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I first learned about the author, Thomas Chatterton Williams, when I was checking Wikipedia for Coleman Hughes. Coleman is a young black intellectual whose YouTube interview with John McWhorter had intrigued me. According to Wikipedia:

In September 2020, ... French newspaper Le Monde identified Hughes as one of four “anti-conformists of anti-racism” along with Glenn Loury, Thomas Chatterton Williams and John McWhorter.

Since I was familiar with three of the four “anti-conformists of anti-racism”, I was pleased to learn that the fourth, Williams, had published a book in 2019, a memoir about the struggle with his own identity as a black man.

After reading the book, I visited the Book Mark Reviews to see how William's book was rated by various literary critics. The website assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream critics; Williams' book received a “Mixed” rating based on 11 reviews: 2 “Rave”, 3 “Positive”, 3 “Mixed”, and 3 “Pan” reviews. When I read the “Pan” reviews, it was clear that several critics are simply 'antiracist ideologues' who simply reject what Williams has to say:

“Woke” anti-racism proceeds from the premise that race is real—if not biological, then socially constructed and therefore equally if not more significant still—putting it in sync with toxic presumptions of white supremacism that would also like to insist on the fundamentality of racial difference. Working toward opposing conclusions, racists and many anti-racists alike eagerly reduce people to abstract color categories, all the while feeding off of and legitimizing each other, while any of us searching for gray areas and common ground get devoured twice. Both sides mystify racial identity, interpreting it as something fixed and determinative, and almost supernatural in scope. This way of thinking about human difference is seductive for many reasons but it has failed us. (p.128)

To be clear, the bulk of the book consists of Williams recounting how his experience of life in the United States and then Europe led to an evolution of his understanding about what 'racial identity' actually is, such as:

Very often a class transition, without any further complicating factors needed, can feel just like a racial one. (p.32)

Or again:

People will always look different from each other in ways we can't control. What we can control is what we allow ourselves to make of those differences. (p.26)

I hadn't actually seen a photograph of Williams until after finishing the book. It was remarkable how the many photos one sees in the Google search results illustrate much about that which he had written.

If one did not want to read the book, one could simply watch for a few minutes the video Unlearning Race in 2020? Thomas Chatterton Williams. Of course, after watching Thomas Chatteron Williams in conversation, one might decide to read his book!

#100daystooffload Day 21.