Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
by Randall Kennedy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Randall KennedyEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-08
ISBN: 0375425438
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
Book Review: Excellent overview of the 'gatekeeping' of who's black or not
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great book that provides an insightful and even-handed look at the use of the word "sellout" by some African-Americans against other blacks.
Kennedy is personally qualified, as he notes near the end of the book. Besides being a professor at Harvard Law and the author of previous black sociology/studies type books, he has himself been a target of the "sellout" moniker more than once.
At the beginning, Kennedy explains that the word is used as part of efforts to maintain racial solidarity. He then notes that other groups use similar tactics, and later in the book draws some parallels to the gay/lesbian community.
But, for groups in general and black in general, this raises new questions that Kennedy tackles.
What are the defining points of the community, and here, specifically, the black community? And, who are the guardians and gatekeepers?
On the former question, Kennedy says it is, without a doubt, affirmative action. He then devoted an entire chapter to exploring how this rubber hit the road with Clarence Thomas.
Kennedy isn't afraid to point fingers at many black "guardians" for merely engaging Thomas on his point of view, rather than any evidence he may have for it. He links this to the larger problem of black "guardians" writing off black conservatives in general. He makes clear that wrestling with an opposing point of view on empirical grounds does not necessarily mean agreeing with it.
No. 2, after affirmative action, from how I read Kennedy, he would probably say is interracial marriage.
And No. 3, quite relevant today with Barack Obama and Tiger Woods, is racial identity. Kennedy defends an ABC reporter a year ago asking Obama about how he identified himself, in part by referencing Woods' "Cablinasian" self-designation.
Summary of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
In the wake of his controversial national best-seller, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Randall Kennedy grapples brilliantly and judiciously with another stigma of our racial discourse: "selling out," or racial betrayal, which is a subject of much anxiety and acrimony in Black America. He atomizes the vicissitudes of the term and shows how its usage bedevils blacks and whites, while elucidating the effects it has on individuals and on our society as a whole.Kennedy begins his exploration of selling out with a cogent, historical definition of the "black" community, accounting precisely for who is considered black and who is not. He looks at the ways in which prominent members of that community--Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama, among others--have been stigmatized as sellouts. He outlines the history of the suspicion of racial betrayal among blacks, and he shows how current fears of selling out are expressed in thought and practice. He offers a rigorous and bracing case study of the quintessential "sellout"--Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, perhaps the most vilified black public official in American history. And he gives is a first-person reckoning of how he himself has dealt with accusations of having sold out at Harvard, especially after the publication of Nigger.
Lucidly and powerfully articulated, Sellout is essential to any discussion of the troubled history of race in America.
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