"A gathering of essays by Harvard legal scholar that explore all the cultural and historical issues of the past quarter century having to do with race and race relations in America. Randall Kennedy chronicles his reactions over the past quarter century to arguments, events, and people that have compelled him to put pen to paper. Three beliefs that are sometimes in tension with one another infuse these pages. First, a massive amount of cruel racial injustice continues to beset the United States of America. Second, there is much about which to be inspired when surveying the African American journey from slavery to freedom to engagement in practically every aspect of life in the United States. Third, an openness to complexity, paradox, and irony should attend any serious investigation of human affairs. Kennedy has tried to allow that sensibility ample leeway in the essays, prompting within himself surprise, ambivalence, and, on several occasions, a heartfelt need to express apology for prior oversights and mistaken judgments"-- Provided by the publisher.

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 -- Policing racial solidarity -- Why Clarence Thomas ought to be ostracized -- Say it loud! On racial shame, pride, kinship, and other problems -- The struggle for collective naming -- The struggle for personal naming -- "Nigger" : the strange career continues -- Should we admire Nat Turner? -- Frederick Douglass : everyone's hero -- Anthony Burns and the terrible relevancy of the Fugitive Slave Act -- Eric Foner and the unfinished mission of reconstruction -- Charles Hamilton Houston : the lawyer as social engineer -- Remembering Thurgood Marshall -- Isaac Woodard and the education of J. Waties Waring -- J. Skelly Wright : up from racism -- On cussing out white liberals : The Case of Philip Elman -- The Civil Rights Act did make a difference! -- Black power hagiography -- The Constitutional roots of "birtherism" -- Inequality and the Supreme Court -- Brown as senior citizen -- Racial promised lands?