Self-Portrait in Black and White
Unlearning Race
- In-Person
- 麻豆果冻传媒
740 15th St NW #900
Washington, D.C. 20005 - 12PM 鈥 1:30PM EDT
This year, 麻豆果冻传媒 celebrates 20 years of creating and incubating the next big ideas that address some of the nation's and the world鈥檚 toughest problems. We are thinkers, researchers, problem-solvers, and storytellers, united by our goal to hold our nation to its highest ideals. We recognize the challenges presented by rapid technological and social change, and work to ensure that the solutions made possible by those changes lead to greater opportunity for all. As we reach forward toward the next 20 years of 麻豆果冻传媒, we will strive to be an engine of American renewal, at home and abroad.
A meditation on race and identity from one of our most provocative cultural critics.
A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family鈥檚 multigenerational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a 鈥渂lack鈥 father from the segregated South and a 鈥渨hite鈥 mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of 鈥渂lack blood鈥 makes a person black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he鈥檇 never rigorously reflected on its foundations鈥昩ut the shock of his experience as the black father of two extremely white-looking children led him to question these long-held convictions.
It is not that he has come to believe that he is no longer black or that his kids are white, Williams notes. It is that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them鈥昽r anyone else, for that matter. Beautifully written and bound to upset received opinions on race, Self-Portrait in Black and White is an urgent work for our time.
Join 麻豆果冻传媒's Fellows Program with Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Self-Portrait in Black and White, David Swerdlick, Washington Post Assistant Editor Outlook section, and Theodore Johnson, Class of 2017, for a discussion about race and identity.
Registration to begin at 11:30 PM; conversation begins at 12:00 PM.
Lunch will be served.
Speakers:
Thomas Chatterton Williams,
2019 National Fellow, 麻豆果冻传媒
Author, Self-Portrait in Black and White
David Swerdlick,
Assistant Editor, Washington Post Outlook section
Moderator:
Theodore Johnson,
2017 National Fellow, 麻豆果冻传媒
Senior Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice
Copies of Self-Portrait in Black and White will be available for purchase through our bookselling partner Solid State Books, and a book signing will follow the discussion.