Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race

Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race
Author: Thomas Chatterton Williams
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393608875

A Time “Must-Read” Book of 2019 “[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard not to admire him.” —Andrew Solomon, New York Times Book Review (front page) The son of a “black” father and a “white” mother, Thomas Chatterton Williams found himself questioning long-held convictions about race upon the birth of his blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter—and came to realize that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them, or anyone else. In telling the story of his family’s multigenerational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white, he reckons with the way we choose to see and define ourselves. Self-Portrait in Black and White is a beautifully written, urgent work for our time.

Self-Portrait in Black and White

Self-Portrait in Black and White
Author: Thomas Chatterton Williams
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-10-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1529322952

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A TIME 'MUST-READ' 'An extraordinarily thought-provoking memoir that makes a controversial contribution to the fraught debate on race and racism . . . intellectually stimulating and compelling' SUNDAY TIMES 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's multi-generational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a 'black' father from the segregated South and a 'white' mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of 'black blood' makes a person black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously reflected on its foundations - but 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 daughter is white, Williams notes. It is that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them - or 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.

When I Was White

When I Was White
Author: Sarah Valentine
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250146763

The stunning and provocative coming-of-age memoir about Sarah Valentine's childhood as a white girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and her discovery that her father was a black man. At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the white girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race. And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from white to black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her white identity. The supreme discomfort her white family and community felt about addressing issues of race–her race–is a microcosm of race relationships in America. A black woman who lived her formative years identifying as white, Sarah's story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her "passing" was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she'd grown up with, in order to embrace a new one.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Author: Beverly Daniel Tatum
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1541616588

The classic, New York Times-bestselling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America. Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about communicating across racial and ethnic divides and pursuing antiracism. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand dynamics of race and racial inequality in America.

White Fragility

White Fragility
Author: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807047422

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

Black White and Jewish

Black White and Jewish
Author: Rebecca Walker
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2002-01-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1573229075

The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But after her parents divorced, leaving her a lonely only child ferrying between two worlds that only seemed to grow further apart, Rebecca was no longer sure what she represented. In this book, Rebecca Leventhal Walker attempts to define herself as a soul instead of a symbol—and offers a new look at the challenge of personal identity, in a story at once strikingly unique and truly universal.

Study in Black and White

Study in Black and White
Author: Tanya Sheehan
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2019-05-06
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0271082461

In this volume, Tanya Sheehan takes humor seriously in order to trace how photographic comedy was used in America and transnationally to express evolving ideas about race, black emancipation, and civil rights in the mid-1800s and into the twentieth century. Sheehan employs a trove of understudied materials to write a new history of photography, one that encompasses the rise of the commercial portrait studio in the 1840s, the popularization of amateur photography around 1900, and the mass circulation of postcards and other photographic ephemera in the twentieth century. She examines the racial politics that shaped some of the most essential elements of the medium, from the negative-positive process to the convention of the photographic smile. The book also places historical discourses in relation to contemporary art that critiques racism through humor, including the work of Genevieve Grieves, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and Fred Wilson. By treating racial humor about and within the photographic medium as complex social commentary, rather than a collectible curiosity, Study in Black and White enriches our understanding of photography in popular culture. Transhistorical and interdisciplinary, this book will be of vital interest to scholars of art history and visual studies, critical race studies, U.S. history, and African American studies.

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
Author: Reni Eddo-Lodge
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-11-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526633922

'Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can't afford to stay silent. This book is an attempt to speak' The book that sparked a national conversation. Exploring everything from eradicated black history to the inextricable link between class and race, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the essential handbook for anyone who wants to understand race relations in Britain today. THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS NON-FICTION NARRATIVE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 FOYLES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BLACKWELL'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE JHALAK PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR A BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD

Black Skin, White Masks

Black Skin, White Masks
Author: Frantz Fanon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Black race
ISBN: 9780745399546

Black Skin, White Masks is a classic, devastating account of the dehumanising effects of colonisation experienced by black subjects living in a white world. First published in English in 1967, this book provides an unsurpassed study of the psychology of racism using scientific analysis and poetic grace.Franz Fanon identifies a devastating pathology at the heart of Western culture, a denial of difference, that persists to this day. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, his writings speak to all who continue the struggle for political and cultural liberation.With an introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack.