Say It Louder! audiobook

My mom and I listened to Tiffany read it herself and it was great. Really smart, insightful, educational, and interesting. We learned a lot and reaffirmed a lot of what we already know/believe. Some of it is really upsetting and infuriating but still educational and enlightening. I kept thinking of the Kimberly Jones who said, "You're lucky we just want equality and not revenge."Hopefully Tiffany Cross will get Joy Ann Reid's morning spot since Joy replaced the barf inducing Chris Matthews in the weeknight slot. Yay!

To inspire Black people by the masses, we must reimagine America.

Cross shows how racial inequality and lack of representation propagates through our democracy – what stories gets reported in the media and how community members are portrayed, inform the decisions that voters make to elect lawmakers and ratify policies that will influence every aspect of the administration. Despite being a major contributor to the demographic composition, media continues to represent the Black public as minority and thereby weakens the influence of their vote. Author Tiffany Cross, in sharing her experiences, tells her own story, in language that is at once engaging and intelligent, stimulating but sisterly, with puns and phrases that allude to pop culture but that also demonstrates the range of her talking points where she can just as easily invoke a literary reference as she could say a line made popular by a reality TV star. What Ms. Cross has to say is important, and how she says it will make it easier to listen, even if the truths she shares are hard to hear. Note: I received a complimentary copy of the book from the publishers in order to complete a review

If you have any interest in the media and politics -- especially the ways the media influence politics -- this book is a must. I would've never thought a book about Black voters could be so engaging. Much of the enjoyment stems from the author's injection of humor and "sophisticated sass," as Michael Eric Dyson says in the foreword. And it's the sharp insights that already has me quoting the book to friends. The best way to consume this book is the audio version. The author clearly has great fun reading her own words. I was loving the book so much that half-way through I bought the Kindle version in order to start highlighting passages and ideas. There was one tiny part that took a star off for me, but almost anyone who has any interest in the media, politics, and race will love it even if they have the same issue.Just a few of the points the author explains well:* How Russian disinformation campaigns were able to target real racial grievances to depress Black voter turnout in 2016, just as the Russians used real racial grievances to target Black people in the 1950s. * How after Obama left office, major media outlets quietly got rid of or diminished Black on-air talent.* How the media and politicians were draconian toward Blacks during the crack epidemic but when the opioid epidemic hit whites, all of a sudden there were calls for compassion and diversion programs rather than prison.Where the author lost a star from me? She calls Melania Trump "FLO-TITS" -- that's messed up.Here are a couple of excerpts to give a feel:White anchors and reporters consistently center much of their campaign reporting around white Republicans. The consistent question to candidates running at the federal level is “How will you appeal to swing voters/Trump voters/Midwest voters/working-class voters” or whatever other euphemism they want to use for white members of the GOP. It’s a strange obsession the media has with Trump Republicans. They routinely invite on his hardcore supporters and parade them as swayable voters—which they clearly are not. Viewers suffer through these internet conspiracy theorists trying to clumsily talk through policy, about which they are painfully ignorant. It’s baffling because I don’t recall that kind of anthropological case study on Obama voters across the cable news media landscape. After all, they too disrupted the political terrain and toppled a political dynasty. And they did it without yelling racial epithets and xenophobic rhetoric at campaign rallies. Were they never interesting enough for a cable news panel?And here's a long excerpt but I want to include it because it's so anger-inducing. It sounds like something out of the 1950s, but it involves the current governor of Georgia and how, for years, he's been trying to keep Black citizens from registering to vote, actually voting (even having Black seniors pulled off a bus being driven to a voting station), and even being represented in political office.When Brooks County, Georgia, elected a majority-Black school board for the first time in 2010, Kemp sent investigators to interrogate Black residents in the county about their unprecedented use of absentee ballots in the election. Law enforcement officials, at Kemp’s direction, had registration activist Nancy Dennard arrested. She was taken from her home in handcuffs, placed in a squad car, and marched into the police station. Eleven of her political allies were also arrested and charged with 120 separate felonies. Among the arrestees were three newly elected Black school board members, who were stripped of their positions because of the allegations. The Quitman 10 + 2, as they came to be known, had their mugshots, all of them wearing orange jumpsuits, blanketed across the media as evidence of voter fraud. Their images were splashed across the front pages of newspapers, played on a loop on local TV news, and shown on Fox News as a talking point to prove voter fraud was real. The intent was not just to suppress but also to humiliate. In fact, Kemp has routinely sent the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to raid the offices of voter registration groups on trumped-up charges. Then Georgia Republican governor Nathan Deal removed the newly elected Black members from the Brooks County School Board in January 2012, two months after the indictments were filed. Dennard had been elected president of the board but was stripped of that title as well. As the court case against them moved forward, Dennard won reelection in the fall of 2012, along with the other African American member of the school board, Frank Thomas, and in early 2013 Dennard, Troutman, and Diane Thomas were reinstated according to the law. They served together for twenty-two months. Four years after the election, the accused were acquitted of all charges, but their lives had been devastated. And Black voters there decided civic engagement was not worth the vicious white backlash. In 2014, not long after their term, the board switched back to majority white.

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.

CWs: Explorations of racism (both incurred and documented); allusions to racist speech; quoting of racial slurs; discussions of police violence and the murder of Black people at the hands of police; in-depth discussions of white supremacy; mentions of suicide, lynching, and racist killings

Listened to the audiobook. I think Cross did just what she set out to do, giving a deeper understanding of the dynamics underlying what is deemed “the black vote”. She does a great job explaining party loyalties, or rather the lack there of amongst black voters, the way the media fails to understand, explore or accurately represent black voters and my favorite part- highlights the absolutely tribal and nepotistic nature of media and politics. I think her voice was clear, authentic and has the earned confidence of having put into the work behind her takes. Glad I listened to this book.

I am a fan of Tiffany Cross and her book was very inspiring. She is an excellent Author

Excellent Book about African Americans Demanding to be HeardThis is a short book about African Americans gathering and demanding to be heard. Cross is best known to me as the journalist subbing on AM Joy on MSNBC and whom I hope to be named the host. She is forthright looks at history and concerns of many eligible African American voters in the USA. She urges in a gentle way to gather a vote and demand their right to be heard.

Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. I loved Tiffany Cross's conviction in both her writing style and her narration of the audioibook. Despite a media narrative that states otherwise, Black voters are not a monolith. And the criticism that they blindly vote for Democrats because there's some sort of unspoken rule in the Black community is incredibly disingenuous and lacks any sort of intellectual curiosity when it comes to Black America's motivations. The fact of the matter is, the Black community recognizes that all politics and systems in America seek to harm them in some way; they just choose to vote for the party that harms them the least. They are under no delusions that voting for Democrats is also not going to harm them in some way. They're just choosing the path of least resistance and least harm. I love how Tiffany Cross provides readers (and listeners) with historical context and supplants that sense of intellectual curiosity that has been lacking in the media as to why Black America votes the way they do.

A very in-depth look at how Black voters are overlooked in media in front of & behind the camera. She also provided a brief overview of how she got started in the business. Very insightful. Definitely recommended.

4.5 stars. This is a really fast, smart book that’s a really good mix of history, personal memoir, and current events. The book illustrates a different side of broadcast journalism and mass media that isn’t often covered in books like this, but it’s a necessary perspective. I wish it could have been longer-I would read a book by Tiffany Cross any day.

Too Easy !!I absolutely LOVED this book ! It was an easy read to complete in just a few days. Tiffany is unapologetic in her delivery which I totally related to. I am vowing to read more black authors and if they write like Tiffany, I'm sold !! Her references caused me to do further study into the people and topics she included. I am more fortified as result of this !! My mom would be proud of you Tiffany so I'm certain your mom is !! Keep the good work up in saying things louder to those of us that are captivated by your no nonsense style. This book teaches us that the informative does not have to be boring 😎

** spoiler alert ** Ironically I read this while votes were coming in and I couldn't put it down! When people tell you how great America is, here are facts of Americans prohibiting Americans. One of the main reasons for a need for everyone to vote is a need for equal representation. "white men comprise 30 percent of the population but still hold 62 percent of elected offices at the local, state, and federal levels. The political structure still overwhelmingly favors white men as the ruling class"(191). I especially enjoyed the chapters on voter suppression. For example, Detroit in 2016 did not count over 75,000 ballots. Cross makes an excellent comparison that if this many people had had their flights cancelled, it would have been all over the news but because this was a majority black city, it was not. Moreover, in Michigan 80 voting machines had issues on election day and an old law was used to avoid recounting those votes. Also Michigan Republicans prior to 2016 did not pass a no reason absentee voting bill (114-115). Ohio has a chapter here, with its 81% white population that has a low population growth, yet is given much focus in elections as a deciding state (144). Cross points out that Ohio's status will fall after the census, taking its electoral college power to that of North Carolina (146). Ohio has been purging voters since 1994 (144). In 2015 40,000 voters from Cuyahoga County were purged (145). In 2012 1 million voters were purged in Ohio (145). Kasich signed strict voting laws and "refuse dot voice opposition"(148).The chapter on Georgia was utterly disheartening-- to read about the Georgia Secretary of State visibly going after voters and organizations registering voters- from arresting senior citizens taking a van to vote, to putting in handcuffs and charging with felonies groups that registered voters. The attack of the elected black school board was jaw dropping. If I had to suggest one chapter, it'd be this one. Many facts astounded me, such as how "leading up to the 2016 presidential election, only a few dozen out of more than 2,300 elected prosecutors nationwide were black"(67). George Soros invested about $21 million to aid in solving this injustice of unfair representation and of prosecutors not invested in reducing incarceration (68). In 2013 in Ferguson "outstanding fines and fees made up one-fifth of Ferguson's entire revenue base--an 80 percent increase over just two years prior"(69). I was sad to learn that our local Cleveland Public Dealer "chose to permanently shut down their comments section [regarding officer Timothy Loehmann and Tamir Rice's murder] to avoid the racist diatribes that peppered their site rather [than to] take on the responsibility of holding racist people accountable by letting others see their unfiltered thoughts"(82-83). She points out how when there were more newspapers, and "more decentralized media coverage"(90) say in 1919, there were African American newspapers and the coverage focused on blacks. I learned about the Red Summer of 1919 where many African Americans were killed. "In the 1910s and 1920s, violence committed by whites was so abhorrent and detestable that civil rights commissions had to be set up in cities to pressure local and federal governments to address it. This is in part how police became the intermediary for what the white community wanted"(91). I was further fascinated to learn how Russia got interested around this time in our problem with racism, seeking to capitalize on it to promote communism(106-108).She mentions a political science study out of UCLA, Riverside that examined Obama-Trump switchers and "found that these voters tended to score high on measures of racial hostility and xenophobia--and they were not likely to be suffering economically" and this refers to about 6.7 to 9.2 million voters like this (123)