McWhorter attributed Black underachievement to culture-internal ideologies rather than ongoing racism

Evidence

Three years after the release of Losing the Race, John McWhorter submitted his Essays for the Black Silent Majority. According to this 2003 book, the silent Black majority believed that African Americans’ own “culture-internal ideologies” had hobbled the group from “taking advantage of pathways to success.” McWhorter wrote Essays for the Black Silent Majority from the half-truth of racial progress, ignoring the half-truth of the progression of racism. “Today, black success stories,” he wrote, are “based on good old-fashioned hard work, ingenuity, and inner strength,” with “residual racism … as a minor nuisance they overcame by keeping their eyes on the prize.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1173

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs with the reader’s discomfort area: this is textbook assimilationism — success framed as conforming to dominant norms and ignoring structural racism.