Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal

Randall Kennedy

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jan 8, 2008 - Social Science - 228 pages

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.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

What people are saying

Review: Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal

User Review  - Socraticgadfly - Goodreads

This is a great book that provides an insightful and even-handed look at the use of the word "sellout" by some African-Americans against other blacks. Kennedy is personally qualified, as he notes near ...

Review: Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal

User Review  - Suzanna Birchwood - Goodreads

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About the author

Randall Kennedy is the author of Interracial Intimacies, Nigger, and Race, Crime, and the Law. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton and his law degree from Yale. A Rhodes Scholar, he served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
• Author: Randall Kennedy
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008
• ISBN: 0307377202, 9780307377203
• Length: 228 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies; Social Science / General