"Acclaimed linguist and award-winning writer John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric. Americans of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race in America gone so crazy? We're told read books and listen to music by people of color but that wearing certain clothes is...

Four decades after the great victories of the Civil Rights Movement secured equal rights for African-Americans, black America is in crisis. Indeed, by most measurable standards, conditions for many blacks have grown worse since 1965: desperate poverty, incarceration rates, teenage pregnancy and out-of- wedlock births, and educational failures. For years, pundits have blamed these problems on forces outside the black community. But now, in a broad-ranging...