““The Misery Merchants tell us, for example, that most blacks are poor. In fact, only one in four black families is poor, and only one in five lives in an inner city. They tell us that there has been an "epidemic" of racist arson against black churches. In fact, there are seven times as many white churches burned every year as there were black churches burned during the seven years from 1990 to 1996. By spreading myths such as these, the Misery Merchants do not encourage success among their constituents; they only deepen the sense of misery. They are working 24/7 to make sure that their version of life, one of divisions and hatred, becomes your reality. John H. McWhorter, the black author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, observes that the perpetuation of these myths is doing more today than racism is to obstruct black achievement in this country. As McWhorter puts it, the America of the Misery Merchants "remains a racist purgatory in which all black effort is a Sisyphean affair that renders even just keeping one's head above water a victory".””
