The Racial Politics of Listening — Community Conversation & Book Launch

Join us for a community conversation on the importance of critically listening to the dynamic concerns of black political and cultural life The Racial Politics of Listening — Community Conversation & Book Launch Join us for an engaging community conversation and the launch of Dr. Clifton Granby's book The Racial Politics of Listening: Deference, Power, and Relationality, which has received glowing praise from Cornel West, Imani Perry, and others. An award-winning educator, scholar, and minister, Dr. Granby will be joined by community leaders Dr. Don McAulay, Jr. and Min. Arthur Thomas. Together they will discuss how we might strengthen habits of listening to support and celebrate communities of color. Books will be available for purchase and for signing after the event. This event is graciously hosted by the Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology (ConnCAT). Book 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. Praise for Dr. Granby's book “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 “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 “A critically important contribution… Granby is a thinker of exceptional range and insight…” —Robert Gooding-Williams, author of In the Shadow of Du Bois “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 “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 “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