Retiring from blackness: a review of Self Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race by Thomas Chatterton-Williams

It can be said of 21st-century society that people ascribe great value to their racial identities. It forms their attitudes, their cultures, their tastes, their style of speech, etc. But when it comes to Self-Portrait in Black and White, Thomas Chatterton-Williams causes us to challenge this often unquestioned notion, that ethnic background is invariably linked to how we view ourselves. As a biracial man, born to a black father and white mother, he reveals that this journey of unlearning race began with the birth of his daughter- a pale, blond and blue-eyed girl with curly hair. In the opening of the book, he admits that “blackness as an either/or truth was so fundamental to [his] self-conception that [he’d] never rigorously reflected on its foundations”. At least, not until his daughter came into the world. 

This fundamental ‘truth’ for many is undisputed. Some may say that blackness provides a sense of camaraderie. I side with Chatterton-Williams on what he refers to as the “fluidity of racial borders”. It is surely far more optimistic and works for the betterment of society to reject labels that do more to constrict rather than free. Although Chatterton-Williams comes to this conclusion because of his daughter’s appearance, some individuals are darker in skin tone but have also adopted this form of fluidity; for instance, Kmele Foster and Adrian Piper. 

Foster does not self-identify as black, whereas Piper has retired from blackness. Kmele says in an interview that “the notion that blackness is a concrete, particular species of person is not something that I prescribe to and it’s certainly not something that’s supported by what we know about biology and genetics”. Foster is right. The idea of race truly is a myth. It came into being during the Enlightenment Era when Carl Linnaeus divided human beings into categories of Europaeus albus, Americanus rubescens, Asiaticus fuscus, Africanus niger. After Linnaeus came Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who produced five groups: Caucasian (white), Mongolian (yellow), Malayan (brown), Ethiopian (black), and American (red). However, many studies have proven that racial categorisation is a social construct at its best and poor science at its worst. In 1972, the biologist Richard Lewontin tested how much genetic variation could be attributed to racial groupings. Amazingly, he found that approximately 6% of genetic variation in humans could be attributed to race categories. Even more so, other studies have shown that the variation between two individuals is minuscule, to the tune of one single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in our DNA per 1000. And so we see that there is no exclusionary tactic in Chatterton-Williams’ book when discussing the idea that blackness can be retired from.

Where then does his journey begin? In the prologue, Chatterton-Williams speaks on how his mother and father instilled a kind of individualism within him and his older brother, an isolation from the crowd. This ‘cut[ting] off from any substantial we’, he later reveals, was immensely beneficial in allowing him to think outside the box that is the black experience. In the first chapter, titled ‘The View from Near and Far’, he reveals that he often conflated racial authenticity with certain behaviours. This means that someone who likes classical music may not necessarily be thought to possess a genuine blackness in the eyes of some. This, undoubtedly, is wrong. To associate specific dispositions to specific ethnicities is not only irrational but also incredibly restrictive. Further, it raises questions as to what belongs to who, which becomes impossible to answer in such a globalised society as ours. Without realising it, people who espouse ideas such as these only further what critical theorists call cultural racism. James Lindsay states: “In Social Justice, the idea of cultural racism insists that white people maintain their social dominance and do a kind of racism to people of colour by finding ‘white’ culture to be normal and preferable to various non-white cultures”. If a non-white person claims that someone of their ethnic background cannot do or say a certain thing because it seems ‘white’ and falls outside their imagined boundaries of what it means to be black, Asian, etc., they are inadvertently promoting the idea that ‘white’ culture is superior. It harms more than it helps. It divides human beings into identity groups, dictating to them how they ought to conduct themselves. 

I, myself, have encountered such a notion. Some years ago, I was told by a black person that I spoke like a white person, whatever that means. And not only that, but this was also confirmed by a white person. It is regrettable that we seem unable to break free from racialised predilections. Chatterton-Williams also comes to a similar conclusion. He realised that “identities are complex and even paradoxical things” and that race is, in fact, fluid. Paul Gilroy, in Against Race, argues that race is “an afterimage – a lingering effect of looking too casually into the damaging glare emanating from colonial conflicts at home and abroad”. In other words, race is something often foisted upon people by themselves because of their decision to continuously dwell on the past. Now, I am not saying that we should not discuss history. However, it crosses a dangerous line when the past shapes our identity more than the present. If all we feel is, as Chatterton-Williams puts so well, a “vaguest sense of indebtedness to past suffering” and feel almost obligated to immortalise it for the sake of familiarity, we are heading in the wrong direction. 

Chatterton-Williams continues to build on the concept of unlearning race in chapter two, titled ‘Marrying Out’, where he discusses marrying outside one’s ethnic background. However, as he notes, even this must be re-evaluated because black Americans have approximately 25% European ancestry and are, thus by definition, mixed. In his book Is Marriage for White People? How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone, Ralph Richard Banks reveals some shocking statistics. Research shows that many black women indicate that only black men are suitable romantic partners. Compared to all other minority groups, they are less likely to express the desire to date outside their race. Chatterton-Williams rightly calls this the “cruel paradox of […] tribal allegiance”. Marrying out of one’s race ought to be viewed positively, for it speaks to a “prospect of a truly post-racial society that many of us claim to want to bring about”. Although, the author himself admits having struggled to come to terms with this truth. The morning after he proposed to his wife, who is white, he thought of the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver called a “racial death-wish”, an apocryphal account of creation. Cleaver states that 6300 years ago, all the people were ‘Original Blacks’, living on the island of Patmos. A mad scientist named Yacub initiated a way of grafting whites out of blacks. The population on the island was 59,999, and should people wish to get married, they could only do so if there was a colour difference. This meant that, by matching black with brown and brown with brown, all traces of black were eventually eliminated. The process was repeated until brown was eliminated, leaving men of the red race. The red was bleached out, leaving yellow; then the yellow was bleached out leaving only white. Chatterton-Williams questions whether he was guilty of partaking in a ‘racial murder-suicide’ but soon realises that he is doing the opposite. He says:

“Or is it possible that one of the most powerful and subversive ways – whether done purposely or not – to combat a racist society is to simply bow out of its perverse customs and mores, rejecting its false boundaries even as they work to tirelessly claim you? […] Is “the only way to deal with an unfree world,” as Camus ventured, “to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion?”

I find this to be quite an interesting way of looking at marrying out of one’s race. For Chatterton-Williams, it reinforces his unlearning of race in that he does not fit in with what is expected of him as a ‘black’ man in America, which is to marry a woman of the same race. He acknowledges the importance of ‘inherited group identities’, as their existence cannot be denied. However, rather than reinforcing it, he chooses to diminish the extent to which such an identity can define him. It seems to be a more mature path to take. 

Throughout the book, Chatterton-Williams slowly fleshes out his journey of retiring from blackness, and the final chapter, ‘Self-Portrait of an Ex-Black Man’, reaches a crescendo. Here, he successfully convinces readers of a possibility of a post-racial society. 

He introduces the notion of ‘racecraft’, a term coined by Barbara and Karen Jenkins, co-authors of Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. It essentially refers to how the imagined reality of race is so prevalent that it affects real-life situations. We are living in a time where people exploit this in a ‘masochistic glee’, evidenced in the anti-racism movement. Proponents of the movement, as well as white supremacists, are more similar than they admit. Both sides value racial identity above all else, and judge individuals on account of their race, placing them into oppressed or oppressor classes, without considering grey areas of minorities not appearing oppressed, and white people being oppressed. Yet this simply further reinforces the very thing anti-racists claim to be fighting against. In opposing racism, they accept the ‘dubious premise of race’. This is not to say that racism does not exist. Rather, it is to say this:

You cannot struggle your way out of a straitjacket that does not exist. But pretending it exists, for whatever the reason, really does leave you in a severely restricted posture. 

So, we are forced to consider what it means to be black. Have we become so entrenched in a so-called black culture, that anything seemingly outside of that is seen as a betrayal to one’s inner self? What then is a black inner self? A holding on to ‘blackness’ brings up more questions than it answers. But we do not have to live under the weight of these labels, as though they are inextricably tied to our identities. Not only blackness, but to the culture, you have assumed to be yours because of your particular ethnic identity. Reject ‘cultural insiderism’, termed by Paul Gilroy and what Ralph Leonard calls ‘identitarian gatekeeping’. Do not be fooled into thinking that you are in the right for ‘protecting’ your culture, placing on yourself the entirely unnecessary onus of setting in place chimerical borders, granting acceptance to those you deem worthy. Further, as Edward Said wrote, “the history of all cultures is a history of cultural borrowing”. Some may wonder, as Chatterton-Williams understands, “how else would we organise ourselves in cultural terms if not along the contours of race?”. But I respond with the words of Adrian Piper: “All human culture is available and knowable to all human beings”.

In rejecting ‘black sensibility’, accusations of so-called cultural appropriation are also left in the dust. We should offer spaces where race can be transcended, not incessantly fortified. Whether or not an individual is part of a ‘historically oppressed minority’, they are allowed much agency by way of living in the present. Times change. The title of this book is quite fitting – not only does Chatterton-Williams provide a glimpse into his unlearning of race as a ‘black’ and ‘white’ man, it can be said that it also speaks to the quality of black and white pictures – there is no other colour. And that is the perspective that Chatterton-Williams encourages us to have – a view that does not limit other human beings on the basis of their appearance but opens its arms to the complex and deep nature that is intrinsically human.

Buy Self Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton-Williams here.