Say It Loud!, Randall Kennedy
Say It Loud!, Randall Kennedy
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Say It Loud!
On Race, Law, History, and Culture

Author: Randall Kennedy

Narrator: Ryan Vincent Anderson

Unabridged: 19 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/07/2021


Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A collection of provocative essays exploring the key social justice issues of our time—from George Floyd to antiracism to inequality and the Supreme Court. Kennedy is "among the most incisive American commentators on race" (The New York Times).

Informed by sharpness of observation and often courting controversy, deep fellow feeling, decency, and wit, Say It Loud! includes:

The George Floyd Moment: Promise and Peril • Isabel Wilkerson, the Election of 2020, and Racial Caste • The Princeton Ultimatum: Anti­racism Gone Awry • The Constitutional Roots of “Birtherism” • Inequality and the Supreme Court • “Nigger”: The Strange Career Contin­ues • Frederick Douglass: Everyone’s Hero • Remembering Thurgood Marshall • Why Clar­ence Thomas Ought to Be Ostracized • The Politics of Black Respectability • Policing Ra­cial Solidarity

In each essay, Kennedy is mindful of com­plexity, ambivalence, and paradox, and he is always stirring and enlightening. Say It Loud! is a wide-ranging summa of Randall Kennedy’s thought on the realities and imaginaries of race in America.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vanessa on September 10, 2021

Admittedly, I went into this book with far different expectations than I should have, in that since the title of the book references the James Brown song "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," that it would be a spirited, accessible, punch-y read about the civil rights movement, but instead it was......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on January 15, 2022

Very engaging and thoughtful. He writes the truth, not what he thinks people need to hear, and I don’t always agree with his interpretation of the truth, but I find this approach hugely refreshing versus much writing about race. He’s not afraid of complexity or of coming off like a moderate by ackno......more

Goodreads review by Matt on July 05, 2023

This is a well-written collection of essays that updates some of Kennedy’s popular articles. The essays are a mix of op-eds on society, race, and rights; essays about public figures including Thurgood Marshall who Kennedy is clerked for, and book reviews like about Eric Foner’s work. The essay colle......more

Goodreads review by Chris on June 25, 2022

An excellent and incredibly thoughtful and thought provoking collection of essays on race, history, law, and politics. Kennedy willingly confronts all of the most controversial topics and explains and analyzes them in an enlightening and fascinating manner. It's a great book for anyone who cares abo......more

Goodreads review by wordsandcyphers on October 12, 2021

Say it Loud by law professor, Randall Kennedy is a collection of essays on African American racial thought on our place in American society. The question of if Black people are true citizens and belong maybe the underlying question. "Within the Diverse, always-changing spectrum of Black American raci......more


Quotes

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • One of Library Journal’s “Titles to Watch”
 
“In these trenchant essays, Kennedy updates previously published pieces that survey hot-button issues and enduring controversies involving race and the law . . .  [A] wide-ranging volume that stoutly defend[s] his centrist stance on race against excesses of the right and left . . . In a time of polarized racial politics, Kennedy’s closely reasoned and humanely argued takes offer an appealing alternative.
—Publishers Weekly

“Kennedy observes that “social relations are complex and messy.” Having lived through several eras, Kennedy calls himself a “Black/Negro/Colored/African American” man born in the year of Brown v. Board of Education. Some of the pieces are of a historical survey nature, [others] the author’s denunciations of “antiracism gone awry” and small-step racial justice laws that “are attentive to the pluralism that infuses American practices.”
       “Sometimes contrarian, sometimes controversial, Kennedy’s arguments merit consideration in a riven discourse.”
—Kirkus Reviews