Randall Kennedy

From the author of Nigger and Race, Crime, and the Law comes a tour de force about the controversial issue of personal interracial intimacy as it exists within ever-changing American social mores and within the rule of law.

The author, a Harvard law professor, discusses the "failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals ... the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection ... the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfairs ... and allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments."--Jacket.

"Timely--as the 2012 presidential election nears--and controversial for its bracing iconoclasm, The Persistence of the Color Line is the first book by a major African-American public intellectual on racial politics and the Obama presidency. Renowned for his cool reason vis--̉vis the pitfalls and clichš of racial discourse, Randall Kennedy--former clerk to late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Harvard professor of law, and author of the New York Times bestseller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Kennedy--gives us shrewd and keen essays on the complex relationship between "the first black president" and his African-American constituency. The Persistence of the Colorline tackles hot-button issues: the nature of racial opposition to Obama; whether Obama has any special responsibility to African-Americans; the increasing irrelevance of traditional racial politics and the consequences thereof; electoral politics and cultural chauvinism; black patriotism and its antithesis (essentialism and rebellion); differences between Obama's presentation of himself to blacks and whites and the challenges posed by the dream of a post-racial society; the far from simple symbolism of Obama as leader of the Joshua generation in a country that has elected only three black senators and two black governors. As the National Law Journal puts it: "Randall Kennedy is doing the smartest work in the area of race." Here, in The Persistence of the Color Line, Kennedy--eschewing the critical excesses of both the left and the right--offers a gimlet eyed view of Obama's triumphs and travails, his strengths and weaknesses, as they pertain to the troubled history of race in America"--

What precisely is affirmative action, and why is it fiercely championed by some and just as fiercely denounced by others? Kennedy gives us a concise, gimlet-eyed, and deeply personal conspectus of the policy, refusing to shy away from the myriad complexities of an issue that continues to bedevil American race relations. He accounts for the slipperiness of the term "affirmative action" as it has been appropriated by ideologues of every stripe; delves into the complex and surprising legal history of the policy; analyzes key arguments pro and con advanced by the left and right, and ponders the future of affirmative action.

A collection of more than thirty-five essays by African-American authors, including Barack Obama, David A. Hollinger, Scoop Jackson, and others, which were originally published between 1994 and 2009.