Thomas Chatterton Williams

I love being a foreigner.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

As fearsome as Covid-19 is, it is not the Nazis.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Almost every summer, my wife and I, now with two kids in tow, spend a couple of weeks in Italy.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

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

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I'm the son of a Black man who was born in the segregated South.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Pent-up white racism did fire Mr. Trump's candidacy, and he happily fanned the flames.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Well, I think that hip-hop is not just a music. It's really a culture and it's a way of life.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

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

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

At various points in my own life, I have been laughed at scathingly for calling myself black.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I am not immune to Oprah's charms, but President Winfrey is a terrible idea.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

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

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Throughout all of life's little interruptions and distractions, I prided myself on keeping my work focused and relatively unscathed.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I think it's absolutely undeniable that nobody really advocates for complete total speech without any consequence or absolute freedom of expression. There's…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

New York is actually a pretty safe place, and I think invoking the Bronx as a metaphor for the nightmarish urban environment…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Traveling through France in regular times, for better or worse, I am simply perceived as an American.

— 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…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

The truth is that ideas matter... If we really want to repair what is wrong in our society, it is going to…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Between my freshman and senior years of high school in the late '90s, my father spent his evenings, weekends and vacations drilling…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

In my own young black life, I have done my part to gentrify a half-dozen mixed neighborhoods ranging from Spanish Harlem to…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I think I was drawn to black culture by the same things that have been drawing the entire world to it since…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

What I know now is that I used to not just tolerate but submit to and even on some deep level need…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

White people have basically been encouraged for most of recent history in America to think of themselves as outside of race. White…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Intellectual development was paramount to my father, of course, but he was hardly a geek. He was a man who happened to…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

A lot of people say there's no such thing as cancel culture and then you name an example and they're, like, 'That…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I tried to fortify myself with the best nonfiction and fiction I could lay my hands on, from the essays of James…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I grew up in New Jersey, but my parents are from out west. They moved the family to New Jersey when my…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

The United States was founded on the triple sin of slavery, genocide, and land theft.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I write a lot about race precisely because I don't believe it's real.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

When I look at my daughter now, I see another facet of myself, I see my own inimitable child.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

People will always look different from each other in ways we can't control. What we can control is what we allow ourselves…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I do think that some form of reparations for the descendants of American slavery would go a long way.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I have spent my whole life earnestly believing the fundamental American dictum that a single 'drop of black blood' makes a person…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

My family matters most to me, even though so much of our daily lives and commitments make it so difficult to be…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I consciously learned and performed my race like a teacher's pet in an advanced placement course on black masculinity.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

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

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

I lament that Paris can be a threatening space for Jews, Roma, Africans and Arabs, but the truth is, as a black…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

My father 'Pappy' who is black, is from Galveston and Fort Worth, Texas. My mother, who is white, is from San Diego.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

Poverty destroys Americans every day by means of confrontations with the law, disease, pollution, violence and despair.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

The name Albert Murray was never household familiar. Yet he was one of the truly original minds of 20th-century American letters.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams

The ideal post-Trump politician will, at the very least, be a deeply serious figure with a strong record of public service behind…

— Thomas Chatterton Williams