A provocative new book argues we must ‘unlearn’ race. We absolutely should | Zaid Jilani
While many on the left now reject gender categories, they seem determined to enshrine racial categories. Let’s do better
In 2012, writer Thomas Chatterton Williams – a biracial African American expatriate living in Paris – took to the New York Times op-ed page to declare that not only do “mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black”, but that interracial couples “share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look”.
Williams argued that embracing a black identity served as a form of solidarity between biracial African Americans such as himself and those with darker skin. “And so I will teach my children that they, too, are black – regardless of what anyone else may say – so long as they remember and wish to be,” he concluded.