The Buzz Board
Picks from the Inner Circle
Patricia J. Williams
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Patricia J. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights; The Rooster's Egg; and Seeing a ColorBlind Future: The Paradox of Race. She is a also a columnist for The Nation. Author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights and a columnist for The Nation. |
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 As Obama addresses the 100th convention of the NAACP on Thursday, I would recommend reading The Souls of Black of Folk, written by W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder of the association. It is as fresh and contemporary and enduring a classic as anything written about race in America. He is the person who said that the problem of the 20th century will be the color line. His analysis has been prescient. Not just for blacks and whites but for the entire rainbow demographic of assimilated populations that have made up the American polity since. |
Patricia J. Williams
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Patricia J. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights; The Rooster's Egg; and Seeing a ColorBlind Future: The Paradox of Race. She is a also a columnist for The Nation. Author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights and a columnist for The Nation. |
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 Blackstone Weekly is definitely what cyberspace does best: It allows quirky, wonderful, original thinkers the freedom to flourish, to publish. The muse behind this site is Jessie Allen, a performance artist-turned-lawyer who until recently worked for the Brennan Center for Justice, arguing voting-rights cases. For reasons one must assign to the inscrutable wonders of “intellectual curiosity,” she decided to take on the task of reading all of Blackstone’s Commentaries. She’s plowing through one section at a time and is posting bi-monthly reflection pieces on each section. Sound boring? Not for a minute: Her peculiarly fanciful and interdisciplinary view of the world makes these meditations nothing less than fascinating. Amazingly lyrical, wise, and funny stuff floats through Ms. Allen’s brain-on-Blackstone; from sewing a lion costume for her daughter, walking the streets of Denver on Election Day, or the relation of law and memory. |
Patricia J. Williams
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RSS
Patricia J. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights; The Rooster's Egg; and Seeing a ColorBlind Future: The Paradox of Race. She is a also a columnist for The Nation. Author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights and a columnist for The Nation. |
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Although relatively new on the scene, PollTrack offers some of the savviest electoral analysis around. Its political director is Maurice Berger, an art curator for institutions ranging from the Whitney Museum of American Art to the New School’s Vera List Center to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s museum to the Smithsonian. He is also one of those polymathic statistical whiz kids who happen to have a passion for politics. Trust me, this is a great combination. The latest feature of this site is something called The Obama Project. It is “an online forum for commentary, analysis, poetry, photographs, and videos content that explores questions such as ‘What does the election of Barack Obama mean to you?’” |
Patricia J. Williams
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RSS
Patricia J. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights; The Rooster's Egg; and Seeing a ColorBlind Future: The Paradox of Race. She is a also a columnist for The Nation. Author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights and a columnist for The Nation. |
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Racism is Over is a new faux blog authored by damali ayo, the Oregon-based performance artist who created the hilarious site Rent-a-Negro.com, as in: “What can you give the person who has everything? Give them a new black friend!” Ayo’s new site sends up the glorious utopian promise of our supposedly "post-race" world now that Barack Obama is president-elect. One posting marvels at the new integration: “I haven’t heard anyone call someone ‘less qualified’ or complain about how their uncle got passed over for a job because of a company's diversity policy. Instead they say, ‘There are plenty of jobs to go around,’ and talk about how much their uncle loves his new job working with all of his fellow countrymen.” |
Patricia J. Williams
Info
RSS
Patricia J. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights; The Rooster's Egg; and Seeing a ColorBlind Future: The Paradox of Race. She is a also a columnist for The Nation. Author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights and a columnist for The Nation. |
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PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM: Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer, by David Kairys. Kairys, a professor of law at Temple University, is one of the best known civil rights lawyers in the Philadelphia area. As a law professor, he is internationally known for his anthologies on politics and law. His new memoir is about his career which includes work on some of the most visible and transformative cases of the 1960's, 70's and 80's. In an era when the efficacy of trial lawyers is often dismissed, it's good to be reminded of the fundamentally important role that legal representation retains in our constitutional system. |
Patricia J. Williams
Info
RSS
Patricia J. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights; The Rooster's Egg; and Seeing a ColorBlind Future: The Paradox of Race. She is a also a columnist for The Nation. Author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights and a columnist for The Nation. |
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A friend in South Africa told me that after Obama was elected, people poured into the streets and danced the toi-toi for twenty-seven hours. I read in the Times (South Africa) that the following weekend, more than a million and a half people registered to vote--exceeding all expectations and despite torrential rainfall. |
Patricia J. Williams
Info
RSS
Patricia J. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights; The Rooster's Egg; and Seeing a ColorBlind Future: The Paradox of Race. She is a also a columnist for The Nation. Author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights and a columnist for The Nation. |
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I'd like to recommend two recent and wonderful studies of the life of Ida B. Wells: Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings and To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells (out February 2009) by Mia Bay. These books are written by two outstanding historians, each study bringing a slightly different lens to the lifetime. |
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