Thomas Chatterton Williams

“Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with 'keeping it real' are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior.”

“We are all living in a techno-dystopian fantasy, the Internet-connected portals we rely on rendering the world in all its granular detail and absurdity like Borges's 'Aleph.'”

“It is mind-blowing to pause and think that a film as forward-facing and potent as 'Do the Right Thing' was released the same year as 'Driving Ms. Daisy.'”

“There are few things more American than falling back on the language of race when what we're really talking about is class or, more accurate still, manners, values and taste.”

“If the first year of the Trump administration has made anything clear, it's that experience, knowledge, education and political wisdom matter tremendously. Governing is something else entirely from campaigning. And perhaps, most important, celebrities do not make excellent heads of state.”

“When I was in college, the Roots, the sui generis ensemble from Philadelphia encompassing all manner of black music, played a show on campus.”

“I think that unlearning race for black people is more along the lines of seriously saying blackness isn't real, race isn't real.”

“The French, whose fascination with 19th-century Japanese painting and decorative art led them to coin the term 'Japonisme,' have reciprocated the interest, and the exchange - in food, fashion and design - is ongoing. After all, these are two countries where style is considered essential to life.”

“If the idea of separate human races is a mistake to begin with, then monoracial forms of identification are fictitious and counterproductive.”

“Most so-called 'black' people do not feel themselves at liberty to simply turn off or ignore their allotted racial designation, whether they would like to or not.”

“Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black - and 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.”

“There can be no dragon slayer in the absence of dragons.”

“To speak about yourself, you must first be able to assemble a sense of origin. For descendants of slaves, this has proved one of the most precious losses of self-knowledge we've endured.”

“The problem is, authentic hip-hop culture is street culture. And so you've got middle-class blacks really emulating the norms of the South Bronx, which is not really in their best interests.”

“I am not renouncing my blackness and going on about my day. I am rejecting the legitimacy of the entire racial construct in which blackness functions as one orienting pole.”

“Mobs in the street tearing down Ulysses S. Grant statues is a really chilling sight.”

“Martha's Vineyard is a very strange place, racially speaking. Or maybe it's the way things could be if everyone had a bit more money and job security and status and could meet on equal enough footing.”

“If liberals no longer pride themselves on being the adults in the room, the bulwark against the whims of the mob, our national descent into chaos will be complete.”