Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood and Rethinking Race

"Thomas Chatterton-Williams speaks to many pressing political issues of the moment in a personal way. At a moment when people are encouraged to identify in ethnic terms, Thomas Chatterton-Williams makes the case that we should preserve the ideal of a society in which racial identity matters less. He’s not naive about this. He acknowledges the deep injustices that continue to shape society, but he does defend the idea of creating a more just society where race could become less rather than more important. Many people on Twitter seem to believe that being willing to see the virtues, as well as the vices, of your country is wrong. 2020 has shown us that Twitter is a distorted reflection of reality. I don’t know whether I would embrace the title ‘centrist.’ I’m a Democrat who agrees with most of the positions of the party’s mainstream. But I certainly think that, to paraphrase the Clinton quote which Obama often invokes, the things that are wrong with America can be fixed by what is right about America."