Randall Kennedy, the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, presents 29 essays on race in the United States in Say It Loud! My favorite essay is “Why Clarence Thomas Ought to Be Ostracized.” Kennedy criticizes Clarence Thomas and his performance on the Supreme Court over 30 years. The recent revelations of Clarence Thomas and his wife getting millions of dollars of free trips from a conservative billionaire doesn’t help matters. The same with Justice Samuel Alito. This week’s Supreme Court rulings striking down Affirmative Action and debt relief for students just shows how out-of-touch the six conservative Justices are.
The strength of Say It Loud! focuses on various civil rights leaders who moved the nation and motivated change. I learned more about Frederick Douglass and Thurgood Marshall. But Kennedy doesn’t stop there; he writes about other, less famous, figures in the civil rights struggle like Anthony Burns, Eric Foner, Charles Hamilton Houston, Isaac Woodard, J. Waties Waring, and J. Skelly Wright.
I found Say It Loud! informative and compelling. Racial issues need to be addressed. Trump exacerbated the tensions among races in the United States. We need to work together to change the precipitous course our country is on. What do you think? GRADE: A
Table of Contents:
Preface xi
1. Shall We Overcome? Optimism and Pessimism in African American Racial Thought 3
2. Derrick Bell and Me 31
3. The George Floyd Moment: Promise and Peril 77
4. Isabel Wilkerson, the Election of 2020, and Racial Caste 84
5. The Princeton Ultimatum: Antiracism Gone Awry 93
6. How Black Students Brought the Constitution to Campus 103
7. Race and the Politics of Memorialization 112
8. The Politics of Black Respectability 123
9. Policing Racial Solidarity 138
10. Why Clarence Thomas Ought to Be Ostracized 147
11. Say It Loud! On Racial Shame, Pride, Kinship, and Other Problems 155
12. The Struggle for Collective Naming 172
13. The Struggle for Personal Naming 196
14. “Nigger”: The Strange Career Continues 210
15. Should We Admire Nat Turner? 217
16. Frederick Douglass: Everyone’s Hero 233
17. Anthony Burns and the Terrible Relevancy of the Fugitive Slave Act 240
18. Eric Foner and the Unfinished Mission of Reconstruction 255
19. Charles Hamilton Houston: The Lawyer as Social Engineer 272
20. Remembering Thurgood Marshall 284
21. Isaac Woodard and the Education of J. Waties Waring 321
22. J. Skelly Wright: Up from Racism 331
23. On Cussing Out White Liberals: The Case of Philip Elman 342
24. The Civil Rights Act Did Make a Difference! 352
25. Black Power Hagiography 368
26. The Constitutional Roots of “Birtherism” 390
27. Inequality and the Supreme Court 395
28. Brown as Senior Citizen 410
29. Racial Promised Lands? 425
Acknowledgments 449
Notes 451
Index 490