Dr. Clifton L. Granby
Author · Educator · Philosopher · Minister
The Racial Politics of Listening: Deference, Power and Relationality
Oxford University Press · September 23, 2026
“This book is extraordinary… [a] rare work that accounts for the way we live race, not simply its effects. It is brilliant… richly textured, elegant, and sensitive in its rendering of both the beauty and pathos of living in the along…” — Imani Perry
“One of the most significant treatments of the practice and politics of listening written in the last twenty-five years…”
— Willie James Jennings
“… An intimate and challenging spiritual meditation on despair and possibility, this grace map that we need for trying to bear living together.” — Kevin Quashie
“Pioneering and pathblazing… Wise humility and appropriate deference to earned exemplary status take this brilliant text to uncharted waters in humanistic studies… we must listen and learn from Clifton Granby!” — Cornel West
“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
“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
“A critically important contribution… Granby is a thinker of exceptional range and insight…” — Robert Gooding-Williams
“Granby’s call for aptly marshaled deference beckons us to a more honest and courageous engagement with ourselves and our histories.” — Luvell Anderson