Thomas Chatterton Williams
in conversation with Susan Neiman (Potsdam)
Is It Racist?
In the past few years there has been increasing consensus that systemic racism is a feature of most of our societies, but far less agreement about when a particular statement or practice is racist. Who has a right to decide this? What is the role of intention if the racism is systemic? Might we make judgments based on racist assumptions we have not recognized? Can we sketch a framework for judging racist language and praxis that would achieve a workable consensus? Thomas Chatterton Williams, whose forthcoming book Summer of Our Discontent examines the impact of the antiracist demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd, will reflect on these questions.
Thomas Chatterton Williams is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Losing My Cool (2010) and Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race (2019). His next book, Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse, will appear in August 2025. Williams is a Visiting professor of humanities and senior fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, and a visiting fellow at American Enterprise Institute. He was previously a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a Columnist at Harper’s. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, Le Monde and many other places, and has been collected in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing. He has received support from New America, Yaddo, MacDowell, and The American Academy in Berlin, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees. He also serves as a board member for the Einstein Forum in Potsdam.