Thomas Chatterton Williams is an American writer. His essay
Self-portrait in black and white: unlearning the idea of race,
has just been translated into French by Grasset.
LE FIGARO.
- In your book
Self-Portrait in Black and White
, you talk about your journey as a Métis in the United States and France.
You tell in particular how the birth of your daughter upset your relationship to identity.
Why?
Thomas CHATTERTON WILLIAMS.
-
My mother is white, my father is black.
But in America it matters differently.
They say that a drop of black blood is enough to make you black.
And it's not just a custom, it was in the law of the southern slave states.
You could be assigned the "race" of your mother, so that the illegitimate children of slavers conceived with their slaves could not inherit.
And that produced more slaves.
It started like that.
Then it became a way for the black community to create a form of solidarity.
Having one of your white parents
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