Racial Disloyalty

Understanding Kennedy's Work on Racial Loyalty and Betrayal

Kennedy asserts every group needs to regulate and police its members. Defection, that is, having some [Page 623]members coerced or enticed into disloyalty by powerful social forces, is antagonistic to a socially disadvantaged group's advancement and even survival. Viewing such anxiety, and consequent attempts at regulation, as inescapable and ineradicable, he suggests epithets and charges of selling out are used to trigger ostracism within the group, making some ingroup members, in effect, into outsiders. Thus, he rejects the counsel of Stephen Carter and others who insist on freedom of discussion and debate in a future rid of charges of racial betrayal, selling out, or other conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, Kennedy is himself concerned that racial discourse wherein Black participants are ruled by fear of being labeled sellouts encourages both self-policing and self-censorship, which stifle and distort needed ingroup discussion and debate. Yet Kennedy proposes that epithets expressing anxiety over the threat of racial defection and betrayal should be used sparingly and that evidence should be both demanded and provided by the group's members.

Kennedy, a law professor, takes a legalistic approach to the problem. Rather than focusing on questions of identity (what someone is)—whether someone is a sellout, an Uncle Tom, an Oreo, or a Trojan Horse—Kennedy's emphasis is on how they act. His project is to determine whether a certain offense has been performed. To this end, he demands defining and specifying the charge (informal), procedures for challenging it and requiring the public presentation and weighing of evidence, high standards for the informal analogue of conviction, and a (perhaps implicit) presumption of innocence for the person accused.

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