The Standard Reader

McWhorter persuasively argues that African Americans are plagued by a “double consciousness”: In private, they stress the bootstrap mentality and reject the “mantle of victimhood.” Yet they publicly embrace the conceit that racism will always be a barrier to achievement for all but the fortunate few; whites can never be “let off the hook.” While this victimology may soothe African Americans’ collective inferiority complex, it keeps them from admitting the gains made since the 1960s, and it fosters a separatist, anti-intellectual culture that prevents further advances.

McWhorter spares no one. In one essay, he ridicules Transafrica Forum founder Randall Robinson for having the audacity to devote “less than three pages” in his pro-reparations book to an actual plan. McWhorter also proves surprisingly skillful at analyzing pop culture. While savaging media critic Donald Bogle for seeing “Mammies everywhere” on television, he offers his own list of performances that helped break down stereotypes, including Sherman Hemsley’s portrayal of a racist blowhard on The Jeffersons.

McWhorter’s suggestion that the controversy over racial profiling could be diffused with the help of community involvement fails to consider some of the more valid objections to the police technique. Still, “Authentically Black” is a worthy follow-up to McWhorter’s previous polemic, “Losing the Race.” But it won’t garner him an invitation to the NAACP Image Awards.

–RiShawn Biddle

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability by Amy Chua (Doubleday, 340 pp., $26). As markets open up and state enterprises are privatized in developing nations, a savvy few get very rich, very fast. Yale’s Amy Chua helped privatize the state-owned Telefonos de Mexico and also served at the World Bank, so she has seen just how corrupt the process can be.

The new rich of developing countries are often ethnic minorities: Indians in East Africa, Chinese in the Philippines, Jews in post-Communist Russia. And when market reforms are accompanied by democratic reforms, these “market dominant minorities” quickly become targets for the poor and resentful ethnic majority.

“The competition for votes fosters the emergence of demagogues who scapegoat the resented minority, demanding an end to humiliation, and insisting that the nation’s wealth be reclaimed by its ‘true owners,'” writes Chua. When ethnonationalist governments come to power, violence and ruin await the prosperous minorities.

A barrage of examples supports Chua’s thesis, each described with careful consideration of the different circumstances of different nations.

Mercifully sparing us the “solutions” chapter that plagues similar books, Chua makes limited suggestions on a case-by-case basis. She advocates encouraging small businesses and widespread stock ownership, as well as reducing the negative impact of globalization with progressive taxes and transfer programs. Mostly, though, she wants us to reduce our expectations. Chua clearly believes that democracy and free markets are good, but she feels compelled to remind us that they can’t turn economic and political disaster areas around overnight.

Chua overextends her thesis, however, when she claims that it also explains ethnic resentment in the Arab-Israeli conflict and anti-American sentiment around the world. She says that America and Israel are resented because of their status as global or regional market-dominant minorities. This is essentially a recasting of the tired, they-hate-us-because-we’re-rich argument. But her empirical evidence prior to this section is strong and told with a dramatic flair that makes a book with a dreary subject worth reading.

–Katherine Mangu-Ward