What truth sounds like : Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and our unfinished conversation about race in America
(Book)

"...every big argument about race that persists to this day got a hearing in that room. Smith declaring that hed never fight for his country given its racist tendencies, and Kennedy being appalled at such lack of patriotism, tracks the disdain for black dissent in our own time. His belief that black folk were ungrateful for the Kennedys efforts to make things better shows up in our day as the charge that black folk wallow in the politics of ingratitude and victimhood. The contributions of black queer folk to racial progress still cause a stir. BLM has been accused of harboring a covert queer agenda. The immigrant experience, like that of Kennedy versus the racial experience of Baldwin is a cudgel to excoriate black folk for lacking hustle and ingenuity. The questioning of whether folk who are interracially partnered can authentically communicate black interests persists. And we grapple still with the responsibility of black intellectuals and artists to bring about social change. What Truth Sounds Like exists at the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape. The future of race and democracy hang in the balance."--Amazon.com.