Say It Loud!

On Race, Law, History, and Culture

By: Randall Kennedy

Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson

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.

Critic reviews

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

Brilliant work

Professor Kennedy’s objectivity is sobering. This is a must read for anyone who wants to develop a clear understanding of the history of racial tensions in the United States.

An informative yet biased account

This title is certainly skewed by race and liberal views. It at least does attempt to present both sides to bring about a level of fairness. The writing has many present day opinions sprinkled throughout the facts presented.

Important

This white liberal needed to hear this story. Eye opening in many ways. Powerfully delivered, brilliantly written.

A read/listen to book.

Thoughtful, reasonable, academic, yet practical and applicable to life. This book can be used to understand where we are and how we got here.