Audio only
A Second Sight
How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward FreedomBy Sarah J. JacksonNarrated by Karen ChiltonLength10h 18m
About this audiobook
"I have been waiting for a book like this, and I’m so glad it's here." — Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed
Since the nation’s founding, Black Americans have had a unique perspective on the U.S. experience—a “second sight”—that reveals the truth about the nation to itself. As renowned media scholar Sarah J. Jackson charts in this bold and daring masterwork, at the center of this effort has been an extraordinary cast of Black journalists, photographers, filmmakers, radio hosts, podcasters and other mediamakers who have drawn on the visionary tradition of second sight to advance democracy and broaden our most fundamental American values.
When Black mediamakers raise their voices and speak uncomfortable truths about America, they shape memories of the nation and push us toward a future more closely aligned with our espoused values. For two centuries, this “second sight” has been an overlooked engine of American democracy.
Drawing from W.E.B. Du Bois’s philosophical work, along with deep historical analysis and dozens of interviews with today’s most active Black mediamakers, A Second Sight shows these visionaries positioned at the margins of their industries and navigating fraught relationships to power. They’ve warned of the greatest dangers to democracy—from slavery to Nazism, and mass incarceration to misinformation. Their work is central to our culture and politics. Yet it is devalued, met with violent censure, or achieved only via ingenious work-arounds. This tension has sharpened their commitments to truth.
Now one of our nation’s foremost scholars of American media, Sarah J. Jackson, presents an appraisal that situates Black mediamakers at the vanguard of telling the American story. Brilliant, urgent and illuminating, A Second Sight is an authentic and candid grappling with a discordant thread in the American fabric and, in tracing a bolder vision for the nation, presents a way forward.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Audiobook details
GenrePolitics and Government, Psychology, Business and Economics
Length10 hrs 18 mins
Narrated byKaren Chilton
FormatAudiobook
Publish dateJun 16, 2026
LanguageEnglish
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