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Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
by Randall Kennedy
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Synopses & Reviews
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. Review:
"Accusations of 'selling out' — of betraying or neglecting the interests of blacks to curry favor with whites — are among the most damaging that African-Americans level at each other, according to Harvard law professor Kennedy. Called a sellout himself after his book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word appeared, Kennedy here explores the charge's potency. He recounts the centuries-long history of sellout rhetoric — sometimes rooted in real betrayals by blacks who echoed white supremacist ideology or informed on slave rebellions or civil rights organizations — and examines its role both in uniting the black community against racism and in stifling debate within the community. A long chapter analyzes conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Kennedy acquits of sellout charges, and a fascinating discussion of racial categories and 'White Negroes' — blacks who pass as white — shows how murky the concept of racial loyalty is. Kennedy finds sellout rhetoric to be overblown — often aimed at blacks guilty only of success — but won't entirely repudiate it. African-Americans should 'be subject to having citizenship in Black America revoked' if they repudiate 'even a minimal communal allegiance' (although Kennedy is hard-pressed to think of plausible instances where this might apply). His is a lively, thoughtful, provocative commentary on a centerpiece of black identity politics." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:
"In a 1963 speech Malcolm X distilled black America's long history of social and political struggle into two simple yet enduring composites: House Negroes and Field Negroes. Field Negroes bore the brunt of racial oppression from antebellum slavery to the civil rights era's high tide, while House Negroes craved white approval, shared secrets with racial oppressors and generally aided and abetted white ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) supremacy. They were the race traitors, the sellouts, the Uncle Toms. 'Suspicions regarding racial betrayal continue to be omnipresent,' writes Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy in his slim but thought-provoking 'Sellout,' which challenges conventional understanding of what exactly constitutes racial betrayal. American history is filled with instances in which prominent, successful blacks have been categorized as race traitors. While Booker T. Washington is often regarded as the quintessential 'sellout' by some critics, prominent figures such as W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey also found their allegiance to black progress under question despite seemingly unassailable records as iconic 'race men.' Kennedy seeks to complicate standard discussions of racial betrayal by questioning the underlying assumptions behind such accusations. Were slaves who informed about plans for impending rebellion Uncle Toms or pragmatists unwilling to sacrifice friends and family for insurrections that seemed doomed to failure? What are we to make of civil rights era informers who collaborated with segregationists in opposition to Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists? For Kennedy, blacks who would be considered 'sellouts' during the 1960s and "70s for informing on civil rights and Black Power-styled organizations have been at least partially vindicated by historical evidence suggesting that 'alongside the noble figures and exemplary deeds of the Second Reconstruction, however, were base criminals and appalling misconduct that warranted governmental intervention.' This is a bold and provocative charge, one that merits the support of more than just Hugh Pearson's controversial polemic, 'The Shadow of the Panther.' The book's longest section addresses the man many would consider the quintessential racial sellout: Clarence Thomas. While taking pains to distance himself from the conservative justice's legal opinions, Kennedy paints a sympathetic portrait of Thomas as an able jurist, keen thinker and, after a fashion, 'race man' who cites 'a greater number and wider array of black thinkers than any other justice in the history of the Supreme Court.' This leads to an appropriate question: If Thomas cannot be considered a sellout, who can? Only those blacks who have purposefully tried to impugn other African-Americans. Kennedy's efforts to place a more rigorous litmus test on accusations of racial treachery are rooted in his politics and his personal experience. The book's epilogue offers his poignant admission that he has often been accused of being a race traitor, something that his penchant for describing blacks as 'Negroes' will do nothing to allay. His advice to young black Harvard law students to resist the need to pay 'excessive racial dues' illustrates a particular kind of unease, one that wrestles with individual ambitions versus group advancement. Kennedy's book, in effect, serves as a kind of elegy for the state of mind of a particular group of black elites forced by Jim Crow to choose group advancement but now able to follow their personal ambitions. The subject of a different kind of racial treason animates Bruce Bartlett's 'Wrong On Race,' which condemns the Democratic party for having sold out black Americans from its inception. Bartlett, a former adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, begins with the premise that 'virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat' in order to trace how the party has managed to hide its past while shifting much of the blame for racial animus onto contemporary Republicans. Through a sweeping overview that ranges from iconic Democrats such as Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson to the more obscure demagoguery of the 19th-century South Carolina politician Ben Tillman, Bartlett argues that the Democratic Party is filled with a veritable rogues gallery of anti-black racists. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt are portrayed as racial reactionaries who, respectively, advocated segregation in the federal work force and supported the internment of Japanese Americans based on race. Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon are singled out as underappreciated racial egalitarians, while John F. Kennedy is accused of advocating a civil rights perspective 'more conservative than Eisenhower's.' Popular wisdom generally attributes the Republican Party's post civil rights success to its appeal to anxious whites, but Bartlett argues that the notion of Nixon's Southern strategy is a 'myth' that conflates economic and political transformations with racial ones. It follows that although Ronald Reagan is acknowledged as having a 'political tin ear' for black issues, he was hardly some kind of racist. This, of course, ignores Reagan's infamous 1980 'states' rights' speech to a virtually all white audience in Neshoba County, Miss., the site of the tragic murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. Both Kennedy's account of racial sellouts and Bartlett's chronicle of the Democratic Party's sordid past illustrate contemporary efforts to grapple with racism's legacy. This is a daunting, even thankless, task, especially in light of the nation's unwillingness to come to terms with its history of racial slavery. Black sensitivity to racial betrayal springs directly out of that history, as does the Democratic Party's crudely effective race-baiting, echoes of which infuse the modern day Republican Party's racial pandering. These books offer illuminating evidence that, despite great marks of progress, race's stranglehold on the nation's collective conscious remains as strong as ever — its hold on the lives of citizens, political institutions and our democracy made no less insidious by the fact that, in the post civil rights-black power era, its staying power is less openly discussed. Peniel E. Joseph teaches African and Afro-American studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of 'Waiting "Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America.'" Reviewed by Peniel E. Joseph, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review:
Praise for Randall KennedyNigger "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
Synopsis:
In the manner of his controversial national bestseller "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word," Kennedy grapples brilliantly with another stigma of racial discourse--examining the meaning of selling out, atomizing the ways in which the term is used by blacks and whites. About the Author Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is a member of the bars of the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Association. His book Race, Crime, and the Law won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780375425431
- Subtitle:
- The Politics of Racial Betrayal
- Author:
- Kennedy, Randall
- Author:
- Kennedy, Randall
- Publisher:
- Pantheon Books
- Subject:
- Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General
- Subject:
- Racism
- Subject:
- United states
- Subject:
- History & Theory - General
- Subject:
- Discrimination & Racism
- Publication Date:
- January 2008
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 228
- Dimensions:
- 7.76x5.32x1.00 in. .69 lbs.
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