Name: Say It Louder!
ISBN: 9780062976765

Tiffany Cross

A Washington D.C. insider discusses both the historical and current influence of African Americans in our electoral process and offers ideas for how they can use their rising power to affect elections and overcome voter suppression efforts.

Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy

Say It Louder!

Lisa W.

Tiffany Cross, thank you... Thank you for making me feel validated. As a black educated millennial female who first voted in the Obama election this is history told from my point of view in which I am currently living through.

I wish I had the type of platform that could truly lift up this book as it so necessarily deserves. However that will not stop me from sharing it with friends, professional acquaintances and strangers on the street. 

This book made me look back on the sliver of time where I thought I wanted to be a journalist at one of the country's top schools for journalism, The University of Missouri-Columbia. It's laughable now that I think about me ever suggesting that it was as simple as enrolling when I never indulged in the craft. However this book makes me appreciate the profession in ways that I had not before. I hope that this book will become a pillar of influence for members of undergraduate NABJ, as it sheds a light into the journey that graduates will soon embark on. It foreshadows their struggles while also referencing the power that lies within their representation. 

I wish the book could be handed to every black and brown 18 year old who registers to vote. Showing them the significance of their registration. Say it Louder! allowed me to reflect on my first voting experience with the 2008 Obama election. How it felt to complete my first civic duty at such a pivotal time in history. This can be said of young adults who will get to vote in the Biden/Harris vs Trump/Pence election. Say it Louder! will help them understand the magnitude of what will transpire in November 2020 and how their vote will make the difference. 

Tiffany Cross did a fantastic job of interweaving historical events such as the 1919 Red Summer with the political strife of today 2020 election. She compacted over a 100 years of political and socioeconomic history into 176 pages that left me amazed. It was done with wit and flare that only a black woman could posses while providing data and context on heavy and complicated matters. As a person who has recently started taking a look at politics a little deeper, it filled in a number of gaps to questions I had such as how Stacy Abrams lost her election, what Russia's potential stake in the presidential elections were, why Flint's water crisis wasn't constant streaming news and more. 

This book is timely and necessary. Not enough good words can be said about it.

A breakout media and political analyst delivers a sweeping snapshot of American Democracy and the role that African Americans have played in its shaping while offering concrete information to help harness the electoral power of the country’s rising majority and exposing political forces aligned to subvert and suppress Black voters. Black voters were critical to the Democrats’ 2018 blue wave. In fact, 90 percent of Black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to just 53 percent of all voters. Despite media narratives, this was not a fluke. Throughout U.S. history, Black people have played a crucial role in the shaping of the American experiment. Yet still, this powerful voting bloc is often dismissed as some “amorphous” deviation, argues Tiffany Cross. Say It Louder! is her explosive examination of how America’s composition was designed to exclude Black voters, but paradoxically would likely cease to exist without them. With multiple tentacles stretching into the cable news echo chamber, campaign leadership, and Black voter data, Cross creates a wrinkle in time with a reflective look at the timeless efforts endlessly attempting to deny people of color the right to vote—a basic tenet of American democracy. And yet as the demographics of the country are changing, so too is the electoral power construct—by evolution and by force, Cross declares. Grounded in the most-up-to-date research, Say It Louder! is a vital tool for a wide swath of constituencies.

Say It Louder! Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy

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