Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race

by Thomas Chatterton Williams

And yet, I would be a fool not to think that my wife’s hair—and especially her eyes—does continue to carry more value in our society than mine. This is why strangers, almost always well intentioned, would stop us on the street to exclaim, Ooh la la, les beaux yeux bleus! when they saw our infant daughter. In retrospect, it is why my high school best friend Charles took to wearing colored contacts for a spell, and if I am honest, it is why even I found myself wondering inordinately, before she was born, whether or not Marlow would have Cleaver’s coveted “blue eyes of death.” But this is precisely the kind of bias it is in my power to, and that I must, reject—while being mindful not to fall into the trap of resentment—for it is with such minor and arbitrary preferences that entire worldviews are sustained.