the time, he spelled it correctly, only to be rewarded by being smacked upside his head by a little girl while the others laughed and egged her on." ... Not only that, he was also a bit of a nerd. He still cringes as he recounts the time his mother virtually pushed him into a neighborhood football game, where he quickly became a source of ridicule when he did not know which way to run with the ball. He also remembers hiding his strong interest in school from his neighborhood peers for fear that it would only prompt further derision."

Exhibit B:

In an interview with Susy Hansen published on Salon.com, Dr. McWhorter was asked about the "one instance where you were called a nigger." Here is his rely and his answer to Ms. Hansen’s follow-up questions:

"The one time anyone's ever called me nigger -- I can't believe that anyone would look at a story like this and think that it hurt them -- involved a guy who lived in an apartment near mine. A low-rent apartment complex just after I was a graduate student. He was fighting with his girlfriend at around two or three in the morning. Loud. I came out of my apartment and asked him to quiet down. He was a drunk and we got into an argument and it ended with him turning around and saying, "Just a f#$%#%* nigger anyway." And I shut the door.

I know that I'm supposed to have shut the door and felt tears rolling hotly down my cheeks and thrown myself onto the couch and cried and called a friend. No. To be graphic, he was what we would call formally a working-class gentleman. Informally, he was a cracker. He was white trash. He had baggy, dirty blue jeans hanging off of his flat old butt. He wasn't somebody who I looked up to in any way. And we have an argument. I'm pretty good at arguing and what he ends up with is to call up that word. Frankly, I don't think he was a racist, because before that when he was sober we always had gotten along very well. I don't think he was burning crosses on anyone's lawn. That was his way of having something to say because I'm more articulate than him. And higher in life."

So what is a racist then?

"A racist is someone who hates black people because they are black and/or acts against the welfare of black people. That person today is increasingly rare. More to the point, as often as not that person can't have any effect on your life. So what's the big deal? I know that sounds naive, but if you have a basic ego, how much can that matter? We're taught to fall to pieces whenever there's a "racist." Why?"

Quite a proud, strong, self-assured man, I think you would agree. The first anecdote - "the spelling beatdown" underlies one of the main theses of Dr. McWhorter’s books. To wit: While racism does still exist, it is no longer the primary chain to the necks of Black America. What lies as one of the clearest factors in black underachievement (as measured from everything from SAT scores to poverty levels) is a misrepresentation of what it means to be "authentically black."

Black people have, in my interpretation of Dr. McWhorter’s words, have been sold a bill of goods. The media, liberal politicians, and the current crop of "black leaders" have made their living convincing black people that they are hopeless victims of institutionalized racism and that the sole reason for their 25% poverty rate, their falling school grades and SAT scores, their soaring murder and incarceration rates, and the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers are all, really, due to "residual racism." By perpetuating this myth, the only hope of the black race is to continue to vote for politicians who identify with the "cult of victimology (McWhorter’s phrase) and "feel their pain."

In his first major book, "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America," McWhorter says the main problem Black Americans face today - both in school and after - is this set of "values" (school is a "white thing," ghetto life is a romanticized true "blackness," et al) that sabotages the unlimited potential that exists for all races in America today. In the preface to his book "Authentically Black" McWhorter explains the concept:

"On the topic of blacks in America, among thinking people over the past few decades common consensus has drifted away from common sense. [author’s emphasis] By this I do not mean just my common sense, but everyone’s. The left tells us that black people’s job is to insist that short of ideal conditions, only the occasional shooting star among us can do much better than show up. We are taught that as good people, we must pretend to believe that unequal outcomes are always due to unequal opportunity, that it is impossible to that culture-internal ideologies can hobble a group from taking advantage of pathways to success. This ideology is taught in universities, assumed on many newspaper editorial pages, and preached by all too many anointed black "leaders." In fact, we are too often told that this is less ideology than truth, and that it is only those who question it who have an ideology."

Mcwhorter’s thesis is not the genetic inferiority spewed by William B. Shockley. The black race is held back not by genetics but by culture. When "keepin’ it real" is translated by the unremitting onslaught of hip-hop into tattooed, Glock-packing, bling-bling wearing, pimps and ho’s, the youth of today will continue to deride and demean the obvious pathways to potential success in American life. Namely, get an education, avoid pregnancy until married, and present yourself with proper grammar and appropriate attire.

McWhorter’s exhortations are not new. Over a hundred years ago, one of the greatest black leaders made a similar argument:

"From the very first it has, been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice..." http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1148.htm

When W.E.B. Du Bois made this statement (as part of his "The Talented Tenth" essay), he was exhorting black Americans to - above all else - seek an education. It was, then as it is now, the one thing that no one can take away from you. But cultural pressure is very effective and peer pressure is even more powerful. When youth sense that they are losing social status through academic achievement, they will often pull back. Stop "acting white." And take on the cloak of "authentic blackness." And, then, the battle for these young minds are lost forever.

As I was writing this centering on the ideas of Dr. McWhorter, I ran across an item in the March 26, 2007 issue of Jet Magazine in the National News section titled "Black Males’ Rampant Joblessness, High Drop-out Rate, Incarceration Dooming Black Community." In testimony during a Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capital Hill. Dr. Mincy made the following statements:

• among young African-American men, half are now unemployed and have a 30 percent chance of serving time in prison before age 30
• among black men who drop out of high school - which is estimated at 40 percent - seventy-two percent are jobless and the likelihood to be incarcerated jumps to 60 percent
• a black male in his late 20s without a high school diploma is more likely to be in jail than to be working
• living with a single mother (70% of black children are born into this environment) increase the likelihood of dropping out of school

The evidence was startling to the assembled congressmen. The solutions discussed and proffered were not. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) "pointed to failing schools, racism, and the decimation of manufacturing jobs as the culprits that continue to suck the life out of the American dream for blacks." According to JET, Mincy recommended, among other things, increased funding on programs aimed at less-educated black males. "Reversing the employment crises among young, less-educated males will require money, patience, a multi-generational perspective, and policies that are responsible and reasonable."

Same song and dance as always. I suspect Dr. McWhorter would have had a different verse and, perhaps, a different hymnal altogether. In the last of the 9 essays in his book, "The New Black Leaders," McWhorter is at his best. In it he accomplished two very concrete goals. He clearly and emphatically declares that the emperors, indeed, have no clothes. Those who inherited the mantles of the martyred "true" blacks leaders (Dr. King and Malcolm X) are not leaders at all. Of Jesse Jackson. He writes: "For all his populist rhetoric, Jackson has eft behind not a single sustained and successful project designed to improve black lives beyond the boardroom...But thirty-five years of his self-aggrandizing machinations confirm that one thing black Americans cannot expect from this man is leadership. "

On Al Sharpton, he is even less civil. To wit: "Sharpton openly covets Jackson’s mantle as "the" black leader in America, but where Jackson can at least coast on a certain presence in a room, Sharpton will remain an opportunistic cartoon." There is much more but, for the sake of brevity, I will omit the remainder.

In the second half of the essay, he demonstrates there are leaders within the black community that truly do accomplish positive changes. He discusses the work of Star Parker, founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). Parker focuses on empowerment and holds clinics in inner-city locations pointing the inner-city poor to job training and teaching them about finances. He discusses John Bryant, founder of Operation HOPE which he "founded out of dismay at seeing black people destroying their own neighborhoods." Operation HOPE "helps inner-city residents in Los Angeles buy their houses instead of renting." At the time McWhorter’s book was written, Operation HOPE had "gotten 450 mortgages for inner-city residents with not a single default and one thousand more are in progress." Parker’s motto: "I’m black but I’m not black for a living."

McWhorter also praises Reverend Eugene Rivers in Boston. Rivers founded the Ten Point Coalition, a group of about 50 black ministers who started taking the church to the streets. They counsel young black men and establish relationships with them and the criminal justice system. He works out of Ella J, Baker House, a restored crack house in Dorchester, "more or less Boston’s Harlem." He helped facilitate what has been called "Boston’s Miracle," in which between 1995 and 1998, there was not a single killing of anyone under seventeen.

There are other unsung leaders within the black community. McWhorter sees their contributions as far more constructive than the preening and posturing of the national "leaders" that are the media darlings and the stars of radio and television broadcasts. He closes with this poignant paragraphs:

"Surely, blacks will play the principal role in closing the remaining socioeconomic gaps between blacks and whites, and resolving the interracial tension that bedevils us still. History records not one single group of people who have insisted that they were incapable of progressing without handouts and lowered standards from the ruling class, and history will not be kind to a group that continues to insist on this when more families are middle class than poor."

John McWhorter is uniquely articulate and promises to bring more to the discussion of interracial matters in future books. And I, for one, look forward to reading more from such an extraordinary scholar.