Randall Kennedy Boeken

The book offers a comprehensive examination of affirmative action, addressing its complexities and the polarized opinions surrounding it. It explores the definition, benefits, and drawbacks of the policy, questioning whether it serves as a positive force or a form of reverse discrimination. Kennedy provides a personal perspective while analyzing the criteria for eligibility and the potential timeline for its conclusion. This work stands as both a critical analysis and a call for a clearer understanding of justice in the context of American race relations.

The collection features thought-provoking essays addressing crucial social justice topics, including the impact of George Floyd's death, antiracism, inequality, and Supreme Court decisions. The author is recognized as a leading voice on race in America, providing incisive commentary that challenges readers to engage with pressing societal issues.

From the author of "Nigger" and "Race, Crime, and the Law" comes a tour de force about the controversial issue of personal interracial intimacy as it exists within ever-changing American social mores and within the rule of law.

A “provocative and richly insightful new book” (The New York Times Book Review) that gives us a shrewd and penetrating analysis of the complex relationship between the first black president and his African-American constituency. Renowned for his insightful, common-sense critiques of racial politics, Randall Kennedy now tackles such hot-button issues as the nature of racial opposition to Obama; whether Obama has a singular responsibility to African Americans; the differences in Obama’s presentation of himself to blacks and to whites; the challenges posed by the dream of a post-racial society; the increasing irrelevance of a certain kind of racial politics and its consequences; the complex symbolism of Obama’s achievement and his own obfuscations and evasions regarding racial justice. Eschewing the critical excesses of both the left and the right, Kennedy offers an incisive view of Obama’s triumphs and travails, his strengths and weaknesses, as they pertain to the troubled history of race in America.

Exploring the concept of "selling out" within America's racial discourse, Randall Kennedy examines its origins and impact on notable figures like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama. The book includes a detailed case study of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, often labeled a racial "sellout." In the concluding section, Kennedy reflects on his personal experiences with such accusations following the publication of his previous work, offering insight into the complexities of racial identity and public perception.

Randall Kennedy takes on not just a word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with bracing courage and intelligence—with a range of reference that extends from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock routines and the O. J. Simpson trial.It’s “the nuclear bomb of racial epithets,” a word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries. Paradoxically, among many Black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment.The word, of course, is nigger , and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it.Should Blacks be able to use nigger in ways forbidden to others? Should the law treat it as a provocation that reduces the culpability of those who respond to it violently? Should it cost a person his job, or a book like Huckleberry Finn its place on library shelves?