Preview
  • Sellout

  • The Politics of Racial Betrayal
  • By: Randall Kennedy
  • Narrated by: Tovah Ott
  • Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (4 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Sellout

By: Randall Kennedy
Narrated by: Tovah Ott
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $13.50

Buy for $13.50

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

In the wake of his controversial national best-seller, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Randall Kennedy grapples brilliantly and judiciously with another stigma of our racial discourse: "selling out", or racial betrayal, which is a subject of much anxiety and acrimony in Black America. He atomizes the vicissitudes of the term and shows how its usage bedevils Blacks and Whites, while elucidating the effects it has on individuals and on our society as a whole.

Kennedy begins his exploration of selling out with a cogent, historical definition of the "Black" community, accounting precisely for who is considered Black and who is not. He looks at the ways in which prominent members of that community - Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama, among others - have been stigmatized as sellouts. He outlines the history of the suspicion of racial betrayal among Blacks, and he shows how current fears of selling out are expressed in thought and practice. He offers a rigorous and bracing case study of the quintessential "sellout" - Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, perhaps the most vilified Black public official in American history. And he gives is a first-person reckoning of how he himself has dealt with accusations of having sold out at Harvard, especially after the publication of Nigger.

Lucidly and powerfully articulated, Sellout is essential to any discussion of the troubled history of race in America.

©2008 Randall Kennedy (P)2021 Random House Audio
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

Sellout is brisk and enjoyable, no small feat given the density of its ideas.... Worth reading for the light it shines on many subtleties of black history.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review)

“Thought-provoking....[Kennedy offers] illuminating evidence that, despite great marks of progress, race's stranglehold on the nation's collective conscious remains as strong as ever.” (The Washington Post)

“Fresh.... Elegant and open-minded.... Sellout does a great deal to complicate the politics of racial betrayal.” (Salon.com)

What listeners say about Sellout

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.