I am Indian. My husband is white and Jewish. Our son looks like he could be Southern European or - certainly here in L.A. - Latino. I appreciate the writer's thoughts about race and the individual and honestly have very much lived my life in that way. Despite a few isolated racist incidents, my life - largely because of my choice of cosmopolitan, diverse locales - has been that of an individual, not a race. That said, racism is less about how we as individuals define ourselves than how society categorizes us. Systemic racism isn't the same as prejudice or bias. Someone calling me or my kid a name isn't the same as a cop shooting a Black man because of the color of his skin. I'm all for the individual flourishing and defining him or herself as long as we don't delude ourselves that the systems in place see us that way. And that we fight to change that.
3
Article thought provoking, and comments more so. People’s experience of “race” is really what matters here, as much as a new utopia of a post-racial world may be wished for. “Whiteness” as prized is not exclusive to the US and Europe’s complicated history of slavery. India’s Brahmin class is “whiter” than the lower castes, and cultivated. As is lighter/whiter skin in China, Japan, Korea, etc. Would love to understand the origins of this cross-culturally. Meanwhile, as long as we “otherise” people for their color, creed, sexual-orientation, gender, politics, etc., and fail to exercise the Golden Rule, humans have a long way to go. Even in the future mocha-colored world, there will be groups who elevate themselves and marginalize others to feel “better than”.....
1
Who is that said, “The personal is political.”
1
Thomas Chatterton Williams’s narrative reinscribes the story of Coleman Silk in Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain.”
Coleman Silk is a black man who chooses to pass as white. After giving up a promising career as a boxer—at the behest of his hyper-correct black middle-class father—Silk endures an unhappy stint in the Navy before becoming a professor of classics and dean at a liberal arts college in the Berkshires.
When his statuesque Scandinavian girlfriend rejects him after meeting his mother and sister, Silk decides to marry a Jewish woman, strategizing that her Jewish afro will provide cover in case his children happen to have kinky hair.
Silk’s career is destroyed after he innocently uses the term “spooks” to refer to two absent black students. His masquerade comes to an untimely end when he and his newfound paramour, the uneducated and abused wife of a traumatized Vietnam vet, plunge into an icy river in his car. The two are the victims of a diminished and enraged white masculinity.
Cleaver is not worth quoting. More Baldwin, Morrison, Roth, and Gates.
Williams’s narrative unconsciously fetishizes whiteness. Blackness is not celebrated.
And what does it mean to observe that his daughter is paler “by a standard deviation[?]”
When your children come of age, explain to them the significance of their maternal grandmother’s slave head, then smash it to smithereens.
The truly enlightened view identity as contingent and accidental rather than an “eternal reflection.”
4
I find this to be an illuminating exploration of the subjectivity of a man "outside" American racial categories. It is strongest when sticking to that approach.
It is weaker when projecting that subjectivity onto others, in particular, his maternal grandfather. The author, when viewing photos of him imagines interior experience that follow not from that man's perspective and position at the time, but through his own in retrospect.
The author writes about a photo, "the parents inhabit a country that does not yet have civil rights, and they are posed with an unperturbed air..." What would a member of the Vietcong or Cuban revolutionaries see? What colonialist psychology would they also reasonably ascribe to them? My point is that the author selects the historical moment relevant to himself and views the photo through that lens. Entirely understandable, even useful. But, largely arbitrary and yielding little if anything about another's subjectivity.
This meaning, this interpretation, this projection, far from stemming from inhabiting the other man's place ("even knowing that he was failing yet unable to help it") as implied can only be from the vantage of the "bi-racial" grandson. As such, it reveals the subjectivity of the writer. Only.
If one really wants to inhabit another's perspective, then a very different kind of work must be done. Not "neutrality" but empathy is called for. I think it would only make this piece even stronger.
1
Thoughtful, sincere, and illuminating article.
3
great article. reading this, made me think with new way, new aspect.
1
Very interesting. We visited family this weekend. I was chatting with my step son-in-law (it's complicated). He is biracial with a name that easily identifies a specific ethnicity. I have a name that does not "match" what I look like (visually, I'm obviously a minority in the US). I was relating a story about how complex it can be to be visually ethnic in our society, and how being a "minority" sometimes invites unwelcome comments. His response was "Well, I'm not a minority" - a head-spinner because to the naked eye, he is absolutely a member of an ethnic minority as are two of his children. I wonder what is his thought pattern, and how is he going to prepare his children to understand and most importantly. overcome things children or other people will say to them, both positively and negatively. I know it's very complicated and he obviously felt strongly that he's Caucasian. My step-daughter and her sister both married "outside their race" and their brother has not forgiven them for it. So maybe it's a protective guard he's put up. I worry that his children are going to feel like they need to pass a white, or be upset that they cannot pass as white, because their father -who looks exactly like them - seems so entrenched in thinking he's only white... They need to understand from the get-go that they are beautiful and valuable as who they are, and deserving of being treated with dignity and care.
5
To all 336 comment writers, the Magazine Editor
Jessica Lustig @jessicalustig sent this Tweet:
20 sep.
"I recommend reading the comments (yes, really!) that readers have left on the piece (about 150 so far), with many sharing their own personal stories."
and Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic Magazine posed this question:
"What are the smartest reactions to Thomas Chatterton Williams' book excerpt?"
I think this may be a first, NY Times comment writers get their first Twitter notice and recommendation.
Anyone want to answer Conor F?
I cannot answer in real time but maybe will revive my blog by answering there.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
3
Just have Valentine ask her grandmother to put the slave head in a drawer when she and her husband and their children visit. Pretty soon, the grandmother may wake up and get rid of it permanently.
Old people are so accustomed to their possessions that they don't always see their connatations clearly any more.
4
Still, upon further reflection, and having at last finished this, alas, torturous read, I keep landing upon what another comment touched on: that most of these mixed-race lads end up jettisoning the black side of them, marrying white, marrying "up," and not that there's inherently anything wrong with that, but why is that, though? I see precious few mixed race men marrying black women. This adaption from a longer work seems to touch on just that: a disquieting reality among some people of color playing up their white ancestries as leg-ups in a sea of ochres, browns. Even this author's seemingly black father is rescued by the qualification that he's red-brown---and he even has freckles! Williams reminds us again and again he's half Northern European. The word blond comes up as if heavily underlined.
I wasn't surprised this color-obsessed author married white. His essay is a paen to the longing to be white, to be accepted. I am curious why this seems to be a phenomenon in communities of color, and I say this as someone from a rainbow background myself.
A black guy once told a physician relative of mine he'd never marry a dark-skinned woman like her because he wanted children with good hair.
In short I get these messages from this essay:
"See I'm whiter than Tiger Woods, who isn't even half white, but who wants to be white, we all know that!"
"See I'm even whiter than Obama who is only half white!"
Love your children for who they are, not how blond they are.
17
@Jack-Odd comments still open but have best before date. I understand the anecdotal basis for your comment but you might admit that nobody could ever carry out a study since nobody can predict the color-features of outcomes of so called mixed combinations.
If TCW had talked with evolutionary geneticis Professor Sarah Tishkoff, an expert on color genetics, she could have told him the possibilities.
When I lived in Rochester NY we were sometimes at the home of a Swedish friend who would have classical conductor Isaiah Jackson - seen as black - who was married to an ethnic Swede. Their kids? One seen as black the other seen as white both belonging to the only modern race - HUMAN
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
1
A few years ago I took the 23andme test. My results came back over 99 percent European, but there is that 0.4 percent Sub Saharan African — specifically Congolese — that is there. It does not appear to be a fluke or a testing error because it also showed up when one of my parents tested as well. I don’t know where it came from. No black or mulatto ancestor shows up in any of the records I found, going back to the 1600s. When I wrote about it for the local paper, someone posted a comment, apparently seriously, that I was now “black” because of the one drop rule. I assume no one who is actually black would appreciate if I started referring to myself as black because of some remote ancestor. I don’t believe most states classed people as black using the one drop rule until fairly late in history either. We would probably be better off without all the obsessing over race.
9
When you call 911 to report an assault the operator will ask if the assailant was white, black, or Hispanic. She is not asking about his clothing, language, outlook on life, ethnicity, or weight, although those things may come up later in the criminal justice process. At that moment she just wants to help police officers identify the criminal as quickly as possible.
She is asking you to make a guess about two things: first, where his ancestors were living five hundred years ago-- the biological part of race-- and second, where in your opinion that puts him in the racial classification currently in use-- the sociological part of race.
Most people can make fairly accurate guesses because race is both a biological and a social construct. If race were not partly biological she wouldn't ask that question because it wouldn't be useful.
Full disclosure: I'm blacker than Rachel Dolezal and more American Indian than Elizabeth Warren.
7
A beautifully written article. The "racial issue" in the U.S. has seemed absurd to me since the 60's when I was in love with a black man. By American identity, he was black, but in fact, his roots were mohican Indian, French, and African American. He was from Louisiana.
I, as someone born and raised in Germany until I was nine, was, ironically (since I was born in 1943), not aware of racial prejudice until I came to the U.S. Race, to me, had top do with your roots, to be celebrated as a point of interest.
Those who today, still cling to the notion that if you are a fifth black you are black, make it very hard for young people of mixed race to find an identity. It is time to let people be simply who they are, a quarter Irish, a quarter Mexican, an eight black, and an eights Puerto Rican, and four sixteenth unidentified.
Whatever the mix, and we are all a mix of cultures and races (remembering that parts of our DNA goes back to Africa). It is time our identity is be based on our values, and cultural norms without thinking about the "racial" aspects. I think also, that the question of race needs to be wiped out of our data bases.
7
It's always seemed to me that, for others, marriages happen in part to safeguard the children. As long as any group of people is subject to danger, just for existing, there is seldom a way of knowing whether one of one's reasons to marry out of the stigmatized group is to lighten the burdens of one's children.
I live in the SW so being Mexican American has a lot of history here, as does being Native American. Native Americans have passed as MexAm even with all the trouble that bears to avoid worse troubles for their families.
Survival is the name of the game.
The self blame that comes with this adds to the pain.
On the other hand for me, having heard too much of what polite people hide, I found it increasingly difficult to be close to people who do not share a similar degree of social stigma, even if they're not from the same group. And by now for real, we ought to know that being mixed is almost universal for long time Americans at least.
2
By continually banging on about race don’t we legitimise something that doesn’t exist?
9
Amitava D in Columbia Missouri opens with these words
“There's no denying Mr. Williams is a superb writer. But ultimately race is what you choose to make of it.”
Not in America Amitava D. In my USA each baby born is tagged with a “race” name at birth. That tag is then seen as essential information by physicians meeting new patients, hospital admission departments, even college Admissions departments with Harvard the worst.
Affirmative action policies apply to people whose “race” is designated. Worst of all, American medical researchers produce epidemiological studies in which self-designated race black or white is seen as a key variable. That might be valid if there were a genetically pure group A – call it white – and its counterpart group B – call it black, but there are no such groups.
In Sweden, there is one group whose members hold that scientifically indefensible view, the neo-Nazi NMR and even some members of the SD party.
Let us look forward to a future TCW essay here in which he draws on the part of his book devoted to
UNLEARNING RACE.
Amitava D and others who think American race names do not matter, I hope you will read Unlearning Race.when it appears - and comment.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
3
Your parents seem like wonderful people in a happy marriage. They raised a good man who has made his own beautiful family. Don't let the racists get you down. Here in so-called "white" Portland, I have a mixed race grandson who has several mixed race friends. All of them are living privileged upper middle class lives. Of course, racial problems will surface one way or another, but I pray those problems will be minor and not affect deeply the course of their lives.
5
Very interesting essay...I've been cleaning out an old house and was shocked to see my Italian maternal grandfather's US naturalization papers describe his race as "white" but his "complexion" officially as "dark"...Weird...But, I always say, in American it's best to have Italian looks with an English last name...As I do...LOL ...Hopefully these racial issues will be forgotten in the near future...Cool writing
1
Wow - a very truthful, insightful & considerate view of how things are for you when you have this history. Thank you ! Mine was a mixed marriage, to a black West Indian, so my kids are of much the same experience as this writer's, altho not so American since we only migrated here as a family from the UK in the late 70's. I still find the total divide between 'black' & white hard to put up with, hard to feel optimistic about because of the deeply embedded historical slavery status within both groups. It becomes just as difficult when you are white to be in a black group - a silly example was at a party with my son's American black in-laws, had been enjoying the vibrant & very civilized & highly-educated group, when I spontaneously tried to kiss my son's mother-in-law as we were leaving. Sounds sort-of normal, but her reaction was one of total retreat & hostility such that I just had to laugh it was so silly - yet I knew at that moment just how deep her feelings about me were - she could not hide it, she could not allow for me to be at a party with her as a normal person, the hurts were way too deep to let me 'escape' what other whites had done to her over her lifetime ! THAT is what is so difficult to get past ! America you have built a horrible history you may never be able to get over without multiple mixed marriages gradually teaching your children that the skin you label people with is just a very thin covering which nobody on the planet chose themselves !!!!!
57
I'm over 60, am black, and have known hundreds if not thousands of black and biracial men. One thing that gets ignored in stories of biracial black/white people, especially men:
They always end up marrying women who aren't black.
That does not just "happen." The internalized misogyny against black women and the desire for children with non-black features is a subject I'd like to see candidly explored for once. The number of black and mixed-race men who marry outside of their race is twice the number of other groups. I don't think that blacks should only marry blacks, but the social disadvantage black women still experience at the hands of blacks and other groups needs to be discussed.
87
@Lifelong Reader hi, i take your point seriously, and i do discuss it in the book from which this is adapted.
32
I'm glad to hear it.
13
@Lifelong Reader
Um, you forgot about Obama.
30
Quite simply the greatest writing. I can't remember reading anything more beautifully written.
Drew me in and made me keep reading, while knowing that as I did, the end would come, even as I wanted to read more.
Such a wonderful exploration of a complex topic. I am blown away by how masterfully this simple telling delivered it's message.
128
Fantastic. Thomas Chatterton Williams is the antidote to so much of the writing/thinking/talking about race that goes on in politics and the media. By acknowledging genetics, history and individuality, he offers an escape route from the downward spiral of race discussion that we seem to be spinning through at the current moment. Writers such as Ta Nehisi Coates would have us believe that racial problems are indelible and that they permeate more than we think. I hope that Coates is wrong but I know that his thinking offers no path forward. In this piece, Williams acknowledges history and pain, offering an escape from both without ignoring either.
143
SJG,
Completely agree. I was a Coates fan until his disillusionment with Obama’s MLK approach to civil rights turned him into the pied piper of critical race theory, and I think Between the World and Me (and the left’s fanatical praise of it) is partly responsible for our current toxic cultural and political climate. Williams’ beautifully written, nuanced critiques of that worldview have given me a glimmer of hope that sanity will be restored.
13
Come down to the Deep South, it does permeate. It’s even in the North though more hidden. Hopefully it’s not indelible.
11
The path forward is facing history. (Not the sanitized version). We can only repair what we willingly face.
18
I’m a black woman. My grandfather looked White because his mother was Irish. When he walked to the store to buy ice cream for my mother, a neighbor warned my grandmother that a White man was buying her little girl treats! My grandfather was also part Narragansett and I don’t know about his Black ancestry, just that it was there someplace. He learned Polish from working on the docks with Polish immigrants and bought me vinyl polka records. I learned the polka and my little friend and I- two 8 year old black children danced the polka during polka celebrations at the ocean beach boardwalk. My dad’s great grandfather was a black man in North Carolina who had to bury his book in the ground and teach himself to read at night in North Carolina because it was illegal for him to learn to read and write. America. It’s complicated.
355
@Fredrica
My dad was mixed (black & white) but looked and identified as a black man, albeit a light-skinned one. My mom was white and pale with blond hair. Her mother, who identified as Jewish (from Russia) was brown-skinned (maybe Halle Berry's complexion) with thick straight black hair and almond-shaped eyes. When my mom was a little girl and would walk in the street with her mother, they thought she was with her nanny cause my grandmother looked anything but white.
I could pass for white. But I don't. Yes, it's complicated.
Loved this article.
111
@nerdgirl
The article is great.
However, the issue is only complicated because we make it so. By your own examples, the illegitimacy of race as a concept is revealed. Most theories need only one example of contradiction for science to put them aside. We walk in a reality where humanity itself debunks the validity of classification by appearance every single day.
The human genome experiment found no markers that aligned with racial categories. The complication is simply that we are not ready to abandon an objectively ridiculous concept, because we too much identity, history, privilege, and connection invested in maintaining it despite all the evidence of its falsehood and its harm.
33
@Gui
I so agree with you. "Race" is a politically constructed identity. However in the US it carries a heavy existential reality regardless of what made up racial category you might have been assigned to. The past and present weighs on us. (as certainly showed in the gripping essay we are discussing here)
If you're stopped for DWB and at times shot, it becomes a reality you have to live with and so does the reality of very recent past history Remember Jim Crow laws and the 'one drop rule" on which they were based were only repealed in the late 1960s. Or rather Jim Crow might have been repealed but we retain the "one drop rule" culturally and politically (politics as defined by the use of power, thus being shot for being "black" is a political act of power based on racism)
So again I agree with you but your choice of the term "ridiculous" when applied to a tragic imposition of a stigmatized identity bothers me. Perhaps you could describe the hatred and oppression and the ideologies that come with it , particularly at this moment when the radical right is so on the rise in many parts of the world, with another choice of word. (perhaps "tragic" "horrendous" "traumatic" "painful" "catastrophic' or?)
16
Commenters here would also appreciate Dorothy West's "The Wedding," an artful book of fiction that has the same theme as this excellent article: What makes a person black or white and why should it matter?
I am a 77-year-old white American woman who married a black man in (thankfully) liberal San Francisco in 1968. I became a widow in 2011 after 42 years of marriage. Our socio-economic family is similar to Mr. Williams': Educated, professional, upper middle class on both sides. We had a son and a daughter, both of whom are recognizably of mixed race. My son's wife is mixed (white/Chinese) and my daughter's husband is a white Frenchman. Their son, my only grandchild, looks completely white. (When my daughter described his citizenship as Franco-American, I immediately thought of a can of spaghetti.)
We share many racial and family issues with Thomas Williams' family; but my husband and I dealt with them differently than he does: Rather than analyze them, we ignored them and simply lived our lives as we wished. I am well aware that living in California's liberal Bay Area has made that possible and am grateful that, by living in urban Europe and Los Angeles, respectively, my daughter and son enjoy the same freedoms of those more enlightened environments. Happily, the world's future belongs to its cities, where racial mixing is already an accepted given.
417
@Lois Manning
This moving, lyrically written prose poem reminded me on a personal note of slights endured by people of mixed race, whom I loved, most significantly, my grandmother's best friend, (Jamaican-One Love) who also helped raise me. When I was sent off to boarding school in St. Augustine, Florida, following riots in Panama when I was eleven, Elizabeth went up to the states with my grandmother for a while. She didn't stay at the Ponce De Leon Hotel with my grandmother, which I didn't understand at the time. When we couldn't even sit with Elizabeth at the lunch counter at Woolworths, I started my first spontaneous protest, insisting on sitting with her although I could not be served. I remember tears rolling down my heated cheeks, and Elizabeth and the lady behind the counter pleading with me to go. It's not that racism didn't exist in Panama; it was more subtle, and escaped my notice until then. When my family moved to Barranquilla, Colombia, I found a racism crueler and more violent than anything I had witnessed before. That is the society that instructed me about the nuances of pigmentocracies, where the paler hues of skin sat on top at the country club, and the darker hued were subjected to rape, which even included children, which I witnessed at Port of Colombia on a beach where white elitists circled a poor dark skinned child-woman, and raped her. My friend and companion pushed me away from it because I was also vulnerable to abuse as a "gringa," an outsider.
46
@Lois Manning I appreciate your comment and what you are trying to convey. However, as a person of color and from my personal experiences prejudice, racism and bias are very much alive in cities and supposedly 'enlightened' places--university towns, in Europe and so on. In many ways it is even more insidious. We need to stop the dangerous logical fallacy of progressive and diverse locations being devoid of racism, prejudice, fear. It's the individual that inhabits the place. I myself have lived in many cities, towns, and have spent time in rural areas and see it (directed at myself and others) across the geographical spectrum.
76
@She This story hit home. My Colombian grandmother hated the fact that her mother was very indigenous, and did whatever she could to be white, although she did have some indigenous features. (We don't know who her father was because my great grandmother never married, but he must have been white or almost white. ) She only married white men to 'improve the race' and projected her self-hatred onto those grandchildren who didn't look right, lamenting how much they looked like her own mother. To this day, my (very educated) cousins still talk about the tone of their children's skin (this one is white, that one is too brown,etc.) I've always said that racism in the US ain't nothing compared to what it is in Colombia!
55
Thank you. I am also black and white, African and European. I have children who appear white. I am the parent of those blue-eyed girls on the playground, at the report card conference, in the doctor's office. No, I am not the babysitter. Sure, my daughters appear white, but they are my children. I have raised them to be conscious of race, the history of this country, the plight of peoples around the world experiencing ethnic discrimination. They are uncomfortable when people make casually racist comments in their presence. Those comments could be about their mother. Those of us of mixed ancestry are not "lucky" our children could pass for white; that is not the goal. My goal has always been to raise the best people possible and in my experience, those are not people who uphold the tenets of white supremacy.
445
@EM: Somehow I prefer the story of the Obamas and how they dealt with their sub-Saharan African ancestry. Mrs. Obama's parents, childhood and subsequent education particularly are appealing.
9
@EM
You are not color aka race 'black and white, African and European'. Nor is anyone else.
I have never seen a black nor a white person. Dark brown and pale flesh perhaps. Albinism is a human condition. But even albinos are not white. Melanism is not a human condition. While being African and European are all about geography. And English and French are all about national origin and ethnicity aka culture and language.
There is only one DNA biological scientific modern race aka human that began in Africa about 300,000 years ago. There is only one national origin aka Earth.
On average about 2-5% of humans with Asian and European ancestry have extinct Denovisan and Neanderthal DNA heritage. That is the only biracial human that lives.
There is none of that DNA in Sub-Saharan Africa. And while the human populations that left Africa carry the inbred genetic bottleneck markers of a tiny population that nearly became extinct as it left Africa there is far more genetic diversity in any African ethnic group or village than in the rest of humanity combined.
See 'The Race Myth: Why We Pretend That Race Exists in America' Joseph L. Graves; 'Decoding Watson' American Masters PBS.
6
@Blackmamba - Perfect as usual. I have filed comments stating that I look forward to TCW's next essay here that will deal with the subject named by the last 2 words of the book title:
UNLEARNING RACE
Also just filed comment that TCW tweet led me to:
Editor of the magazine recommends that everybody should read the now 336 comments here.
The Atlantic writer Conor x ask readers to identify high quality comments.
Cannot do that now, on a ferry taking me in to Göteborg.
Enjoy Sunday
Larry
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
3
"...Since I was very young, I understood that Texas was not so much where my father came from as where he never wanted to return to. ..."
So many gems in this excerpt.
Felt very moved by this nuanced and soul&heart full conveying of your experiences, ponderings, insights and descriptions.
Thank you for writing - and NYT for publishing this.
227
@CNN, when I read the words you quoted, I felt a sense of solidarity with the author's father. My Jewish family comes from Russia, Poland, and Austria. None of us have ever had any longing to visit "the old country."
15
This article is excellent. It shows that how other people judge you does have an influence on your life whether you like it or not. You and your family have to deal with this the best way you can. The reason black or white matters is because other people can see that. If people could see our blood type, we could be judged by that.
2
As a "white" person I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with that checkbox, even as I understand it to the only one that applies. My college-age daughter thinks I am being privileged or naive when I say I wish there was another box, perhaps "European-American." I get her point - that I have had all the benefits of whiteness (although am occasionally thought to be Jewish because of my dark hair/eyes/skin!) But if "white" people can't give up on their box, how can we ever approach seeing other people outside of theirs? I have read and been deeply changed by enough books (thank you Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, the list continues) to know that human experience binds us all. I deeply appreciated this truth-speaking article by Thomas Chatterton Williams about both the deep truth and absolute artificiality of "race" as experienced in our world today.
5
I recall a story of non-Jews sewing on a Star of David. I believe “white” Americans can do that too with regard to refusing to casually accept the benefits of a racist society, while acknowledging this doesn’t in any way mean we wish to erase history, just that we wish to not be complicit in perpetuating it.
My dad is from the islands with a French father and a native mother. He and all his siblings are red/brown with straight black hair and brown eyes. All have very large families of brown skinned children with variously textured long hair from dead straight to kinky.
I have no idea if my dad considered himself black. He looked and could pass (depending on which state he lived in) for Mexican, Flipino, Native Indian, East Indian, but never white. If I tell someone I have this mixture, they may not see it until they see me with my siblings,
My mixture is a personally rather interesting story to us, but we consider ourselves black, although sometimes others are a little confused and assume we are Hispanic (to Puerto Ricans) or have East Indian blood (to Southern East Indians, but not the ones up north(?)). I've been told to pass as Puerto Rican by Puerto Ricans (why on earth?) as though somehow that'll give me additional social currency.
I'm as curious about black/white mixes and where they see themselves on the social scale, as I look at my parents' brown skin and identify as black, first and foremost. Black people always know I'm black, although they may occasionally say, where are you from? But only after seeing my siblings and I together.
From what I can tell, colorism, as bad as it is in the states, is worst elsewhere, especially in Spanish speaking countries. My white husband's, ex in-laws (Cuban) appear to obsess about it. While his children less so.
3
@Meh
Re: your comment on colorism in Spanish speaking countries. I (a black woman) have to agree with you from experience. Not to say that I haven't experienced prejudice in the US, but I was surprised at the extent it existed among Latin Americans.
I went to a conference on Latin-American companies hosted by a major investment bank and the white, Latin-American receptionist wouldn't even acknowledge me. After a while of standing directly in front of her, I informed her I was there to register for the conference. I was wearing a business suit so it's not as though I looked like the help.
Then there was the case of the Hispanic waiter who tried to get me (one again in full business attire) to leave a buffet line because the food was "for the company". I informed him with an icy voice that I was "with the company!"
Then there was the time I was in Argentina at a restaurant with a group of financial analysts at a company-sponsored dinner. I went to the bathroom and two tango dancers were wondering what this "negra" was doing there (my high school Spanish came in handy). They found their answer when I was in the audience for their dance.
7
What an astonishingly incandescent story of race and one man’s emotional ecology. I couldn’t stop reading until I had finished.
6
Love your writing. Life can be exceedingly beautiful, yet so inscrutably complex.
I'm a gay caucasian (Dutch, Italian) guy born in Chicago, married to a black (Creole) man from small town Louisiana. Our adopted daughter is of mixed ethnicity, although those details remain a mystery, probably forever hidden in a small city in southern Georgia.
I relate to your description of crossing through the shifting fog of nuanced cultural and societal barriers all the time; you have a wonderful way of relating this experience.
I was struck by your father's (somewhat desperate) attempts to introduce you to boxing; I am doing the same with our 8-year-old daughter, for reasons that I am certain are in many ways similar.
I'm looking forward to your book.
Peace and love to you and your family.
13
Utterly brilliant limpid writing. I was spellbound. Thank you for sharing this essay with us, sir. It was deeply moving, yet simply lovely.
Worth every character of the composition (leave alone every word), and then some...
7
I was thinking yesterday - remembering perhaps - how that as an old, dark skinned, dark-eyed human being, created from various ethnicities, people with blue eyes still alarm me. Not as much as they once did - even with a Mother with blue eyes, a companion with blue eyes - but still, the not very subtle element of fear and suspicion is there. I occasionally wonder if blue-eyed people know that this effect exists? Certainly no one taught me this tentative discomfort - but to me the blue-eyed folks appear slightly 'unnatural'. Somehow unlikely, perhaps.
6
What a beautiful piece of writing (the memory as a sliver of mountaintop visible above the clouds...)
As a white woman, I have only faced the ugliness of racism but once, when as a 6 year old child in a school bathroom, I was accosted by an African American 10 year old girl who called me a "white devil" and threatened to beat me up. Luckily, as a recent immigrant I was still learning English, and missed some of the other pejoratives that were being thrown my way. I ducked under the bathroom stall and ran.
I can't imagine dealing with this day after day as black and brown people do to this moment.
Thanks to the traditions of racism in our country, with its "one drop" rule, the author and other mixed race individuals have all been lumped into the same category, regardless of their many shades of mocha. Because of their immediate labeling as a black individual, they have not been able to express or acknowledge their white ancestry. How sad that their world is binary, that they feel they have to suppress one side of their heritage, lest they become the "master."
4
The first reality of racism is that it isn’t real. Race doesn’t distinguish people, nor does skin color make an important difference. The second reality of racism is that it is very real. This is not because it is true in any objective sense, but simply because enough people believe it to give it an ersatz reality.
The real differences between groups of people are tribal in nature, not physical. They matter only because some people think they matter. Demonstrably wrong beliefs give fear and antagonism a reality greater than they deserve, a magnitude blown completely out of proportion to reality.
Racism, then, is an artifact of culture. What gives it strength is not any sort of actual legitimacy, but the fact that, like all of culture, it is impressed upon children along with the many valuable lessons of childhood. Parents, along with other significant adults, play a powerful role, either intentionally or not, in nurturing its presence or its absence. Parents, of course, are merely passing on the same imprinting they received, with all of the experiences, good, bad or indifferent, that have shaped their lives.
I’m not sure it’s possible to change people. Cultural values, on the other hand, can be modified, but often more slowly than we would hope for. Like the grandfather in this piece, who resisted change, people sometimes have to be passed by. Eventually they become outliers, so society can become better and pass on better values to future generations.
6
Why do I feel like after reading this essay, the author, said all this to say that what? He never "felt" blackness, only his whiteness side? He's high "yellow" so he would NEVER feel the full brunt of racism, anyway, if he was maybe few shades, darker, he would REALLY know why his dad, acted the way he did? IJS. Until white people, stop with the racism, NOTHING changes...so, yeah his kids are "white, unfortunately, he's just "mixed"...what ever the h that is, we are all human, it's certain, folks that came up with the racial hierarchy, who's superior, and what not....depending on their "hue".
7
@Kim What amazes me is how few people saw through this. This author is actually part of the problem, not the solution.
5
Fascinating article.
Thanks to Twitter I discovered Thomas Chatterton Williams during the past year and he is always a compelling thinker and writer on these issues.
5
"Try as I might, I do not see myself — or my father or anyone else I know and love, for that matter — in that sad porcelain figure. And so I am left to question just why I am bound and defined by this demeaning past in some truer way than I am allowed to be by my more or less leveled present."
Let me take a stab at defining the author's dilemma.
That porcelain figure represents the distorted echo of the ancestral cultural heritage lost when the male side of his biological existence was enslaved and prevented from passing down the richness of that heritage. No amount of discovery of genetic ancestry, or knowledge of the region, tribe, or clan origins that might be traced, can substitute for the subconscious comfort that comes from inheriting hundreds or thousands of years of a culture passed down, unbroken and inculcated into one from birth. Even if one ultimately rejects it, it is still a deep psychological anchor that colors how one views everything and reacts to everything. And being devoid of such an anchor also colors everything.
That figure implies the possibility, maybe probability, that others see him in light of it and any negative stereotypes it represents - and not just in America. That possibility is powerful because his cultural roots are both young and confused by how race "lives" in America, and he doesn't have the subconscious gestalt of his ancestral culture to anchor him.
Basically, his present isn't truly "more or less" leveled.
5
Too much attention paid to complexion, not enough to achievement and culture.
It would have been interesting if the author had disclosed what Clarence Williams wound up doing for a living.
Kathy Williams is a courageous woman. Her ability to break with her father's narrowness would also make for an interesting story.
1
The narrative written was already fascinating.
Why not simply reflect and comment on what’s already been carefully scaffolded and presented about the complex racial challenges presented?
3
@Jan
The confessional mode is suitable for adolescents. Here, the narrative capitalizes on the sensationalistic elements of two blonde, blue-eyed children of an interracial union.
Your fascination has to do with the appearance of the children. The story would hold little interest if the children had been phenotypically black. In the lead photo, why is the mother's face cut off?
I would refer you to James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" and Philip Roth's "The Human Stain."
Also the many documentaries on the phenomenon of albinism in Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa.
3
This may be the finest piece I've read in the Times all year. Thanks for writing it and thanks for publishing it.
11
Absolutely beautifully written article! I especially appreciated the part about relying on racial stereotypes to describe things that are much more about mannerisms or class, like his brother's Italian friend. As a white woman working to untangle my own racial assumptions, that part was clarifying for its plain-spokenness.
Thanks for the thoughtful read!
8
And now we have a POTUS who is fostering this hate. We are going backwards.
3
Beautiful conflicting identity. Profound and certain love of something seeming different yet greater than half one's blood.
Thank you.
3
I did the 23andme thing.. Being from a Country in South America with majority of European genetics, and not having ascendants from the wave of immigrants of the early 1900's, like Italians or French or Polish, etc, I discovered what I already knew by simple math and logic, that I had to have some native and sub Saharan blood, even if it does not show in my exterior look. It says that I have (approximately and surprisingly small) 1% native and 0.4 of sub Saharan African and about 2.5 North African. 500 years of living in the Americas cannot be anything else. The "Kingdom" will come when the races and nations are completely mixed and unified. We will get there. I have seen the light. "I have been to the mountaintop". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgVrlx68v-0
1
it's not about skin color. it's all value system.
1
I actually feel sorry for those who are so obsessed with race
I, a white person was happily married to a black woman anne we have two lovely children recently graduated from University
We don't constantly think about race nor did be beat it into our kids
Live your life the best you can - you cant fix the past you can only move forward
8
Many thanks to Mr. Williams for this essay. It's clarity and honesty is sorely needed right now in the US.
I am a Norteña , a person of both Mexican and European descent and a person who's ethnic history and familial history is every bit as complicated as Mr. William's history is. And I agree with him-it's time to get rid of this menu of ethnic and racial categories that have caused so much harm to people. But how to pass on the better parts of my heritage to my children, and now grandson, often escapes me as trying to tease apart all this often seems to perpetuate these divisions we live with.
2
Thank you. This is beautiful and moving. I feel humbled.
5
This brought me to tears, thinking about my mother’s interracial marriage in the sixties when I was seven. All the back and forth problems with my maternal grandparents, my fathers new family; not as much pushback from my new step family (which was “fictive” in any case). What a waste of time and energy and love it was.
7
49% West African, 50% Mediterranean, 1% Northern European. I am generically brown, with a neutral Midwestern accent and very well educated. And yet so many of the classic, racist assumptions have been made about me just because of my skin color - lazy, promiscuous, drug-using - it boggles the mind.
I finally married a European too, a man who did not saddle me with the racist baggage of the US. A man who did not even grow up with the concept of "race".
In my professional life I am constantly aware that I am part of a small group of well-educated, high achieving minorities. I do not work just for myself and my family, I work for those who will come after me - the young people with darker skin or different accents who are just as intelligent and hardworking, but still less likely to be accepted. It never ends. The US is still so rooted in the past.
24
Many of those who protest the sentiments in this article seem to do so from a blissful ignorance of how people of color are regarded at birth, taught in school, and passed over for advancement for no other reason than how they are perceived by those who have the power to deny them their place in this society because of their own prejudices, unrecognized or not. It makes those people ponder their past, and fear for their children's future.
I submit that the Times will stop writing about, and bringing up "race" when people (possibly those who yell loudest when race is being written about) stop doing things to others, or decide to not do things with others based on race.
15
Keep in mind that "race" is a (relatively recent) social construct, not a biological fact.
7
"Latitude based tanning" is one of the more helpful ways I have come to think about skin color. People tan to prevent the destruction of Vitamin B in the summer, and un-tan to be able to make Vitamin B in the winter--if we didn't maintain our vitamins with tanning our pregnancies would fail. We all know "race" is a social construct originally created by racists, and racists comically can't explain why people from the same latitude show the same tanning--Sri Lankans, Sub-Saharan Africans and Australian Aborigines all have the same tanning patterns. Inuit and Laplanders have the same tanning pattern, just like Egyptians and Mexicans--it's a response to sunshine at that latitude. So perhaps the good news is the author may be a little healthier for having a tan that better matches his latitude.
2
@karen davidson I think it is vitamin "D". With the worldwide migrations of the last 2000 years at least, the tanning is not matched to the region anymore. The shade in skin color is the product of a very lengthy process and/or mixing. But we are way past that, it is a new Era.
1
I am a white woman married for 13 years to a man from Trinidad who is a mix up of ancestors (African, Spanish, Chinese and English). My anceators are as well: Native American, Ukranian, English and Swedish. I share the author's fervent wish for a post racial world. I relate to the seriousness of choosing an interracial marriage, especially post-Trump. The hostility from white strangers has grown significantly in the last two years. Having said that, my husband and I adore each other and it all comes down to love in our relationship...the love is worth it! We hope our children marry for love and always know that all people bleed red. We love visiting Trinidad, a melting pot, where people understand that love makes the marriage and the family and color is secondary!!
6
The nuances of race in America are frustrating, heartbreaking, maddening and painful. As a Black person—a descendant of enslaved Africans—I never quite know what to think when I read some of these stories. I find it vexing how some of those who identify as mixed-race, Black & N, easily dismiss the mixed-race identities of every single Black American, and the rest of us in diaspora, as a result of the Atlantic Slave trade. I am a person of mixed heritage, but identify as Black because of history and political solidarity.
Though I know that I am often wrong, when I meet someone—Black, mixed, other—I just want to know where you stand. We’re not living in a post-racial society. What are you willing to defend, regardless of how you may have reconciled the nuances of self and your family. Can you be trusted with the Black parts of who you are? Race is a man-made notion, but relative to establishing an maintaining a good quality of life. I wonder if the author tries to finish what he thinks his father wanted to say to him before his wedding. Never forget our history, use the success of your darker ancestors to inspire and protect others? I don’t know.
17
@Raq Very well said. Thank you. I might add these are our all our relatives. Everyone is put neatly in a box except the individual discussing it - basically accepting and normalizing the status quo.
Thank you so much for delineating the joys and struggle of both surmounting and celebrating one’s DNA. I have been on the edge of a life like yours and wish I had had a Grandma Esther to affirm us.
3
How unfortunate the obsession with 'race'. People who perceive themselves as victims rarely achieve happiness.
And do we really react to 'race' (e.g. skin color) which is a benign physical characteristic? Yet, for many, race is a marker of an anticipated behavior pattern of a group or culture.
Are all cultures equal?
4
@Ami
People who fail to take stock of the legitimate (quantifiable) barriers to advancement and social acceptance which are due entirely to the color of their skin are less likely to take the extra steps towards achievement which this situation requires, and more likely to take these barriers personally -- as a reflection of their *innate* capabilities. I think you have to agree that this is not a recipe for happiness.
Yes, actually, we do react to 'race' even though of course it is a benign physical characteristic. Study after study -- as well as common sense -- tells us that people are quick to generalize what you call the "anticipated behavior pattern" of a group or culture (itself a tenuous construct which owes more to the mind's appetite for the creation of patterns and stories than it does to solid reliable information) onto a single unknown individual -- and to not only apply it but over-apply it.
All cultures are not "equal" or at any rate: the same -- every culture has different strengths, and different weaknesses. But it's a truth rather than a platitude that all cultures have a great deal of value to offer. People who believe in the innate superiority of one culture over another are people who, in my experience, have done very actual investigation or exploration of other cultures.
11
Beautiful essay- thanks for writing it. Your father and mother deserve much credit for their bravery to marry at that time. The photo of your marriage brings feelings of hope in this tribal world.
10
I come from a long line of people who married people who, at that time, many others of their time probably thought they shouldn’t marry. This means that all of my life I have been confronted by the question “what are you?” At times I have found this irritating and I am tempted to growl “Human. What are you?” When I’ve felt more mischievous, I have claimed to be things that I am not. On days when I’m tired or feeling that seemingly inevitable pressure to fit into someone else’s need to fit you into a category, I will simply recite all the ethnicities of all the ancestors that I know.
My earlier years were spent among people who looked like my mother. From how many of them perceived me, I concluded I must be the “otherness” of my father. Then, in my middle childhood, we went to live among people who look like my father, who frequently asked where I came from since, to them, I looked different. From this I realized something quite important. I was always me no matter how others perceived me and others would not always perceive me in the same way.
I am grateful, though, that my parents raised me to see that if someone else had a problem about who I was, it was their problem not mine. They also raised me to have a sense of humor about it. But I am most grateful that I was raised to know I could simultaneously be many things and proud of all my ancestors. And I am.
15
@Mari Rutka - Mari you forgot something. You wrote that you would recite the ethnicities of all the ancestors...
There is not a single word bearing on "ethnicity".
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot
Citizen US SE
2
Hi Larry,
That may give you some idea of what I think of race as a construct . . . . :-)
Not that I, alas, do not see its effects or power on so many, but that it really doesn’t seem to me to be, to put it mildly, a very helpful way (socially or politically) or valid way (scientifically) to keep parcelling people. I know that this way of parcelling happens. Far too often. I know it is important to many. But I would prefer not to perpetuate it myself. Even parcelling people by ethnicity can be most misleading for so many reasons but, as I said, somedays I get tired and I also do not think it invalid to state geographic origins or to acknowledge cultural learnings and traditions (to be sure, we get to celebrate a lot of holidays in my family).
1
There is a phrase that I haven't thought of for years but which I think describes what Williams is experiencing perfectly: I contain multitudes.
17
This story touched my soul like few things I have read for a long time. The American fixation on race is both unique and repulsive. Its a vestige of slavery that most Americans either don't recognize or refuse to accept as reality.
I was born in the Caribbean. There I was white. My mother was white. Her brother was black. Her other brother was white. Same parents. I had white aunts and black aunts, Black and white were just colors - the idea of a separate race was just not something we thought of. There was no such thing ass black or white neighborhoods.
When i moved to the US as a child, I told everyone I was white - it was what my parents had told me. I soon discovered that I was not. White people in NY thought I was Puerto Rican. I was not. Black people thought I was black. Eventually, this was the group I identified with. They accepted me.
As I grew older and travelled around the world, I found that this was only an American thing. The rest of the world, Europe, Asia, Oceana, has no such fixation. If I told people I was black they did not believe it.
As the author says, a "single drop of black blood makes a person black primarily because they can never be white." This is the root of the persistent racism in America. After 400 years its still woven into the social fabric.
Its taking me a lifetime to get over it. Now as an older adult I really don't think much at all about belonging to a group. I think of myself only as human. Its liberating.
36
In surprised you didn’t find it in Oceana. When I visited in the nineties hostels turned away Maori openly.
Here we go again. Fallacy of authority. White people, nor biracial people determine who is black / African; thus African American - African people do. Under white domination white people have been having a field day promoting the one drop rule. Great to know many in my generation does not follow it. Here is a clue, if you cannot live in West Africa without be called a foreigner, you are not black.
2
@Jonathan. There are Africans (and I don’t mean white South Africans) with paler skin, like supermodel Iman, whom some people don’t see as black. Africa is also vast, and Africans also come in many colors.
4
Why in 2019 does the NYT still even use the term "Race"? This term has almost no scientific validity (just look it up) and is increasingly considered old fashioned and a relic of the 19th/early 20th century view of humanity that lead to fascism and the genocides of the period. Even the idea of children "passing for white" is a bit ridiculous when you think about it. The word "white" is idiotic, nobody is white, nobody is black, just have varying shades of melanin which gives our skin its rich variety of colors
5
@Ben - The simple answer that I have already given in other replies.
The US Census Bureau classifies us by placing us in groups called races. US Medical researchers often use "race" as a key variable in their research as if there were two pure races in America, one pure white, one pure black. When you visit a doctor or hospital you may be given a form to fill out / what is your race.All absurd, of course.
I do not want to repeat what I have already written but end by noting that the last two words in the title of TCWs book are: "Unlearning Race"
Wait until he writes the next magazine essay
"How Americans Can Unlearn Race"
You and I can hardly wait.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
2
Racism is a sign of personal ignorance, so yes we have to continue remedial one-on-one education for the ignorant.
6
How about the NYT takes a break from looking at melanin in someone's skin before deciding what "category" they belong to?
How about they stop writing about race unless it's tied to culture?
Such as 75% of children born in urban centers are born to single women on public assistance...followed by 75% of kids in 3rd grade unable to read or do math at grade level.
Which, has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with culture.
White, brown or yellow kids born into the same family structure fail at the same rate as black kids or mixed race families.
It's not the color of skin that matters, it's whether there are 2 parents in that household to raise a child.
Why doesn't the Times focus on this instead...and the trillions of dollars of lost opportunity in this country by ignoring the most obvious problem facing society...the breakdown of the American family?
9
@Erica Smythe I long to read an article describing ways to teach males, starting very early, never to have sexual relations with a female unless 1) she is willing, 2) they intend to raise any resulting child with her, and 3) together they are financially capable of doing so.
After all, most women never have more than one baby per year, but most men could create at least 365 new lives per year. It is men who cause the breakdown of the family you describe.
8
@MLChadwick It's a woman's choice to have sexual relations that result in a child or sexual relations that do not result in a child, or no sexual relations at all.
To put this on men is part of the discussion, but women own 50% of the outcome of unprotected sex, or more.
I'm an advocate that cities and states with such high single parent households to trial a law that states that women who give birth to a child while receiving public assistance (they could impose the law on everyone..just to be totally fair) with both the birth mother and birth father on the birth certificate, or no public assistance will be provided.
The father listed can appeal their naming (that's what instant DNA tests are for), but until we put the responsibility back into responsible sexual relations and family planning, we cannot begin to change the attitudes that allow men to be feral impregnators and baby mama's to rely on the rest of society to pay for the raising of that child without being allowed much say in how that child is being raised.
This would never happen in a Socialist/Communist country. The village would remove those children from these homes and place them with structured family's to help the child become a positive contributor to society vs. a drain on society that many of these children end up becoming.
Biden wants to send social workers into each home to act as proxy parents while turning on the record player to hear "words."
I don't think that fixes the real problem, do you?
@Erica Smythe Ignorance is not a “culture” but sometimes wonder bc many people have no problem speaking as an authority on topics they no nothing about. With that said, if you and your family has experienced oppression, racism, joblessness, poverty, malnutrition, mental illness, PTSD, etc. for generations then only those with extraordinary abilities will rise above the station that they born.
2
Wow, born out of the age of Enlightenment Europe came this strange fruit -racial classification- which led to "racial hierarchy"...
2
Do people really still use the term 'pass for white?'
10
@Kate Baptista Yes. It’s what historians and many lay people have used for a couple of centuries if not more. Check the classic novel “Passing” by Nella Larsen.
Why must the NY Times continue to subject its African American readership to such drivel? Is this how racial identify in the 21st century is being articulated- as a glimpse of the slave’s face in the African American’s eternal reflection? That sounds like a damnation or a curse cast down from the worst racist.
While I’m truly sorry that a history prior to slavery simply never occurred to the writer, in the great history of our people and the civilizations of Africa, our bondage here is but a blink of the eye. These sweeping statements that whites are the eternal master and blacks the eternal slave- spoken like great truths, reprinted here and swooned over in comments- are really just proclamations of the writer’s sense of racial inferiority.
Unfortunately, the NYT, by pandering to this and printing it continues to promote these degraded ideas about African American identity, which it’s readership is all too eager to lap up and praise.
22
People have remarked about Obama that he was not descended from a slave....ie, his father was Kenyan.
Then Ancestry.com, a legitimate ancestry/DNA site, traced his mother's heritage. Rather amazingly, her ultimate American ancestor was a man who may well have been the FIRST Black slave in the U.S.
See: https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/president-obamas-surprising-link-to-slavery-in-america/
(fascinating look at how little our ancestry determines what "race" we are!) (Take a look at photos of Obama's caucasian mother!)
15
@RLiss Kenya was colonized and is still managing the effects like the rest of the continent.
@RLiss Yes. This is a great example of how crazy and ironic things are to me. What is surprising and depressing (to me) is how it seems most people do not to know or care to know more about this history. It depresses me that people don't find these facts more interesting than naturally occurring visible human variations. I would like to read an article about individual stories like this. The main article has value as his story voice and struggle but I find it a bit dull and hurtful to keep reading about "the implied highly valued visible blond hair and blue eyes" versus "the other". Black does not mean slave. It might help if people did not try to find a way to further dehumanize ancestors who already were treated as less than human because of their appearance and/or circumstance. I reject the shame placed upon the "black" or "slave".
1
I hate the holdover of the one drop rule and the idea of passing. When will this stop? The Williams children don’t need to wear buttons that say, Actually, I’m black (too), but I hope by the time they are adults percentages won’t matter and people can take pride in any and all parts of their families stories’. Or as we are resetting our shared history thanks to efforts like the 1619 Project, we can all try to rectify wrongs, learn how to not be racist (and anti-Semite, etc.,) and celebrate in the fullness and richness of all that our American family is.
11
Racism against African Americans, Africans, and other people of color is specific to the United States. Group hatred is common around the world. But racism as practiced and taught in this country is specific to native born white people. Until white people in this country can see the beauty, intelligence, and dignity inherent in people of other races as did the author’s wife and mother the pernicious racism inherent in the white power structure of this country will persist.
5
Where does it leave you? Homo sapiens, a hairless ape, just like the rest of us.
You need to self-overcome, get past the restrictions placed on yourself in your own mind.
People who care about what other people think of them are lost, utterly lost. They will sink back into the mire.
1
is barack obama black, or white? separate from any genetic argument, which seems to split the difference exactly all the way through his ancestry, what is the cultural calculus that makes his blackness a settled question?
i am uneasy with the apparent compromise in our culture that there can be two forms of racism. it seems acceptable if you intrude your conceptions of your racial identity into our mutual affairs, because that is your right. it is generally unacceptable for me to intrude my conceptions of your racial identity into our mutual affairs, because that is considered odious. why?
it's illuminating to compare this with other attributes: i can comment on your accomplishments, appearance or behavior as i choose, and criticize them without seeming hateful; but you cannot do so without appearing boastful or self absorbed.
i appreciate the author's personal experiences, but he does not speak directly to many of the unspoken race tripwires that proliferate in our regulated and litigious culture of separate but equal (and self proclaimed) ethnic heritages.
on that note: the use of "pass for" in the subtitle is an unwelcome colorbar legacy. the concept is racist, even if the editor and author consider it benign. pass for human, pass for idiosyncratic, or just pass by.
6
" farcically preppy brothers " "costume of boat shoes and Dockers"
I dunno -- sounds like not nice stereotyping. Yes, this individual was not nice and obviously racist, which is a problem for society and especially you. It's the choice of the word costume. It's the choice of the word farcical.
Two wrongs not equaling right?
No matter how much blending of families across racial lines and no matter how much this great younger generation (grandchildren in their teens) meld with each other aside from racial identity, it seems like it will be forever until all peoples are comfortable with each other.
11
Where does that leave you? Lucky. For the cultural enrichment you grew up with. I feel blessed growing up in a Mexican American family / Irish family mash-up. Great weddings, too.
8
I approached this piece with elevated expectations. Having read through it a few times now, however, I'm left feeling unfulfilled and somewhat anxious. I am also a man of mixed race, black and white and dreadlocked, married to a very pretty white woman, and father to several very white, very blonde children. When we married, my wife and I shared the author's optimistic individualism and thoughtful post-racialism. We weren't black or white; we were human beings in love. Marriage was our own decision. Who dared cared that we were interracial? Racism was a thing, but mostly a historical thing, on its final, feckless breaths.
But the era of Trump has changed me deeply. His divisive, old-school white supremacy leaves me with a stark decision: am I a Black man, subject to the burden of history, the suspicions of my fellow White Americans, and the racist structures of legal, financial and educational systems? Or will I remain blindly post-racial, positing that the field is "mostly leveled," America is more or less a meritocracy, and Black Lives Matter is largely fabricated, or overly activist, or a noisy relic?
I often talk with my white-ish children about race. If racism was dead, I would not rehash it, but race is our social construct, and racism is our social reality. It is my daily, frightening, depressing, obstinate, insidious, social reality.
So yes, as a black man, I do glimpse the slave's face in my own reflection. I pray that my white children will see it in theirs.
36
In Minnesota I am somewhere between
white and "mixed race." Back in North Carolina
I was unambiguously black.
I have therefore migrated north of the "one drop rule."
18
This article is fascinating but I will let others comment on the story itself. I just have to say, this is the best writing I've read in a long time.
15
I love Thomas Chatterton William’s work. Great piece.
7
My mother likes to say she is pleasingly tan. Me not so much. Both my parents are black, but because of the vestiges of being in bondage, black folks can come out any color. When the nuns at St. Vincent's first saw me, they continually pestered my mom whether the father had seen the baby.
Then to add salt to the wound, my mom shared her room with an Italian lady. The woman wanted to know why I was lighter than her baby.
8
Lovely. Thank you so much.
8
I am curious about his experience living in France which doesn't have the baggage of american slavery. While his upbringing will shape his experiences and world view I wonder how a black fenchman would view the figurine on the in law's table. Is it an ugly figurine to them or would they take personal offense to it. I have a Camaroonian friend who for all purposes looks like an African American until she opens her mouth. Many slights which I take as discrimination are not perceived as that initially.
2
Whew! This article was a bit drawn out than needed. Maybe I feel so because I can’t relate to the struggles of being mixed race as a dark skin black woman. In my opinion, your children are white and it is what it is. You can rest assure that their skin color wouldn’t be one of their problems in life.
17
I have never seen such a nasty piece of ceramics. Mixing will definitely be the end of our racial conflicts.
Shame on the Dems for trying to maintain separation and animosity for their political gain.
2
It will be a great day when we stop using words like black, brown, red, yellow, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc. If only all racial labels would die and be deleted from all languages. If only we could think of each other and refer to each other as what we all are: human. Our bodies are merely vessels for our souls and it is the souls of others that we must try to connect to and not let labels and appearances get in the way.
4
All of the races are mixing, yet there's still all of this prejudice. Imagine that?
2
The thing of the moment pulled out of its historical context acquires an undeserved permanence. It's notable that one of the author's first encounters with racism came from a boy with an Irish background.
Ireland was the first English colony and all of the techniques that the English settlers in North America (and elsewhere) used to dominate Native Americans and hold kidnapped African populations in bondage were first perfected against the Irish.
The Irish were, indeed, described by their English oppressors as being of a "separate race" characterized by "red hair and a twinkle in their eyes". The Irish who emigrated to the United States to escape the potato famine of the late 1840's were subject to the same xenophobia that Hispanics (and Middle Eastern populations) confront today. Anti-Catholicism was rampant and the Irish could rarely qualify for anything but the worst jobs.
I'm half-Mexican and as a child my best friends were the sons of Irish shipyard workers (the Lenahan's, Henahan's, and Murphy's) and my most frequent antagonists were the Anglos even though my own mother was a Gibbs.
Today you have the black, immigrant Nigerian professionals (doctors, teachers, engineers) in South Africa subject to the xenophobia generated by the education gap that apartheid imposed on an older generation of Zulu speakers.
What is racism? The nightmare of temporary historical circumstance and oppression that each one of us must now either purge or perish from.
15
@Jim I was thinking about South Africa, what a shame...
There is only one biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
What we call race aka color is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at different altitudes and latitudes primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations in ecologically isolated human populations over time and space.
What we call race aka color aka ethnicity aka national origin is an evil malign socioeconomic political educational demographic historical white European American Judeo-Christian supremacist prejudiced myth meant to legally and morally justify humanity denying black Africa enslavement and equality defying separate and unequal black African Jim Crow.
My earliest known European American ancestor was born in London in 1613 married in the Virginia colony in 1640 where he died in 1670.
My earliest known free- person of color ancestors were living in South Carolina and Virginia during the American Revolution and fought on the side of the rebels.
My earliest known black African enslaved ancestors were living in Georgia and South Carolina from 1830/35 where they were owned by and bred with my white American ancestors.
My earliest known brown First Nations ancestors were living in Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia from 1830/35 where they mated with and married by black and white ancestors.
Why does this heritage makes me just black in America?
11
Amazing writing! Thank you!
6
The fact that he still has to say "could pass for white" of his children and not "are white", means that he still dares not offend by transgressing on the one drop rule.
5
Race is not immutable across generations. If the descendants of a mixed race marry whites exclusively for multiple generations, the descendants will eventually be white rather than mixed race. If the the descendants exclusively marry blacks, the same process will apply with future generation being black rather than mixed race.
However, children born to Hispanics or Latino will always be Hispanics or Latino, not matter who they marry because Hispanics and Latinos are pan-ethnic group. They can be of any race or combination of races. To be Hispanic or Latino, a person need have only one Hispanic or Latino ancestor. It has nothing to do with phenotypes. Blond, blue-eyed actress Cameron Diaz is Hispanic.
In the far distant future, there may be no racial phenotypes.
3
@William Case
Yes indeed. David Ortiz is black, Andy Garcia is white, Jennifer Lopez is mulatto, Evo Morales (president of Bolivia) is native (south) American and Jorge Ramos is "mestizo"...……..but they are all Hispanics.....Out of 450 million NATIVE Spanish speaking people world wide, about 100 million are Caucasian ……….
Many black parents teach (or taught) their children to have pride in themselves, black self-respect, and how to deal with/respond to anti-black racism. What to do, what to say in age-appropriate language, knowing the difference between what a child can handle and what should be brought to parents for resolution are Parts of the lesson. This teaching begins at an early age because children do act out in racist fashion at early ages. It is sad that the author was unable to respond to the racist name-calling, put it in its proper place emotionally or even tell his father about it. It appears the author did not get the described guidance from his father but I suppose that is a feature of marrying interracially.
3
@Lynn in DC,
The author did explain why he didn’t tell his father about it.
I am dark skinned from black parents and my parents never discussed this with me in advance. It was only after I came home with a story of what happened at school that there was a discussion. I can understand why some parents will have the discussion sooner and other parents may choose to have the discussion later when a child may be older.
1
So much angst over racial make-up. I'm half Japanese, most of the people I grew up with were also half Japanese, it was no big deal. Stereotypes? Pretty good at math, can't grow a beard. Actually. it's always been an advantage, but in 100 years, we will all be a sort of off white/light brown Mulatto anyway, what difference does it make?
11
I am white and my first cousins are mixed race being French, Italian, African American, Filipino. Two are veteran Marines who took after their father who was African American and Filipino. I have spoken to them about this and they have the most sane answer to this subject. As did President Obama. We are Americans in this country and as Obama correctly said a mongrel people. People may not like the term but it is accurate. Many many black people and whites as well are mixed race whether black, white, Asian. And probably the vast majority of white people are from different European nations often bitter enemies. I offer myself as an example. My grandparents were from France, Italy during WWII living in Paris where both nations were at war with each other. My dad’s family were Anglo Irish Protestant and Irish Catholics. Put all that together and it is obvious this “white” person is a mongrel or mutt if you prefer. Just like President Obama said.
6
What he should be called is an American..and leave it at that..
4
“A tiger does not declare its tigritude, it simply pounces”.
-Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.
No person who identifies as black worries about their “negritude” as displayed in this piece, they clearly know whether they are black or not. It’s not about looks or colour, it’s about the black experience.
Where does this leave the writer? Perhaps I am being harsh but if he doesn’t have to worry about his children being shot by the police at 12 years old like Tamir Rice then he doesn’t really have to worry about his “negritude”.
16
one word " Awesome"
3
I am floored by your threading together your father’s, ‘don’t let them make you white,’ your effective pushing aside the 3rd grade bully, and your incisive view how your granddad presumed to dignify himself by handing off the New Testament to your (Jewish) friend. You give credence to our differences but wish they don’t incite the master-slave, superior-inferior narrative. I am better for having read this piece. Thank you, Mr Williams. Thanks for articulating what anyone of us, with a little imagination, could find beautiful and more importantly, clarifying.
5
Bravo! The world needs you and Valentine and your children.
When will the ruinous idiocy of racism stop? When we are all related!! I like to think of love as a strong vine curling around throughout the world, uniting us all.
3
This is an article that will linger. The ceramic head, the "white" children, the father hitting the son to teach him - what?
The cover of Marlon James's The Book of Night Women is the portrait of a slave woman by a white artist. Is that portrait "okay" because the woman is beautiful and the ceramic head is bad because it is ugly?
My heart's mother was a black woman in the South. Her son was a GI in Korea and he sent her a jug shaped like the head of an oriental woman, not lovely but sinister and cruel. Was that "okay?" If so, why? If not, why not? Is the picture "okay" because it is a picture and the head not "okay" because it is an object one can touch?
I would have grown up criminally racist, like my birth parents, had I not had the great and loving attention of a woman who was paid to mind me and love me. My wise friends say that paid love is no love, but I know she loved me, pay or no pay, because at the end of her life, I cared for her as lovingly and as intelligently as I knew how to do, and we talked, I am certain, openly about everything. i buried her. I think of her every day, after nearly 40 years. And now, I will think back on that oriental head and wonder what it meant . . .
9
Very lyrical prose, reminds me of one of my favourite authors W.G.Sebald.
Racism, I think is a tool for somehow "justifying" exploitation but also to satisfy the need to feel better about oneself (compared to the " inferior" other ) without any effort whatsoever. In the US black people can be the predominant victims of racism -there are many others- but racism exists all over the world even between people that look the same colour.
The author, although in beautiful prose , doesn't contribute much to my understanding. Maybe a racist could stop and think after reading this account but I doubt any racist would even bother. For normal, not racist people it is banging on an open door. All racism is stupid evil.
1
I'm still stuck on Caitlin Jenner being able to define her own gender after about 30 figurative, and Rachel Dolazel not being able to define her own race about decades of activism and identification. That Jewish men are white until they grow a beard and put on a yarmulke. That Muslims are white if they're from Turkey, but not white if from across the border in Syria. That you can have one drop of blood and be X, but be 25% Y and voted off the rolls of a Native tribe. People are crazy when it comes to this stuff.
19
@O'Brien
Yes insanity is not hyperbolic in your diagnosis of these things you aptly pointed out.
1
@O'Brien Best comment!
All of this anguish about "The races of Man" is doubly painful because there is no such thing as races of Man.There is only one race, the human race.
The human species produces only one skin pigment, melanin, which is brown. It's sole function is protection against sun damage, nothing else. Not intelligence, not courage, not determination, not anything other than to prevent sun damage.
All of us except albinos have this pigment; some have more and some less. The color of each of us is just a mixture of the brown of the melanin in our skin and the pink of the blood beneath it. (Our blood is all the same color)
"Race" is a political, and only political, construction from the days of slavery, the way to identify who was enslavable and who was not. It is still political, and only political, today. Those who throw the word "racism" around so freely are just using it as a whip to drive us into the political corral they want us to occupy. Nothing more.
If you doubt this, look at your palms. They all look the same because they all are the same - human.
Wake up.
1
Mr. Williams' article is a cogent and moving commentary, not about his racial mix and its attendant complexities, but rather about "Everyman's" human condition. We all suffer and celebrate no matter WHAT. And we confront our deamons as best we can with little to do with skin color. Were that we all be capable of analysis and contemplation, a marvelous past-time of evolutionary hubris, or is it?
2
Beautiful essay. Thank you, Mr. Thomas.
Do the English language has a word for children with a white parent and a black parent? In Puerto Rico, we call them "trigueños" and is very typical. I look like my mother in a darker shade. She's very white, and I'm trigueña. When we're together in Puerto Rico, people immediately know the resemblance. Here in the USA, they don't. My mother-in-law is black, her children have green and blue eyes, like their grandfather. To me, it is wonderful to see a family with a diverse palette. We have our jokes, don't get me wrong, but ultimately we know that we're talking about family. There's no shame in being a "hincho" (white person) with black or trigueños parents or relatives and vice-versa. Also, I don't feel like I don't belong. In the USA it's almost like you have to choose, and hope that you get accepted.
10
Thank you for publishing this beautiful, nuanced piece. May I recommend a book to read as a companion to the author’s forthcoming book, “Dreams for My Father” by President Barack Obama.
2
A beautiful writing. But I'm left wondering about the last paragraph. Does the author's optimism depend on his marriage to his wife? What if he instead married one of his mostly black and non-white girlfriends from the past? Would he still feel the same way about "the terms on which people.. meet and live"? Those terms are still far from universal after all.
Slavery happened. Racism exists. This essay in a way reads like an escapism (from the burden of race through inter-racial marriage) detached from reality, rather than an optimism.
6
Beautifully written. Clearly by an individual and a human being. Like some others in appearance more, like some others in appearance less. But that's entirely irrelevant to this writing objectively. Racism is the history of an error, but unfortunately falsehoods thought to be facts can have as much influence on our lived experience as truths. Human beings will never all look the same, but we can change how we feel about that. It seems to me Thomas has got it all pretty well figured out. Kudos to him for that and this work.
3
What an extraordinary piece, in content and form! At once lyrical and coolly cerebral, it gave me the same chills going down the spine as when I was reading William Faulkner’s Light in August. We have come a long way since the time of Faulkner, and yet it doesn’t “feel” as though we as a society have evolved much in substance. On the contrary, sometimes I even have the impression, under the current politics, that we are regressing. My dream – naive, perhaps – is that the suffering of Joe Christmas, that unsparing mirror of the greatest human tragedy in my view, never be repeated. And Mr. Thomas Chatterton Williams gives a reason to hope, as he concludes the piece with this ever so delicately powerful note: “I do not, and do not wish to, see myself in the master, but can — and should — I really claim to glimpse in the slave’s face my own eternal reflection?”
3
This is an article about nothing. Many Americans have mixed ancestries. Most of them have ancestors from different European countries. I find it to a liberating experience. My maternal grandfather told me that he did not want me to become a member of the Venetian club. My father made it clear to me that he saw no value in claiming to be Romanian. Both sides of the family made it clear that they I was different than both of them. I was told not to listen to my parents on how to be an American if I disagreed with them. I was told that I would know better than the older people in my family how to be an american and that I was supposed assimilate into America. It worked. I don't feel that I am any other type of person other than american. It is really to bad that people like this author can't see themselves as being just another american. They are fooling themselves and setting a bad example for their children.
5
@Bored
Amen. I also have read this several times and am generally flummoxed; “my father grew up under Jim Crow...my children pass for white...where does that leave me?” Confused I guess. As confused as I am at the author’s confusion. His father’s experience has nothing to do with his daughters passing for white. His daughters are light skinned because he married a French woman. I must be missing something.
12
I think one way to at least begin a genuinely honest national dialogue to provoke at least an understanding of one’s own racial perceptions is to use this extraordinary piece by Mr. Williams as an example for high school students to use in a class exercise of writing their own perceptions of self and others; it would open unexpressed thoughts and lead to asking questions with the next step of searching for answers. To me the universal sentence he wrote that could be a national mantra on the subject: And yet I am convinced that we will never overcome the evils of racism as long as we fail first to imagine and then to conjure a world free of racial categorization and the hierarchies it necessarily implies.” Before race, before gender, before socioeconomic status, before age we all share first and foremost one category: Individual.
1
Mr. Williams's book, which I have pre-ordered, is in conversation with a book entitled, "The Black Notebooks," by Toi Derricotte. [From the Amazon page for this book:] "The Black Notebooks is one of the most extraordinary and courageous accounts of race in this country, seen through the eyes of a light-skinned black woman and a respected American poet. It challenges all our preconceived notions of what it means to be black or white, and what it means to be human".
2
The part about the statue that was in a friend's house reminded me of something that my aunt did when she met my black husband for the first time. Aunt Mary had a lawn jockey in her front yard. I remember my cousins and I posing with the yard ornament when we dressed up for Easter or other occasions. I don't think I ever even noticed that the jockey was black. My husband and I were married out of state and we went to my home on leave. When we pulled into Aunt Mary's driveway, I noticed right away that the lawn jockey had been painted. His face was now a buttery tan. That side of the family is my mother's; they are Sicilian. When I asked Aunt Mary why she painted the lawn jockey, she took my hand and my husband's hand and said "I did not want to offend you. I love you both and welcome you to our family". In 1975. My Aunt Mary was ahead of her time. I will never forget how amazing it was to have one of my favorite aunts accept my choice. Sadly, when Aunt Mary died, there was an estate sale and the lawn jockey was nowhere to be found. I wanted to keep it; to remind me that there is goodness everywhere. That people can learn acceptance, that we can live together in peace. Thank you for this essay.
45
I am also a product of an interracial relationship. It is fascinating how some people can't see how I am related to my family members simply because we are different shades.
I have white half-siblings, and we share a lot of facial features, but some people who see us together wouldn't know we are siblings because we don't have the same skin color.
On a sadder note, I do relate to the last sentence of the article. I am racially ambiguous and close to both sides of my family. I cannot- am unable to- fully embrace the white side of myself, because, as the author said, I will never be white as long as I have at least a drop of black blood. Though I as well do not wish to "see myself in the master." But I feel like if I fully embrace the black side of myself, it would be a betrayal for the white side of my family who loves me.
83
A very beautiful, thought provoking article, thank you for your words.
2
Mr. Williams, your writing is lyrical. This article was as interesting as it was beautiful to read.
3
Brilliant essay, I look forward to reading the book.
3
Beautiful piece! It’s refreshing to hear a personal story written with such honesty. The author’s father is pretty funny in how he tries to pass black culture (boxing) to his son, the author, who is apparently of a different body type. Many multi-ethnic couples live in the Bay Area and their culture preferences tend to hinge on the mother’s “race.” Obama’s mother could not teach her son black culture but maybe that is why he believed he could be anything he wanted to be, including President of the United States. To answer the question presented on how to classify their children, it does not matter in France.
3
I realize I was supposed to be paying attention to the nuance and complexities of Mr. Williams' thoughtful excerpt, but I was distracted by the image of a great looking guy marrying a beautiful woman in Normandy, their two cherubic kids, and the narrative of their culturally rich life together. May we all have such love and adventure in our lives.
14
Race identity is surely more than thinking about how people "look" or how they are seen by others.
I found this piece a bit empty, in terms of its exploration of how ideas of Blackness have political and historical dimensions.
And was surprised by his description of the 90s as apolitical - the era defined by hip-hop MCs who were anything but that.
Maybe it's a personal taste thing, but personal memoir that focuses solely on how the author feels, within such a narrow frame seems a liked a missed opportunity.
Reading this also gives no idea of the broader French context. It's as if the author is living in his own bubble.
8
This is a beautiful article stating how defining people according to race blurs the nuance of reality.
3
Like many other commenters, I come from a complicated mixed background. My mom was half Chinese, quarter Filipino, quarter English. Her blond haired/blue eyed grandfather came over from England to Shanghai, married a Chinese woman, their son was my grandfather. Mom grew up in Shanghai, looked very Chinese, escaped during the revolution to Hong Kong. Married my dad, blond haired/blue eyed German/Scottish guy from Ohio. Because he was CIA, I was born in Taiwan and grew up in Japan, HK, Thailand, and Laos, never lived in the US until high school. My sister and I were born tow headed blonds and mom was always mistaken for the Asian nanny by the other Caucasian military wives, which annoyed her tremendously. After doing my DNA analysis, I'm 40% Asian, but am frequently mistaken for being Native American. All my friends growing up were Eurasian mutts, and I can spot one a mile away. And I live in Seattle, where frequently 1/4 of all marriages every year are Asian/Caucasian mix. Coming to the US was a difficult transition, and many of my Chinese/Caucasian friends went thru the same cultural identity crisis, no matter what we looked like. Today at 60 I'm proud of my mixed heritage, but like the author went thru a twisted inner conversation coming to grips with internal/external identity. Thank you Mr. Williams for a brilliant and moving article.
19
I am white European. My husband is a mix of everything else. His family was unapologetically mean spirited when it came to religion. My family was welcoming and inclusive. That generation is gone now. What remains are grandchildren who understand how complicated life can be and are confident in their own skins. They also have the significant benefit of mixed DNA, diluting the likelihood of genetically diseases.
8
What beautiful and thought provoking writing! Thank you!
2
What a beautiful essay, I didn’t want it to end. Reading it made me want to personally know your family. I now there is racism everywhere but when I travel outside the U.S. I somehow feel it fade away a bit. I would like to live elsewhere but it is not financially possible.
3
Wonderfully written and thought provoking. I am the grand mother of two beautiful bi-racial girls and my heart breaks to think someone would judge them by the color of their skin. I have never understood why this racial bias exists. Who decided that an outword appearance determined who you were?
Those who use the bible or their religion to support racism are deeply misguided.
Thank goodness our younger generation seems to move in a much more accepting way.
6
As a white southerner married to a black man whose children look white I really appreciated this piece. Though my husbands father was black and descended from slaves from Ga who made the great migration to the Midwest in the 20th century, it was his white mother from Iowa that raised him. I think he understood issues with racial identity less than I did. I grew up in a segregated southern town. We even had one of those outside restrooms from "The Help" at the house I grew up in. When my husband first came to visit he was shocked by the poverty and isolation of the black community. For me, I want by blue eyed children to be proud to be black. Why? Because somehow, it seems to honor those ancestors that came before and their suffering. To not acknowledge their blackness seems to be forgetting the long dark path to their existence.
19
@Southerner
Beautifully said.
1
The casual racism of older generations can be hard to confront. And yet I think it is crucial that the author explain to his wife's grandmother why that ceramic slave's head is so offensive to him personally and simply in general. Of course, hiding or even destroying an object is different from changing someone's point of view. But I think in this instance the first is actually preferable to the last, and the last is in any case out of the author's hands.
Put another way: the head is not there accidentally, and allowing it to stay says more about the author's reluctance to learn to box than anything else in this essay. He says it himself: he does not want his own children to see this object. Therefore, Mr. Chatterton, it's time to put on those Everlast gloves and go a round. Then there will be need to end your essay with a question mark.
2
If possible, maybe you should simply see the porcelain figure as a human being. Perhaps you could imagine her as a dignified, capable human being who is making the best of her unfortunate lot in life. The size and shape of our lips has nothing to do with our character.
3
With so much of diversity being more accepted, we must get rid of trying to name along old lines. Only Multi/Mixed Ethnicity (M/M E) seems to hold in the emerging world of today. When we advance to the point of accepting that ultimate diversity, we will also probly have to accept that they are the majority or soon will be. Prince Harry is doing his part, even at the royalty of England level.
Ask yourself, how many families can trace all their heritage from one branch of any ethnic tree in today's western world? Only the hate and greed of folks like Trump have created such a throwback that we have the problems of today. If we get past the racism, we could probably solve all the other problems, including climate, but racism diverts too much of our unity and resources so we can't work together.
2
This article, excerpted from an upcoming book, seems a continuation of the author's understanding of his place in the world that started with his first book, LOSING MY COOL, which I highly recommend. Williams has a way of drawing you into his wrestle with race, identity, and personal ambitions that makes you feel part of his struggle to understand, as opposed to feeling victimized when you don't.
I really enjoyed this article, his reference to James Baldwin's observation that the racist ultimately is damaged more is a concept that needs to be in the forefront of any discussion on race.yet I never hear it refered to in any mainstream media forums.Convincing racists that they are victims of of they're own beliefs seems farfetched, but the message needs to be delivered loudly and repeatedly.
Thank you for this story. This reminds me of a dinner I attended with a couple a few years ago. The husband was Greek and the white was French. The conversation turned to race and she shares with us that her grandmother was black. I was astonished because she looked white. But to make a long story short, she shared stories of some of the most racist things white people say about black people when they "assume" that no one black is around.
15
I read this with great interest. I have no way of answering the complex thoughts that Mr. Williams has struggled with, but I applaud the deep and careful thinking that will be a boon for his children.
Let’s hope that sad porcelain is resigned to the dustbin. It starts with, “You know I love you, but.....”
2
A beautiful and wonderful story. I see the parallels in
my life. Originally from Chicago left the city after returning home from Vietnam more than forty years ago and came to Germany, yes running away from the racism. Today, Grandfather to some beautiful and wonderful blonde and red-hair children. Not returning to the States anytime soon but life is full of surprises, if you just let go.
74
Hmmm no racism in Germany?
5
There's no denying Mr. Williams is a superb writer. But ultimately race is what you choose to make of it. I'm half white, half Bengali. For all my parents' (many) differences, not once in my life did they ever make race out to be one of them. My wife is half Sicilian & Mexican (& no small part Nahuatl). Our firstborn is not yet 2 weeks old. When I hold her in my hands and look into her face, I see her & only her. I intend to raise her completely unburdened of such atavistic concepts as tribalism & ethnic identity. To me she's American, full stop, and more importantly will have the opportunity to be a completely autonomous individual. How she defines herself will be entirely up to her, and maybe that's the most American thing of all.
297
@Amitava D Thanks for sharing your experience. I am particularly interested in it since I am raising a son who is half white and half Bengali-American. Like you as you look at your newborn daughter (congratulations!), I see him and only him when I look at his face. But I do find myself talking about race with him (he is seven). He sees it right in front of him when he notices all the different shades of skin in his family. I feel compelled to share with him all the injustices people face based on the color of their skin and hope that he will take what he learns to help make the world a more just place. Perhaps I am informed by having an ancestor who was one of the first British explorers to try to establish trade inside India's interior. The legacy of the horrors of past British colonialism and racism weigh heavily on me.
35
@Amitava D:
I disagree. I would raise her to celebrate all the different strands of history and ethnicity that make her unique.
20
@Amitava D
As a mixed race person (half black/half Irish) I can tell you that regardless of how you intend to raise your daughter, the universe i.e., those people around you will select a race for her. My parents elected never to discuss race. Never. When I started school as a child, other kids would ask me "what are you?" I didn't understand the question. So, I asked my mom. She said, tell them you are green. Well, that was the wrong answer. Next time a kid asked me, I said "I'm green," the kid of course told everyone that I thought I was green and they all laughed at me. It would have been far better for them to prepare us for the realities. Your daughter can be taught by you the complexities of race or you can leave it up to the encounters with strangers. It is up to you. But, it will be taught one way or the other.
73
Well crafted essay that speaks to the complexities of love over binary frameworks and history. I only take issue with your reference to Normandy. There were a significant number of African American soldiers in Normandy during the war battling back the Germans. One of those soldiers was my late father.
6
A wonderful essay. Thank you. As a species we are far, far from realizing our potential.
5
Thank you. What a wonderful essay.
8
Brilliant essay. Thank you. I'm a white guy who grew up in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s (public schools, busing, and a mix of racial tension and incredible diversity and tolerance), but then I lived in China for most of my adult life (20 years) and have a Chinese wife and mixed kids. I've been speaking and dreaming in Chinese for over thirty years. So much in this essay resonates for me. When my wife and I were first dating in Beijing in 1991, we could not walk down the street together for fear of being accosted. I was an outsider trespassing in the dominant culture and my wife was viewed as a traitor to her ethnicity. Most people in China still think in terms of "we yellow-type people" with a sense of pride and exclusivity without even thinking about the implications. And I suspect it pre-dates the age of enlightenment.
This is my favorite quote from the piece: "I am convinced that we will never overcome the evils of racism as long as we fail first to imagine and then to conjure a world free of racial categorization and the hierarchies it necessarily implies."
It's true in America and in France and in China and everywhere.
If I could control the world for a day, I'd require everyone to love and marry someone completely different from themselves, have mixed kids, and plant the seeds to eventually get past race. But since that won't happen, for now, I hope people read this article and talk about it with everyone they know.
64
If you allow race, one of countless factors, to be a defining factor in the quality of your life it will be. This is however a choice.
10
@Craig. Race is a factor. Racism is a system. This is an important distinction. Racism has often deep and lasting impact on a person’s life, especially if, for example, they are sitting in Bible study in Charleston, or shopping for school clothes in El Paso, or living in a neighborhood with neighbors who don’t want you there because they don’t like your skin color. Or if you are born in a place where the school is vastly underfunded, three miles from a wealthy district with new computer labs and a huge library. Usually, racism manifests itself in subtlety and is denied or even smiling. It is just not that simple.
14
@Craig, it's always wrong to assume something about someone, but I assume you are white because no one who has to live in a white supremacist society like ours, which insists on denying the existence of racism could deceive themselves that race is a choice.
7
@Craig only someone who has not had to deal with white supremacy or racism every day of their lives could say something like this. Those who appear "other," even if their families have been in America for 400 years, have no choice to make. They will be "other," unless their children choose to reproduce with those who are more "acceptable" than they are, as the author did. Whether he chose to do so or not, that is the effect.
2
I think the author could write a whole book about his mother & father. The social mores that they had to overcome; it's got to be several lifetimes worth of stories. I'd really like to read more about it them both.
29
I was so hoping this was a book extract so I could go buy it immediately!
Humans have been migrating for millennia, and subsequently families of mixed heritage have always existed. Anyone who has done Ancestry.com understands that individual history is often a long tangled story of migration. I have links to 15 different cultures on 3 continents. Every member of my immediate family has a different skin color, and that's just such a small part of my family description. Instead of obsessing over some kind of unattainable purity, we can instead admire the motivation and achievement of our mobile and adaptive ancestors, and all their contributions to modern civilization. Just consider American music, a creative powerhouse due to the sonic mosaic of our citizenry. We are so lucky to have such complex diversity in America!
30
A thought provoking and beautifully written piece. I will be sharing this for others to consider and appreciate.
23
Would that we could stop categorizing people by their skin color and merely see the beauty of each person. Trying to lump people into groups and then making assumptions about them is inappropriate. This article shows the complications that we impose upon ourselves and others.
We are all human. Let's leave it at that.
22
It is a complex but simply beautiful, heartening story. Thanks for the love and understanding, Thomas Chatterton Williams!
20
A candid and moving story of hope for all of us.
Thank you.
35
It leaves Mr Williams as a great American and an excellent writer. Thank you Sir!
48
It is harder for folks not around diverse peoples to mingle comfortably, which is too bad as both sides would enjoy the fresh connection. Helping our children try new things and setting the example go a long way.
30
I have two children both blond hair and blue eyes. They are White people for all tense and purposes. I never forget I had an interaction with this woman after my daughter was born and she said, "It must be nice to take care of that beautiful baby." I said what do you mean? She said, "Aren't you the babysitter?" I said no this is my biological child; this is my baby. Even when she my daughter was in the hospital nursey the nurse stopped me because she didn't see any "Black babies". I had to show her my armband and point my daughter out. It is funny my children lives are worth more than mine. Think about that. If you want to see my children, I am on Twitter at kingsley_a_rowe.
85
@Kingsley Arthur Rowe It is harder for folks not around diverse peoples to mingle comfortably, which is too bad as both sides would enjoy the fresh connection. Helping our children try new things and setting the example go a long way.
15
@Kingsley Arthur Rowe
This happened and still happens to me. The day after I gave birth to me a nutritionist came to my room to discuss nutrition to bring down my blood pressure. I was breastfeeding my daughter who was tucked into my hospital gown and this lady asked me, twice, if I was sure the baby was mine, because "mix ups happen all the time."
30
@Kingsley Arthur Rowe: Many years ago, my sons and I were riding the train from NYC to upstate NY. My sons had walked to a different part of the train when a woman approached me and asked if they were my "biological children". She said that she and her husband were considering adoption and wanted to know which adoption agency I had chosen. I politely told the woman that the boys were my biological children. She said "Oh, they're so brown. I thought they must be adopted". I said, my husband is black and our children are biracial. She moved back to her own seat. My sons attended high school in a predominantly white school. Thankfully, my sons had been befriended by the most liberal kids in their classes. One of the friends always respectfully called me Mrs. and said "Luke is the brownest white kid I know". I laugh at these things now. In the article, the author mentions the "Loving" case in the (I believe late 50 or 60s). My husband and I were married in Kansas in 1975. When I first heard about the Loving case, I was astonished that interracial marriage had only been "legalized" in Kansas for about 15 years. I don't remember much about the justice of the peace that married us, but I do remember the stares and scowls as we celebrated at a nearby restaurant with our friends. Thankfully, things have been much easier for my sons. Hopefully some day we will all be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. Thank you for this wonderful essay!
14
Beautiful article.
16
One day, and it won't be long, the world will be made up of one race of tan people with no blue eyes and no black eyes.
This cannot come soon enough for me!
35
@steve
Why are you looking forward to a world where everyone looks the same? How about we respect the diversity in human beings without elevating one race?
10
@steve It will happen. I wonder what the culture and ethos will be like. Will we cooperate to make a heaven on this plane ? Will we be interesting or uniform ? Will we work to save our planet and ourselves ? What doth the universe have in store ?
@steve why would that be a good thing? The diversity of the human race is an astonishingly beautiful thing. The solution to racism is to stop using color to have power over others. It’s not to make us all one color.
9
Thank you for examining this vital, always shifting subject. We don't experience an individual's unique spirit when we obsess over race. This article returns the focus to the whole person. As an Egyptian-American (the rest is Czech and Polish and, yes, Jewish), I like to say, I'm definitely an example of our American melting pot. We Egyptians are an ethnicity that encompases and includes several races. Another, more ancient melting pot.
My own journey and emotional work has necessarily had to include both facing racism sexism and classism that exist, sadly, in my heritage cultures -- which we all should I believe -- while also being treated differently in some ways, in some contexts, in my home country because of my Egyptian part of my background.
When Ramana Maharshi, the monk, was asked, "How should we treat others?" his answer was, "There are no others." I find that's a good place to start. Krista Tippet wisely says, "Race is in our minds." I do encourage doing all the emotional work of confronting your own heritage with respect to race and ethnicity, and truly listening and learning about others'. The rewards include growth, joy, resilience, inner peace.
79
Wow, what a great article and piece of writing to start the day. I remember going to a friend’ mother’s house about 40 years ago and seeing something close to the black vase the author speaks about and like the lady in the story, the folks in that house except my friend who was embarrassed saw nothing wrong. Explained it had been in the family for generations. Needless to say I never visited again, which I think made all sides happy.
16
Beautifully written, and all the more powerful for not being dogmatic in its viewpoint or conclusion.
16
A touching personal essay, sensitive, and insightful, except for his inability to appreciate the value of his wife’s porcelain figure of a black servant, which, like lawn jockeys and period racist art reflects our region’s cruel foundations. Posterity however still needs to know the meaning of authentic historical pieces such as a mammy doll, which will always reflect our true political sorrow. As much as one dare says as white southerners feel the need for monuments to Confederate soldiers, perhaps, unwittingly, to enrich posterity’s righteous rage against racism. But the author’s rejection of the figure’s value, even as evidence of the deepest form of social humiliation, defeats his conceptual victory over America’s creation, by violence, of our racial ranking order. His reaction to the figure expresses an archaism, and to view it as only offensive shows that his transcendent racial vision still has not acquired a language to express his, nor ours, transcendence. So his reaction falls back into the same racial polarity, the old racial rut of either or, with no poetic invention to show us that he sees it for the value it has lost and the different value it has gained. In time, hopefully, he will do so.
8
@Bayou Houma Re-read the article. The figure is not that of his wife Valentine but belongs to her grandmother, the author's grandmother in-law, called "C" in the piece. A woman from a very different background and culture and influences.
36
@Bayou Houma
I had a doll as a very small child. It had a long skirt.
Held one way the doll was a white girl. Turned the other way the doll was a black girl. I liked it because I could have both. Blended families: racially, religiously, culturally should allow us to value every person and every background.
@Unworthy Servant
The figure belongs to his wife’s family. Thanks for the clarification, but the figure is part of Valentin’s family. It has value, which he misses.
1
Race is a construct; racism is not.
The systems of inequality, both historic and present, that are designed to oppress black & brown people (redlining, education linked to property taxes, healthcare, mass incarceration, etc.) are very real and impact all of us who live in the States. This piece mulls over one man’s personal journey, but I fear readers are taking away a dismissal of our horrific origin and our current practices of white supremacy. A multicultural/post-racial society will not be possible until reparations are made & structural racism is dismantled. We are nowhere close.
47
@E. J Neither is France. Far from it actually.
3
Superb article. I can only hope that interracial marriages of all kinds grow in number exponentially. Of course, when we're all the same color we'll find new ways to try to feel superior, but at least race won't be one of them
20
@Eric Weber
Americans have “race mixed,” voluntarily only for the past half-century, since there was more than one race here yet racism still exists. When the interracial children vary in skin tone and hair texture from Mariah Carey to Barack Obama (look at his college photos to see his natural hair texture), can anyone say we will ever be the same skin color? What about those of us who like our darker skin tones? Will we be banished to a remote island?
1
My mother is mixed race, my father lilly white. I look Latin American like my grandmother, my brother looks Sicilian, my sister is lilly white after my father's family. When people ask em what we are, my answer is Human Beings.
67
@Betti
I like that approach Betti but in addition you should be able to just say American. But I realize as you point out people are obsessed with putting everyone into a racial category. It’s crazy that was in large measure a main cause of Hitler’s madness in the 1930s.
"Where does that leave me?" The answer is that while racial differences exist and shouldn't be ignored (e.g. we shouldn't ignore sickle cell anemia just because it's a predominantly black disease) every person should be looked at as a unique individual, not as a member of some group.
His kids demonstrate the ridiculousness of identity politics. They could legitimately claim preferential treatment as "black" while also benefitting from the alleged benefits of white privilege.
13
@J. Waddell Trying to right the wrongs by giving a leg up to those who continue to be oppressed isn't "preferential treatment," it's equality.
4
@J. Waddell I think you could leave out the word "alleged" when speaking of the benefits of white privilege . . ..
6
@J. Waddell Problem is, there is such thing as white privilege, whether or not you think it is "alleged" - and the only "preferential" treatment black people get comes from the police.
8
A beautiful poignant piece.
16
This is a stunningly beautiful piece. Although the histories of the people in the story are linked to race, I was moved by how well he described the tension all couples with children face in holding onto and embracing separate "pasts" yet creating a future that is all our own.
32
Thank you for this moving and insightful essay. It connects me to a past I infrequently remember, a first love lost in a tumultuous time.
12
An eloquent and loving portrait of a complex family and history, quite American, and equally French. Beautiful, fluid storytelling. I wished it to continue.
50
Beautiful writing here. Lyrical self-reflection that moves as deeply inward as it does outward. I can't wait to read this book when it comes out next month.
68
Continuing to accept and operate under the very concept of race is the problem. While science has been able to inform or dissuade societies from embracing traditional ideas created from misguided conclusions, such as a flat earth or the medicinal benefits of gum bleeding, it has been unable to reverse centuries of misapplied Darwinian or Scriptural allusion to justify the categorization and treatment of people by their physical appearance.
The fact is that different skin color, hair texture, or lip thickness should have nothing more to do with how we label people than eye color, hair color or height. But it does, simply because we have linked our identities so deeply with this false premise, building our historic norms and interactions on it, that we cannot get out of our own way to free ourselves from it.
The fact is that race did not create racism; on the contrary, it is racism that created race. And until we come to understand that fact, there is little hope that we will ever free ourselves of the debilitating impact it has on our ability to engage as people, or, as this article portrays, as families.
105
Beautiful piece of writing that made me question my own assumptions about race.
29
what a beautiful piece!
"I realized how profoundly ungenerous — how impressively unimaginative — my grandfather’s entire worldview could really be."
Since there really is no way to define a racial category in a multi-racial world, it would be better to educate a new generation of children in how they SEE race.
Personally I consider the author's background to make him more interesting, almost enviably so.
I raised my own children to see different races, cultures, religions, as INTERESTING, and therefore, in a way, more desirable than the unimaginative mono-cultural model. But we are in New York City, where I believe that the melting pot is beautiful.
25
Race shouldn't be an issue, but still is today. It is rather unfortunate. Just look where I live, most population in Houston and Harris county in general are Hispanic decedents. Although not like California, greater Houston also has plenty of Asian origins. Traditional blacks are still here. White is less than 50% of the total population in the 4th largest city in US. I would say just based on my own limited traveled experience that US is a rainbow-colored country. If people still cannot accept it, we will be in a big trouble in not too distant future.
37
@Usok
Your overall post is great but the last sentence though spot on, could benefit from acknowledging the lack of acceptance by those who purport to be helping the issue. They derive power from race staying a problem. We are already in big trouble as this stays a political focus.
19
Race is not a real thing. Color is a distinguishing feature. Racism is a real thing - a system was born with the Nation, and rooted in the idea of White superiority over all others. That idea served to justify the enslavement of black human beings in a slave system that created enormous wealth for a group of White Americans who passed it along. It also allowed some poorer White people others to embrace a sense of superiority over people of color. It is not race that is at issue today. It’s racism.
5
An amazing piece of writing - so personal, with such depth. When will awareness of race, rather than humanity, disappear? It holds us back from so much that we could achieve.
94
In January of 1970, was working on the Black Panther breakfast in East Harlem and I remember asking a co-worker about his lovely white Irish cable-stitched sweater. He said, "I think I bought it off the Champs Elysées ..." My wife and I were white, he was black. There were no comments about the color difference. I think he was Darryl Pinckney.
Thank you for your tale, Mr. Wllliams
18
@Philip Sedlak as friend of Darryl Pinckney back in the day I don’t believe he arrived in NYC until 1972, but it very much sounds like Darryl. Especially meeting him at a Black Panther breakfast which could have been a scene from his novel “High Cotton”.
In the 1970s, you weren't visibly shocked that a Black man had been to Paris. What do you want, a cookie?
9
A very thought-provoking piece, and it evokes the tensions of life in post-civil rights America, as embodied in the question: "how to retain blackness in the face of integration?"
And so it's striking--and ironic--that Williams' father demanded the son retain his blackness when the father himself had little contact with his black family and married Williams' mother, a white woman who gave birth to him, a mixed race black man.
Retaining blackness, that is what Williams is wondering about. What does blackness mean in the face of such whiteness in two generations of a mixed race black family?
As some point, retaining blackness seems like a performance, something forced, because that is what the culture demands, it is what the history of racial memory requires--remembrances of slavery, discrimination and stereotyping.
It seems that the conclusion is that basic humanity is what matters, not performances of race, and especially as the questions of race will become less salient, with the grandchildren who look whiter than everyone else.
84
@Barbara I think your interpretation is a perfectly your own. I'm going to give you my own. Blackness is not a performance for a Black American. What his father may have been telling him is not that slavery, discrimination and stereotyping is all Black people have in our history. That is a shallow non factual view. His father knew that his attempt to put those grievances aside did not exempt him from all that Black people have done for this country and the world. Leaving the world of the segregated south was not in order to integrate. It was to gain a greater level of freedom. His father's separation from that painful existence also meant separation from those he loved and cared about that chose to remain there. This is the losing of oneself his father experienced. The pain was still with him but he felt that, as the man he understood himself to be, he gave his son what he was..... a proud Black American that represents himself and nobody else. He didn't do it "for the race" but that is the shallowness of the American lens. It always gazes upon the whiteness in proximity. I experience it all the time as people as me what I am. I've seen others revel in what they feel is their modern racial ambiguity but always defer to Blackness for some of the smallest things.... for this is culture bound.
7
@Barbara Losing himself means precisely what you have questioned.. "What does blackness mean in the face of such whiteness?" Integration demanded assimilation and the giving up culture you seem to dismiss as mere performance. He is fully aware of this as his citation of "Cleavers famous, venomous articulation" suggests. It is sad that this is a touching story but some have rose colored American glasses that seem to not be able to put self in the shoes of the "other." The story, for all its beauty and tenderness, began with the author as a little boy being called monkey so he could set the stage for your deeper understanding of what he was and still is dealing with by closing with the slave caricaturized slave knicknack. Along the way he emphasized how his father would have reacted to the pain of telling him of his experiences thrust upon him from others intentionally and unintentionally - but the result is the same. The fact of him being aware that he stands out in a room with his wife's family no matter how much they love him speaks volumes about his awareness and the ultimate wonder will his children ever feel that from him as he did from his father.
6
And there is also the matter of retaining pride in and appreciation for our ancestors, gratitude for their struggle, creativity and strength, and perseverance over not decades, but centuries. Most of our Black ancestors we will not know, their individual histories ended at the Atlantic shore. 400 years have passed since that beginning. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964! I was in high school. So my gratitude is deep and abiding How dare anyone begin to suggest that forgetting to remember them is even an option.
10
A magnificent piece of writing.
Many of us are mixtures of different races and cultures, but don't have to live with daily judgments because we blend in. Which leads to the question: Ignoring our external appearance, what type of people do we really blend in WITH?
23
Breathtaking. Only once in a while do I get to read something so beautifully written and heartbreakingly honest.
152
Tough subject, great writing. Gonna get the book.
30
I am definitely going to read his book! Putting the info into my iPhone right now!
8
Just putting this out into the void: if black Americans were the "model minority" I wonder if there would even be thought about not wanting to be part of their ethnic group. Because the idea of the model minority was a created idea as well. If things had turned out differently after the emancipation proclamation would some people be so willing to jump ship?
11
I am delighted to see this excerpt from Thomas Chatterton Williams book confirming my high expectations for that book based on following him via his own essays, columns, and interview reports and setting his views based on his own experience in the context of 21st Century genome research.
At this hour only 31 comments are showing and I have read them all. Almost all are strongly positive and a number point to what genome research has established, that there is only one genetically defined race, the human.
I do expect that eventually there will be many comments like the one filed by Cousy New England 9/18 who writes that: "But seriously, this article was the most overwrought thing I've ever read."
I refer Cousy to an extraordinary novel, set in the New England where I grew up and written by Helen Oyeyemi, born in Nigeria. The novel, Boy, Snow, Bird introduces readers to a number of New Englanders all of whom can trace a line of descent back to a "black" person but who in real life represent the continuous color spectrum that artist Adrian Piper is developing as a post-race view of what humans really look like. Brilliant book, to which I often return.
The Times will have to eventually enlist genome researchers like Svante Pääbo and evolutionary geneticist Sarah Tishkoff to help Americans who believe that color is race to learn what their research tells us about the infinite variability of such markers as eye and skin color.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
45
Larry Lundgreen, “Boy, Snow, Bird” is one of the most thought provoking books about the perceptions of race that I’ve ever read. Thank you for recommending it.
19
@JC - Thanks. This almost never happens. I name a book and a reader writes that she has read it. I am about to write a comment - 04:15 h 20 September here on an island in Sweden asking "Is there anyone here who has read the essential book by former US Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt "What Is Your Race?...?
Has TCW read it?
I grew up in exactly that part of New England but Nigerian born HO seems to know more about than I do.
Tack!
Larry L.
A rambling discussion of multi-generational racialized traum that had moments of light and insight, but I can't say I really understand what it was all about. In answer to the author's question: your children are white. Does this matter?
48
@Anne, Of course it matters when people think they are not his children!
4
A very interesting piece. The question that Mr. Williams poses at the conclusion however deserves an answer. "Can/should I claim to glimpse in the slaves face my own reflection"? My experience as a black man who grew up in the 50s and 60s leads me to remember how I chose not to identify with the demeaning images I saw of black people as presented in the movies of the 30s and 40s, the Amos and Andy TV shows and the mainstream media of those times. As a young boy I felt more comfortable identifying with the majority of my classmates, (whites) in my predominately white elementary school. I feel this attitude predetermined a denial of self and ultimately a dilemma of identity that was in many ways detrimental to my understanding of the challenges I would face in the real world. The figure of the slave reminds me of the ancestors who suffered, struggled and died in order that I may enjoy a life that they could only imagine. The white 90 year old grandmother like many of her generation could not understand that the slave figure with its accentuated(exaggerated?) Negroid features is an attempt to reduce oppressed Africans to caricature subject to scorn and associated with negative implications regarding intelligence and morality, in order to reinforce a concept of white racial superiority and a justification for slavery. Displaying such a figure is to further victimize the already victimized.
47
Perhaps of interest, the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University. Here their online tour:
https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=8miUGt2wCtB
2
@Conrad
I don’t see the figure in that way and would not be offended by it. I am black.
Well, I for one will look forward to reading this author's book. His intelligence and sensitivity makes reading his thoughts so enjoyable.Thanks .
17
What a stunningly beautiful peice. I loved it, amoung all that has happened in the past, something beautiful can emerge. All this culminates in a loving family. So well written
50
If race is a social construct, why all the pieces on race? What is supposed to be the end game of all of this 1619/Сritical Thеory business?
35
@John-There is a simple answer to your question. Americans are asked not only at 10-year census time but on other occasions, for example at checkin at a doctors office or into a hospital "What is your race"?
I last experienced this a long time ago since I have lived 23 straight years in Sweden where nobody is assigned to a race.
New York Times columnists faithfully use the US Census Bureau system when writing about people and even employ the one-drop rule where anyone seen as having the fictional one-drop of black blood is seen as black and now even African American.
Kamala Harris is a perfect example.
David Reich, a leading genome researcher had a column in the Times in March in which he made a misstep, showing maybe he wanted to hang on to races even though he knew better. Well informed readers pointed out the error of his ways and he wrote a quite good reply, stating, that all should understand that race in America refers to groups that were socially or in my view more accurately politically constructed.
I havenot read TCW's article here yet but I have read everything I know of that he has written and I can be sure he will be met with terrific opposition. Already in something called I think Book Forum a critic who had a pre-publication copy of the new book wrote a scathing review that I could not reply to because I do not have the book out in October.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US Se
18
@John I am surprised you have to ask that question John. Why all the pieces on race? Put your seat belt on because this is just the beginning.
The USA needs to have its truth and reconciliation concerning slavery, voters' right and race...just the beginning my friend.
63
@Lisa we've had a rather open discussion for the last 50 years about race, and people have tried to reconcile. But ID politics lovers don't want reconciliation, but just guilt tripping and revenge.
38
I feel that in this day and age, these kids should be considered WHITE.
Only the people who still hold on to white supremacy and outdated racial classification schemes would defer.
16
@Truth It is probably up to the kids on how they identify. This is a complexity that I just cannot understand nor will I ever experience. And I thought being adopted was confusing enough.
17
@Truth
As stated above, the concept of race has no basis in science, it being a purely sociocultural and political construct. The concept of race and racially based hierarchy was essential for the justification of slavery. The "one drop rule" as adopted in this country, dictated that one could not be considered white as long as an individual had any evidence of "other" ancestry. The upshot of this leads us to final observation: Whiteness is the only "race" that is defined not by what it is, but instead by what it isn't.
57
@Conrad-You are definitely a rare voice here both in every NYT article with the exception of TCWs and as far as I can see the majority of comment writers.
I had to move to Linköping Sweden and view America from afar via the New York Times and NPR to realize how strong the commitment of all factions is to the belief that there are distinct races, and that it is possible to assign each American to one of those races.
As far as I now the NY Times Race/Related newsletter has ever made the slightest effort to explain the uniquely American concept of race and then to have an accomplished genome researcher explain a few essential elements about our genomes, the haplotypes to which our own genome can point to.
Truly unbelievable is the literal commitment to the one-drop rule, the fatal invention of racists and yet seemingly almost cherished by our fellow Americans.
Thanks for writing your comment.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US Se
25
Regarding the racially offensive candy dish: it is inappropriate in all settings and for all audiences. Children should not see an object intended to presume that features of another race are inherently comical, or that another race is servile. Valentine’s family needs to have a serious talk with Grandmère.
31
@S. Spring
When candy dishes, dollies and even their makers are all gone, the mind will remain able to conceive them. The mind needs far more to recognize them for what they are — lies and caricatures — than not see or unsee them. So whether the representations of the illusion of racial value are present or removed, is of far less importance than knowing the truth and valuing that.
Williams describes the slave head as sad. This is appropriate to its story. The terror and humiliation of the story are not far away, which is sad too. Children understand sadness. Rather than destroying the head or spiriting it away, and by that gesture sweeping the story out of sight, perhaps the caricature can be explained, its sources recognized, and the mind freed of some limiting beliefs.
18
@S. Spring
Yes!! A mistake that they have not already removed this troubling object!!!
Being able to explain one’s racial and ethnic identity will become harder and harder in our country as the world of people becomes more inclusive and we intermarry by choice. Being a Person of color may be defined by degrees or quantum as a member of a Native American tribe, but it is more complicated and harder to check off on a census form or a job application form if needed as in schools that were under court order that were hiring to fill a quota in the past decades. In cases like the public schools, people in mixed race categories would check off ‘Other’ as the racial designation, then the HR department decided ‘Other’ had other designations, but not ‘mixed’, and then the choice would not be scrutinized by the personnel department until it did not for their definitions. A drop of identity is a peculiar institution that kept people enslaved for generations and was a source of confusion for many beyond the Emancipation Act. The admonition of ‘Don’t Lose Yourself’ is a sad statement when a young person has not been given a definition that could lost until others remind them of a forgotten remnant like the statue of a head of an African person holding candies like an enslaved servant in a castle centuries before.
2
A beautiful piece. My thanks to the author. I only wish that those insisting on seeing the world through racial differentiation would read this dissertation - and take it to heart.
16
@Flatsthick
I find that the point of the article is that it is difficult to use race as a classificatory category. That is how things are these days.
Identity is a construct of consciousness, though artificial in itself, it has been the catalyst for carnage. On their own, however, the chromosomes of various humans meld quite easily.
4
Does he think his children aren't white? They have three completely white grandparents and one somewhat mixed black grandfather. Beyond the "one drop of blood" definition, what are they? But then what is their father? Can a black father have a white child in our world? A white mother can have a black child, so why not the opposite? My Jamaican friend told me that in Jamaican families it is literally skin color itself that they use to describe people, not heritage per se.
79
@Caroline You are absolutely RIGHT.
His children are white.
17
@Truth, why does it matter?
24
@Debbie it matters because the outside world will treat them differently. My friend's grandchildren are mixed race. When they were small, people stopped him because he was pushing a dark skinned baby in a stroller. It matters whether we like it or not.
15
Beautiful. Thank you so much.
23
"To speak about a thing clearly you must first be able to name it. To speak about yourself, you must first be able to assemble a sense of origin."
I would argue that this is untrue, and ignorantly, cluelessly untrue, for an entire class of "white" people. We come eventually from immigrants, but from a class of immigrants that aggressively assimilated and lost most our "back story" from the pig farmers in Poland or subsistence farmers in Ireland et al. At some point one or more people in the family got some education to break free of steelworking and longshoremen, and then it was relentlessly expected from every kid born thereafter.
We're doctors and lawyers and scientists now, and we've scattered all over the country because we have to for fellowships, adjunct professorships, and jobs. We don't stay in the towns we grew up in, whining endlessly about our ethnic backgrounds. Good luck to those who do.
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We have another background to worry over. It is the ideals of democracy and equality, threatened as they are, and the American project, warped and scarred by slavery and racism. And also, I’ve come to think, the beautiful warm culture we share with the best Americans regardless of race or ethnicity.
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Thank you for this powerful, poignant and moving piece, Thomas. I relate to it wholeheartedly as a bilingual, multiethnic, dark-skinned biological mother of a bilingual, multiethnic son presumed to be white. I too wrote a book (published by 2Leaf Press in April 2019) about our experience. I am convinced that without challenging the language and ideology of racial difference and whiteness, we will forever be trapped in a vicious cycle. Racial categories were created to uphold the status quo (i.e. white supremacy) and it is high time we challenge the ethos that is the bedrock of the system. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo40171801.html
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Uh, okay.
I am a white woman married to a Black man and we have kids together. There are important and interesting challenges and learnings that spring from our multicultural make-up, and we each have our own experience within that.
But seriously, this article was the most overwrought thing I've ever read. My family often discuss articles of interest on race, but I'll pass on sharing this piece.
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“I’ll pass on sharing this piece”
Why?
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Cousy,
Please, seek out some of the author’s other essays. I think this one might give some people the wrong impression of his position on the politics of race.
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Maybe her and her husband see their children as @black” as the world will see them. Her Black children, unless they choose to pass, will experience life as Black people.
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Superb article.
Wonderfully written.
Touching.
I’d love to meet him and his family.
Thank you.
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Thank you, thank you. This touches my heart.
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Wow I was immersed and the words came in so lovingly and flawlessly. I was touched the humanity of the words and deeply moved
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What a gorgeous piece. I will be readying Mr. Chatterton Williams’ book!
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