Losing the Race

Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America is a 2000 book by American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter in which he argues that not external racial prejudice and discrimination, but elements of black culture are more responsible for the social problems faced by black Americans several decades after the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, McWhorter points to anti-intellectualism, separatism, and a self-perpetuated identity of victimhood as factors limiting black Americans as a group.

The book was a New York Times bestseller and received mixed reactions. McWhorter considers it the work that first made him known to larger audiences and that contributed to the perception of him as a conservative commentator.