Patricia Williams: A League of Her Own

by Augusta Akpotu

She stepped up to the podium. I watched as the imposing presence before me opened her mouth to speak. Confident, yet undecided about what she wanted to speak about, she chose to read an excerpt from the book she was writing. Touching on personal experiences, this lady with a commanding aura transported the audience back in time, to the America of the 1950s and 1960s. She led the audience by the hand into her world – a world characterized by oppression, repression, discrimination, and prejudice.

She opened with a moving story about incestuous practices, name-calling, and social profiling. She also talked about growing up in a predominantly white, working class neighborhood, with neighbors who wanted to “wrap themselves in the symbolic trappings of America.” In particular, she read about her “Aunt Mary,” an eccentric lady whose life highlighted the problematic and complex socialization of race. “Aunt Mary was part of the pathology of orphaning oneself” in order to fit into society. This powerful lady, the one with the assured voice and in a league of her own, is Patricia Williams.

Ms. Williams is the author of The Alchemy of Race and Rights, which was named one of the twenty-five best books of 1991 by the Voice Literary Supplement and one of the “feminist classics of the last twenty years” that “literally changed women’s lives” by the Twentieth Anniversary Edition of Ms. Magazine. Her other books include: The Rooster’s Egg, Seeing a Color-Blind Future, and Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own.

Patricia Williams, Professor of Law at Columbia University, spoke on October 21, 2004, in the University Center Ballroom. In a collaborative gesture, the Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change, the Center for Research on Women, the Department of History, and the African and African American Studies Program invited Professor Williams, recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, to conduct a private question-and-answer session with a select group of graduate students. After the private session, Ms. Williams chose to read from her book, instead of delivering a lecture.

At the private session, Ms. Williams addressed various political issues of our day. A graduate student asked her about the Patriot Act: “Is it okay to give up individual freedom to protect the general freedom?” “What is general freedom?” replied Professor Williams. She warned that there is probably coded racism in the Patriot Act because it gives the government authority to burglarize a person’s home for whatever reasons, without the individual’s knowledge. Therefore, the government has ultimate power and goes unchecked. Ms. Williams also stated that the Act has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein and more to do with the delight of evening a score: “On little and big levels, we‘ve got a lot to worry about.” Professor Williams said all citizens need to take the Patriot Act seriously because sooner or later we might be unwary victims of this Act.

Ms. Williams also believes that African Americans still have a “thorny path” in the quest for civil rights. She stated that the biggest challenge in the twenty-first century for African Americans is the degree to which the structure of racism, from the Jim Crow era to the Patriot Act, has been characterized by criminal/racial profiling, the breaking down of civil rights and civil liberties, and black disenfranchisement. In closing, Ms. Williams expressed concern for today’s youth, stating that “there is a national cynicism growing among the youths of today.” She stressed that one reason for this cynical attitude is the “politics of fear,” which is promoted by the media and, as such, puts constructive knowledge at stake. These young voters are inundated by so much propaganda that they “don’t believe anything anymore,” she said.

Photos of her visit

<< articles