The Racial Politics of Listening
Deference, Power, and Relationality
Clifton L. Granby
A "transformative" and "original" account of how racial injustice shapes our habits of listening—and a "grace map" for listeners to appreciate the philosophical depth, diversity, and wisdom of black intellectual traditions
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Description
The Racial Politics of Listening reveals how racial injustice blocks effective communication and practices of accountability. It examines how deference is often required of the politically vulnerable. The powers and institutions who have control over their lives often come to expect deference, demand it, reward people who give it, and penalize people who don’t. By centering the insights of black religious thinkers (like James Cone) and black literary figures (like Ralph Ellison), Clifton L. Granby transforms how we think about racial ignorance and social injustice in the US.
The Racial Politics of Listening identifies institutional arrangements and cultural dynamics that bear directly on early childhood pedagogy, university settings, criminal justice systems, and religious practices that aim to resist divinely sanctioned forms of racial denigration. Granby argues for the importance of critically listening and responsibly deferring to the dynamic concerns of black political and cultural life. His book empowers readers to appreciate the philosophical depth, diversity, and wisdom of black intellectual traditions.
Advance Reviews & Praise
“The Racial Politics of Listening is that rare work that accounts for the way we live race, not simply its effects. It is brilliant. It is philosophically rigorous… but also richly textured, elegant, and sensitive in its rendering of both the beauty and pathos of living in the along…”
—Imani Perry, author of South to America
“One of the most significant treatments of the practice and politics of listening written in the last twenty-five years.”
—Willie James Jennings, author of After Whiteness
“An intimate and challenging spiritual meditation on despair and possibility, this grace map that we need for trying to bear living together.”
—Kevin Quashie, author of Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
“Pioneering and pathblazing… deeply informed by a genuine love of Black people… we must listen and learn from Clifton Granby!”
—Cornel West, author of Race Matters
“Clifton Granby’s The Racial Politics of Listening deploys, with grace and vigor, the richness of black religious thought and literature to expose and challenge the implicit and sacralized deference to whiteness in our habits of listening.”
—Richard Shusterman, author of Pragmatist Aesthetics
“This beautiful, sensitive book weaves a marvelous tapestry that integrates voices and traditions that enrich us when we behold them together — philosophical argumentation, prayer, social criticism, and song.”
—Susanna Siegel, author of The Rationality of Perception
“A critically important contribution… Granby is a thinker of exceptional range and insight…”
—Robert Gooding-Williams, author of In the Shadow of Du Bois
“Granby's call for aptly marshaled deference beckons us to a more honest and courageous engagement with ourselves and our histories.”
—Luvell Anderson, author of “Racist Humor” & editor of The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race
