What Happened When My Daughter Was Born Looking White - And I Wasn’t (#277)

3 Takeaways

In a Paris hospital delivery room, Thomas Chatterton Williams, writer for The Atlantic and author of Self-Portrait in Black and White, held his newborn daughter for the first time. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. And in that instant, everything he thought he knew about race shattered.

Thomas lives the questions about race and identity that most of us only debate. The son of a Black father who grew up under Jim Crow and a white mother, he had accepted America's racial categories without question. Until he couldn't.

What he decided is radical. Controversial. And will challenge how you think about identity, George Floyd, and the categories we use to define ourselves.


More description

In a Paris hospital delivery room, Thomas Chatterton Williams, writer for The Atlantic and author of Self-Portrait in Black and White, held his newborn daughter for the first time. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. And in that instant, everything he thought he knew about race shattered.

Thomas lives the questions about race and identity that most of us only debate. The son of a Black father who grew up under Jim Crow and a white mother, he had accepted America's racial categories without question. Until he couldn't.

What he decided is radical. Controversial. And will challenge how you think about identity, George Floyd, and the categories we use to define ourselves.


2025-11-25 16 min Transcript
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