A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - One of Library Journal's "Titles to Watch" "In these trenchant essays, Kennedy updates previously published pieces that survey hot-button issues and enduring controversies involving race and the law . . . [A] wide-ranging volume that stoutly defend[s] his centrist stance on race against excesses of the right and left . . . In a time of polarized racial politics, Kennedy's closely reasoned and humanely argued takes offer an appealing alternative.
" –Publishers Weekly "Kennedy observes that "social relations are complex and messy." Having lived through several eras, Kennedy calls himself a "Black/Negro/Colored/African American" man born in the year of
Brown v. Board of Education. Some of the pieces are of a historical survey nature, [others] the author's denunciations of "antiracism gone awry" and small-step racial justice laws that "are attentive to the pluralism that infuses American practices."
"Sometimes contrarian, sometimes controversial, Kennedy's arguments merit consideration in a riven discourse."
–Kirkus Reviews