Timely—as the 2012 presidential election nears—and controversial, here is the first book by a major African-American public intellectual on racial politics and the Obama presidency.
Renowned for his cool reason vis-à-vis the pitfalls and clichés of racial discourse, Randall Kennedy—Harvard professor of law and author of the New York Times best seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—gives us a keen and shrewd analysis of the complex relationship between the first black president and his African-American constituency.
Kennedy tackles such hot-button issues as the nature of racial opposition to Obama, whether Obama has a singular responsibility to African Americans, electoral politics and cultural chauvinism, black patriotism, the differences in Obama’s presentation of himself to blacks and to whites, the challenges posed by the dream of a postracial society, and the far-from-simple symbolism of Obama as a leader of the Joshua generation in a country that has elected only three black senators and two black governors in its entire history.
Eschewing the critical excesses of both the left and the right, Kennedy offers a gimlet-eyed view of Obama’s triumphs and travails, his strengths and weaknesses, as they pertain to the troubled history of race in America.
The Persistence of the Color Line
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Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Randall Kennedy
Sellout
“Sellout is brisk and enjoyable, no small feat given the density of its ideas . . . Worth reading for the light it shines on many subtleties of black history.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Thought-provoking . . . [Kennedy offers] illuminating evidence that, despite great marks of progress, race’s stranglehold on the nation’s collective conscious remains as strong as ever.”
—The Washington Post
Nigger
"Provocative . . . Engaging and informative."
—The New York Times
"Kennedy's commitment to racial justice is plain . . . He frequently throws the cold water of common sense upon issues that are too often cloaked in glib histrionics."
—The New Republic
Race, Crime, and the Law
"Admirable, courageous, and meticulously fair and honest."
—The New York Times Book Review
"[Kennedy] is doing the smartest work in the area of race."
—National Law Journal
Interracial Intimacies
"As definitive as it is defiant . . . One of the most important books on race in recent memory."
—The Columbus Dispatch
"We urgently need Kennedy, his courage and convictions . . . For some time [he] has been a member of that small coterie of our most lucid big thinkers about race."
—The Washington Post
Sellout
“Sellout is brisk and enjoyable, no small feat given the density of its ideas . . . Worth reading for the light it shines on many subtleties of black history.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Thought-provoking . . . [Kennedy offers] illuminating evidence that, despite great marks of progress, race’s stranglehold on the nation’s collective conscious remains as strong as ever.”
—The Washington Post
Nigger
"Provocative . . . Engaging and informative."
—The New York Times
"Kennedy's commitment to racial justice is plain . . . He frequently throws the cold water of common sense upon issues that are too often cloaked in glib histrionics."
—The New Republic
Race, Crime, and the Law
"Admirable, courageous, and meticulously fair and honest."
—The New York Times Book Review
"[Kennedy] is doing the smartest work in the area of race."
—National Law Journal
Interracial Intimacies
"As definitive as it is defiant . . . One of the most important books on race in recent memory."
—The Columbus Dispatch
"We urgently need Kennedy, his courage and convictions . . . For some time [he] has been a member of that small coterie of our most lucid big thinkers about race."
—The Washington Post
About the Author
Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton and his law degree from Yale. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and is a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is the author of Race, Crime, and the Law, a winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award; Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption; Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word; and Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. He lives in Massachusetts.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By phyllis
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I could not put this book down. The subject is timely and so pertinent.
Mr. Kennedy has made it all read like a novel.
The footnotes and the end notes are full of fascinating facts, so make sure not to skip those.
Kennedy has written an interesting, entertaining and terribly informative book.
This should be a must-read for anyone interested in politics today.
Mr. Kennedy has made it all read like a novel.
The footnotes and the end notes are full of fascinating facts, so make sure not to skip those.
Kennedy has written an interesting, entertaining and terribly informative book.
This should be a must-read for anyone interested in politics today.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Nathan B
Format:Hardcover
As a white, conservative, thirty-something male I find much to disagree with in Mr Kennedy's book, "The Persistence of the Color Line." After all, Mr Kennedy does "demand that he [President Obama] governs as progressively [i.e. in keeping with Democratic ideology] as circumstances will allow." (pg 274) In many ways I found the book to be judgmental - often referring to conservative views as "indecent," (p 23) or immoral - the book was also not organized particularly well, and the central thesis often seemed hard to elucidate.
Yet I give this book five stars. Why? Because we need people like Mr. Kennedy - who for all his talk about race in this book never made me feel like he was being unfair. His repeated attempts to be fair minded earned him my respect. I never found myself doubting the veracity of what he said, only disagreeing with his analysis in places. And in many places I found myself sympathetic to his viewpoint as a consequence.
Indeed, on the subject of race it can be hard not to feel defensive. I find myself editing the foregoing sentence, "earned him my respect," to "earned him my respect as an author." I changed my mind. After all, I would not have to clarify that in any other circumstance. Yet it is that kind of thing that has dogged President Obama's candidacy and occupancy of the White House. Nearly everything said is analyzed in the context of race. And it is this issue that seems to be the uniting theme of this excellent work.
The first chapter discusses the inaugural celebration and spends some time discussing black electoral politics up until Obama's candidacy.*
The second and third chapters discuss how Obama has gained the vote of the African American vote and the White vote. Many African Americans did not at first support his candidacy due either to the fact that he never courted the black leadership in the traditional way or out of a desire to keep him from being assassinated literally or figuratively. (I remember praying that he would not be assassinated as well - there are always some crazies out there.) Some opposed him ideologically. In the end, about 98% of blacks voted for him, even prominent conservatives like Colin Powell.
To convince whites, says Kennedy, he had to go out of his way to make sure to avoid racial topics, support for affirmative action, and made sure to never seem bitter over race issues. As noted later in the book Obama obtained 43% of the white vote (p 251), not much different from various other democratic candidates such as Clinton, Kerry, or Gore. He discusses Obama's famous speech on race, which I loved, but which Kennedy feels rather lukewarm about. My mother spent much of her summers in a tent since they couldn't afford to live indoors. I suffer from a crippling illness which leaves me in pain everyday. President Obama pointed out that people everywhere have a hard time, not just non-whites. He recognized, as few liberals do, how painful it is to many to be accused of racism with casual indifference.
I think Kennedy here and in other parts of the book fails to give sufficient credence to how important this process was of convincing white Americans that if elected Obama would represent them as well. Blacks after all have their own black caucus, the NAACP, etc., which see the world as inherently unfair towards blacks (rightly or wrongly), and prefer to spend their time on black issues. Given the history of American race relations and the awful treatment of blacks at various times and places, it is not entirely unexpected for some blacks (like the author's father) to hate whites, however unfair it may or may not be, but nor is it unreasonable for whites to desire a president who will not promote policies to their detriment, as for instance, affirmative action inevitably does - and to his credit, Kennedy acknowledges this though he believes the cost is worth it.
Chapter Four deals with the dreaded Race Card. Kennedy goes through each candidate's campaign in 2008, focusing on Hillary Clinton, McCain, and Obama's campaigns. His surprising conclusion is that there was very little race baiting - he gives a lot of credit to McCain, though many readers will dislike this - but that many commentators and pundits during the election cycle engaged in irresponsible racially charged accusations. I agree with Kennedy's statement that we all need to do a better job in giving people the benefit of the doubt.
The last four chapters each deal with these themes in different ways - evaluating the Jeremiah Wright controversy, discussing the Sotomayor nomination process, and discussing how Obama talks about race (i.e. doesn't talk about if he can help it).
Conservative frustration with race is that it often seems to be used as a weapon (i.e. the race card) rather than a genuine issue. Just a few weeks ago a headline writer was fired for writing the headline "A Chink in the Armor" when referring to the Asian NBA player Jeremy Lin. He had used this headline many times before and clearly did not intend to cause offense. In fact, his color-blindness seems to have worked against him - "chink" never even registered for him as a term that had anything to do with Asians. Yet he lost his job. The "Sherrod debacle" as Kennedy calls it (p 238) is a similar example, but of a black woman unfairly accused.
This kind of thing has to stop. It has been forty years since the majority of Americans embraced the civil rights movement, and those who participated in that movement were not aged 0. Serious racism last found in the mid twentieth century is rare in most parts of the country as Kennedy says in the book. In my elementary school twenty+ years ago the most popular kid in the school was black. Accusations about racism now deal with "unconscious racism" since there are few real examples of racism. At some point we need to stop tearing ourselves apart over racism. The real legacy of racism is that black households have not accumulated the wealth and assets that white families have often accumulated and that can be passed on in various ways (e.g. sending kids to college, having spare time to help with homework, etc.). Perhaps if irresponsible accusations of racism weren't so rampant we could actually work together to end this sad legacy. And perhaps this book can help further this goal.
----------------------
Note -- Few people have commented on the content of this book despite multiple reviews because race is a very touchy subject. As Kennedy says, we need to all just calm down and give each other the benefit of the doubt. Please be patient with me.
* = yes, I do here remove his title for brevity - as does Mr Kennedy in three out of eight chapter titles and repeatedly in the text. Here again, we see a heightened racial awareness in interpreting words as having depreciatory motives instead of more normal motives such as brevity. We often refer to "Bush" or "Clinton" without remark.
Yet I give this book five stars. Why? Because we need people like Mr. Kennedy - who for all his talk about race in this book never made me feel like he was being unfair. His repeated attempts to be fair minded earned him my respect. I never found myself doubting the veracity of what he said, only disagreeing with his analysis in places. And in many places I found myself sympathetic to his viewpoint as a consequence.
Indeed, on the subject of race it can be hard not to feel defensive. I find myself editing the foregoing sentence, "earned him my respect," to "earned him my respect as an author." I changed my mind. After all, I would not have to clarify that in any other circumstance. Yet it is that kind of thing that has dogged President Obama's candidacy and occupancy of the White House. Nearly everything said is analyzed in the context of race. And it is this issue that seems to be the uniting theme of this excellent work.
The first chapter discusses the inaugural celebration and spends some time discussing black electoral politics up until Obama's candidacy.*
The second and third chapters discuss how Obama has gained the vote of the African American vote and the White vote. Many African Americans did not at first support his candidacy due either to the fact that he never courted the black leadership in the traditional way or out of a desire to keep him from being assassinated literally or figuratively. (I remember praying that he would not be assassinated as well - there are always some crazies out there.) Some opposed him ideologically. In the end, about 98% of blacks voted for him, even prominent conservatives like Colin Powell.
To convince whites, says Kennedy, he had to go out of his way to make sure to avoid racial topics, support for affirmative action, and made sure to never seem bitter over race issues. As noted later in the book Obama obtained 43% of the white vote (p 251), not much different from various other democratic candidates such as Clinton, Kerry, or Gore. He discusses Obama's famous speech on race, which I loved, but which Kennedy feels rather lukewarm about. My mother spent much of her summers in a tent since they couldn't afford to live indoors. I suffer from a crippling illness which leaves me in pain everyday. President Obama pointed out that people everywhere have a hard time, not just non-whites. He recognized, as few liberals do, how painful it is to many to be accused of racism with casual indifference.
I think Kennedy here and in other parts of the book fails to give sufficient credence to how important this process was of convincing white Americans that if elected Obama would represent them as well. Blacks after all have their own black caucus, the NAACP, etc., which see the world as inherently unfair towards blacks (rightly or wrongly), and prefer to spend their time on black issues. Given the history of American race relations and the awful treatment of blacks at various times and places, it is not entirely unexpected for some blacks (like the author's father) to hate whites, however unfair it may or may not be, but nor is it unreasonable for whites to desire a president who will not promote policies to their detriment, as for instance, affirmative action inevitably does - and to his credit, Kennedy acknowledges this though he believes the cost is worth it.
Chapter Four deals with the dreaded Race Card. Kennedy goes through each candidate's campaign in 2008, focusing on Hillary Clinton, McCain, and Obama's campaigns. His surprising conclusion is that there was very little race baiting - he gives a lot of credit to McCain, though many readers will dislike this - but that many commentators and pundits during the election cycle engaged in irresponsible racially charged accusations. I agree with Kennedy's statement that we all need to do a better job in giving people the benefit of the doubt.
The last four chapters each deal with these themes in different ways - evaluating the Jeremiah Wright controversy, discussing the Sotomayor nomination process, and discussing how Obama talks about race (i.e. doesn't talk about if he can help it).
Conservative frustration with race is that it often seems to be used as a weapon (i.e. the race card) rather than a genuine issue. Just a few weeks ago a headline writer was fired for writing the headline "A Chink in the Armor" when referring to the Asian NBA player Jeremy Lin. He had used this headline many times before and clearly did not intend to cause offense. In fact, his color-blindness seems to have worked against him - "chink" never even registered for him as a term that had anything to do with Asians. Yet he lost his job. The "Sherrod debacle" as Kennedy calls it (p 238) is a similar example, but of a black woman unfairly accused.
This kind of thing has to stop. It has been forty years since the majority of Americans embraced the civil rights movement, and those who participated in that movement were not aged 0. Serious racism last found in the mid twentieth century is rare in most parts of the country as Kennedy says in the book. In my elementary school twenty+ years ago the most popular kid in the school was black. Accusations about racism now deal with "unconscious racism" since there are few real examples of racism. At some point we need to stop tearing ourselves apart over racism. The real legacy of racism is that black households have not accumulated the wealth and assets that white families have often accumulated and that can be passed on in various ways (e.g. sending kids to college, having spare time to help with homework, etc.). Perhaps if irresponsible accusations of racism weren't so rampant we could actually work together to end this sad legacy. And perhaps this book can help further this goal.
----------------------
Note -- Few people have commented on the content of this book despite multiple reviews because race is a very touchy subject. As Kennedy says, we need to all just calm down and give each other the benefit of the doubt. Please be patient with me.
* = yes, I do here remove his title for brevity - as does Mr Kennedy in three out of eight chapter titles and repeatedly in the text. Here again, we see a heightened racial awareness in interpreting words as having depreciatory motives instead of more normal motives such as brevity. We often refer to "Bush" or "Clinton" without remark.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
As usual, Mr. Kennedy has written a levelheaded book that looks at the effects of the Obama Presidency on race relations. Readers who are of a conservative, jaded bend will likely view his assessment as some kind of liberal rant. Please do not be influenced by such shallow-minded reviews. I am a happily married, 51-year-old, Caucasian dad (and white wife) with two adopted boys (ages 13 and 11) who are African-American. All five of Mr. Kennedy's books have been very informative, well-reasoned works. The author gives a very accurate assessment of the emotions and political conflicts arising from the 2008 campaign and the first two years of President Obama's term. Not only does he call to task the President on various issues, he also empathizes with our first black Chief Executive having to walk a very fine line for political survival and effectiveness. Mr. Kennedy also gives credit where credit is due (such as Senator McCain's unwillingness to play the race card during the campaign as well as his wonderful concession speech) and lambasts liberal and conservative critics who apparently live in a world where the sky is orange and they only have one toe in reality. The author also covers such issues as the Reverend Wright imbroglio, accusations of playing the race card, the sham carnival show known as the Supreme Court Confirmation hearings, the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest with the silly "Beer Summit," and an especially poignant, small section (pages 182-185, hardcover edition) about Mr. Kennedy's dad attitudes about patriotism. This is great stuff and truly enlightening. A wonderful educational tool.
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