Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture

In a magnum opus that spans two decades, Harvard Law School professor Randall Ken­nedy, one of our preeminent legal scholars and public intellectuals, gives us twenty-nine provocative essays--some previously published, others written for this occasion--that explore key social justice issues of our time.

Informed by sharpness of observation and often courting controversy, deep fellow feeling, decency, and wit, Say It Loud! includes:

Shall We Overcome? Optimism and Pessimism in African American Racial Thought
Derrick Bell and Me
The George Floyd Moment: Promise and Peril
Isabel Wilkerson, the Election of 2020, and Racial Caste
The Princeton Ultimatum: Anti­racism Gone Awry
How Black Students Brought the Constitution to Campus
Race and the Politics of Memorialization
The Politics of Black Respectability
Why Clar­ence Thomas Ought to Be Ostracized
The Politics of Black Respectability
Policing Ra­cial Solidarity
Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture

In each essay, Kennedy is mindful of com­plexity, ambivalence, and paradox, and he is always stirring and enlightening. Say It Loud! is a wide-ranging summa of Randall Kennedy's thought on the realities and imaginaries of race in America. View Less