Book Review: What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America

Image: The cover of the book is a white background with "what truth sounds like" in gray capital letters except for the word truth which is in larger, black letters. In small, red capital letters next to the word "like" sits the byline of the book. A black line divides the title from the author's name below written in black capital letters. Next to his name is a gold circle that says "New York Times bestselling author of tears we cannot stop."

When I began Michael Eric Dyson's "What Truth Sounds Like," I found myself wondering if this book was going to be for me. I was previously unfamiliar with Dyson's work and the first passage of the book seemingly speaks of heroes and patriotic martyrs. I worried I was walking into another neoliberal revisionist telling of important histories of racial struggle and justice in the United States. You know, the kind where we hear things like Rosa Parks was just a tired woman on the bus and not a radical civil rights activist. I was pleased to find that continuing forward lead me into an informative and fairly well analyzed catalogue of race issues in the United States. Dyson's writing style is captivating and held my attention throughout.

It is clear that Dyson thought deeply about this book and his position in society before writing it.  His attention to his own perspective and how that both informs and limits his knowledge clearly helped him write the book. While the book's title references a discussion between RFK and James Baldwin, this discussion is not what the entire book is about. It is more of a connecting thread that Dyson uses to analyze elements of social justice, pop culture, politics, and policy throughout the decades. We do learn about this conversation, about the Kennedys (and their shortcomings regarding understanding race,) Baldwin, and other important figures present in the conversation such as Lorraine Hansberry. But, Dyson also discusses a wide range of public figures who have spoken about or influenced racial justice in some way including Harry Belafonte, Muhammad Ali, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Colin Kapernick, Cornel West, Ta-nehisi Coates, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton among others.

Dyson's book is fairly inclusive of a variety of intersecting struggles with race. He regularly mentions gender, sexuality, class, colorism, immigration status, and other issues. This is particularly important given that James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry were gay and lesbian on top of being Black which added a whole other level to the amount of social sludge they had to trek through to make their way in the world. There is also a great deal of information that Dyson included that showed the multidimensional nature of people the left likes to view as perfect, infallible heroes (which strengthens our toxic call-out culture.) The book is well researched which creates a good foundation to build the analyses Dyson expresses in this book. I feel like I understand more about what it was like to exist in different time periods than I did previously.

Dyson does well criticizing the racist and oppressive history of the United States without sugar coating it, but in the last third of his book he does fall into neoliberal patterns I was worried about. He has a whole section on Hillary Clinton in which he jumps through several hoops to defend or ignore the extensive problems with her, essentially blames Black people and other radicals who criticized her during her campaign as at fault for Trump winning, perpetuates the myth of the "white working class" being responsible for electing Trump when most Trump voters were affluent or at least middle class whites,  and other problematic and false assertions. During this he does make some good points such as rich famous academics not having as much to lose or that people critiquing Clinton did not do the same when Obama took similar actions. But, he completely glosses over the fact that the system is completely corrupt, many people with felonies could not vote due to extensive criminalization that Clinton supported, and the 2016 election was essentially a choice between two republicans: one closer to the center (Clinton) and one further to the right (Trump.) Clinton's convenient adopting of social justice language last minute cannot erase decades of racism, homophobia, war crimes, and other such beliefs and policies that have had deadly effects. Dyson's assertion that people should only be critiquing Trump instead of Clinton shows ignorance that does not fit in with the rest of his well researched and nuanced analyses he presents in the rest of the book. Forcing people to vote for someone who took active steps to keep them from having rights, because someone else does this more, makes voting pointless.

Overall, the book is interesting readable, and well timed. Dyson must be a fast writer because there are issues he talks about in this book that I remember happening quite recently. It is worth the read while keeping in mind that Dyson occasionally contradicts his radical analyses and politics at times by falling into neoliberal trappings.