A: On the road I find that at first, black audiences are mostly waiting to hate me, out of a sense that "black conservatives" are evil, opportunistic, naive characters. When they see that I am a human being, and not even really that far to the right, generally I"get" about half the room. It probably helps that I am young and apparently look it — it makes it harder to dismiss me as "out of touch" with contemporary culture.

The "black intellectual establishment" of course hates the book, and unfortunately it is these people who the (liberal) media usually call upon to review it. So most of my mainstream reviews are nasty. But these contrast with the literally fifty messages and letters I get a week, from as many blacks as whites, who love the book. The"black intellectual establishment" are, after all, but a sliver of the black population. And especially since I am not a sociologist by trade, my academic career does not depend on how Ishmael Reed or David Dent feel about Losing the Race. Their opinion is irrelevant to me — it is the public I am talking to.

Q: More than once in recently published reviews, you have been accused of opportunism, of donning the "black conservative" mantle for fundamentally mercenary reasons. How do you respond to this criticism?

A: This is an understandable criticism — these people can't help it. As I say in the book, they are truly convinced that racism remains a serious obstacle to black well-being, and thus naturally they cannot imagine that points like mine could be based on logic. Thus it follows that they assume I must not mean what I say.

Which is why they don't see any problem with, say, Cornel West making millions with his work. People accusing me and others as opportunists are, unfortunately, highly blinkered in their perspective on black America, and always will be. Our job is to keep young blacks from falling into this trap.

Q: Do you find that your thesis in any way applies to the course of the Florida election, whether with regards to the issue of "disenfranchisement" or with regards to the controversy surrounding Jeb Bush's decision to dismantle affirmative action?

A: I did an op-ed in the Washington Post on this [subject] two Sundays ago. ... As for the Jeb Bush adventure, of course the root of the response is again, the idea that blacks remain hobbled by racism. This makes the idea of holding blacks to mainstream standards seem inhuman to many black people.

Q: Losing the Race deals exclusively with the black academic experience. And yet, at several points in your discussion, you touch upon the issue of "diversity." In what ways does the victimologist discourse interact with the rhetoric of diversity? In what ways (if any) does post-209 Berkeley typify this interaction?

A: The idea that "diversity" should be weighted over credentials after a certain point stems, in education, from a tacit sense that really hitting the top note in academia is foreign to the black essence, as I say in the book. Under this conviction, it naturally seems more important that black faces be "in the mix" regardless of whether they are as qualified as anyone else. Victimology plays its hand in the idea that also, blacks are PREVENTED from being able to be as good as everyone else, rather than subtlely culturally disinclined to. Naturally it seems from there that "diversity" ought be more important.

To return to the review of McWhorter's book, click here.