Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (1997 BBC Reith Lectures)

Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (1997 BBC Reith Lectures)

In these five eloquent and passionate pieces (which she gave as the prestigious Reith Lectures for the BBC) Patricia J. Williams asks how we might achieve a world where “color doesn’t matter”–where whiteness is not equated with normalcy and blackness with exoticism and danger. Drawing on her own experience, Williams delineates the great divide between “the poles of other people’s imagination and the nice calm center of oneself where dignity resides,” and discusses how it might be bridged as a first step toward resolving racism. Williams offers us a new starting point–“a sensible and sustained consideration”–from which we might begin to deal honestly with the legacy and current realities of our prejudices.

Seeing a Color-Blind Future comprises five essays that author Patricia J. Williams presented at the highly prestigious Reith lectures in Britain. Erroneously perceived by some conservative British papers as a “militant black feminist” Williams proves in these highly readable and intelligent essays that she is an influential and important voice in race theory. Williams and other left law professionals theorize on “quiet racism.” This is a racism that doesn’t make newspaper headlines but occurs all the time. It is the taunting of black children by white children in the playground, it is being singled out in a crowd because you are black, it is not being viewed as the “norm.” Williams asks, “How can it be that so many well meaning white people have never thought about race when so few blacks pass a single day without being reminded of it?” So can there ever be a solution? Williams does hold hope for a color-blind future, and her answer lies in a society where we must deal honestly and openly with our prejudices, and where we must eliminate the “little blindnesses” not just the big. This is a slender little book, filled with compelling and thought provoking narratives. –Naomi Gesinger

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