In the wake of his controversial national bestseller, "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word," Kennedy grapples brilliantly and judiciously with another stigma of racial discourse: "selling out," or racial betrayal, which is a subject of much anxiety and acrimony in Black America.
In this incisive and unflinching study, Randall Kennedy, author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, tackles another stigma of America's racial discourse: "selling out." He explains the origins of the concept and shows how fear of this label has haunted prominent members of the black community--including, most recently, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama. Sellout also contains a rigorously fair case study of America's quintessential racial "sellout"--Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In the book's final section, Kennedy recounts how he himself has dealt with accusations of being a sellout after meeting fierce criticism at Harvard upon the publication of his book, Nigger.