Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Dayton Roberts. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine.

My guest today is Professor Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School.

Professor Kennedy is the author of a number of books, including for discrimination,

Race Affirmative Action and the Law, the persistence of the color line, sellout the politics

of racial betrayal, and Rose recently say it loud on race, law, history,

and culture. He's always provocative, always fascinating. This new book, Say It Loud, available

from Pantheon covers everything from critical race theory to prison abolitionism, to the career

of Thurgood Marshall, to an essay that I love

called Why Clarence Thomas Ought to be ostracized. Professor Kennedy, it is a delight to talk to you.

Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you very much for having me on. So let's see,

this book covers a lot of ground, but I wanted to start with, I saw you recently on a Manhattan

Institute panel about critical race theory.

And I was really fascinated with your contribution because Manhattan Institute is pretty

conservative and they invited sort of critics of critical race theory on, because obviously this is the big thing

that Republicans have been talking about, critical race theory in the schools, and it's a big issue in Virginia.

And they had all these critics on, and most of them, they had, you know, Chris Rufo, who's been doing a lot to scare people about critical race theory. And they had, and they had you on.

But what was your perspective was, I think, the most interesting of the bunch. And I'm not sure

that they expected the take that you gave them, because you began by saying, well, you know,

everyone here has been talking about critical race theories if it's worthless.

They invited you as a critic of critical race theory.

I think maybe expecting that you would concur, but you didn't concur.

And I think it's very interesting in this book, the way that you throughout the book,

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