Thomas Chatterton Williams
Staff Writer, The Atlantic. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
authorjournalistacademic@thomaschattwill ↗thomaschattertonwilliams.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Thomas Chatterton Williams is a cultural critic and staff writer known for his writings on race, identity, and free expression. He is the author of several books, including Self-Portrait in Black and White and Losing My Cool.
1shows
1appearances
23statements
2resolved
1supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
Everything Thomas Chatterton Williams said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Williams: Vague school concept bans set precedents that will backfire
“Once you get into the business of banning certain ideas on the basis of, you know, cause some of these laws are written in such a way that anything that makes someone feel uncomfortable, Something so vague, first of all, it can't really stand up in court, but …”
Williams: Western ideas produced uniquely tolerant multi-ethnic open societies
“Why do we need to study the history and ideas that lasted from the Western tradition is because it's not because they're Western, it's because these ideas shaped our world. These ideas actually made the societies that we must learn to navigate in and that made…”
Williams: New anti-racists share the racial essentialism of racists
“You have the racists, but then you have the new anti-racists who share a lot of the same premises and presuppositions as the racists do, that the categories, everything is the thing that's most important about the individual, it's the thing that can never be f…”
Williams: Cultural enforcers target near-allies rather than actual extremists
“They never actually come for the alt-right, or for actual white supremacists. They come for the person that's basically agreeing with them on every issue, but differs just slightly.”
Williams: Far-left focus on CRT and equity exacerbates racial problems
“I think it exacerbates the problem. It's, It says it wants to counteract.”
Williams: Identifying by physical attributes over intellectual pursuits is harmful
“The idea that first and foremost, you identify yourself Through, through physical attributes as opposed to mental endeavors. I think that's very harmful. And also, you know, the notion that that you want to buck the system instead of learning how to operate wi…”
Williams: Barack Obama's example transformed Black identity in America
“The image and the example of Barack Obama I do think transformed I don't think it's too much to say that it transformed, to an extent, blackness in America and made and normalized certain ideas and destigmatized other ideas in a way that was very liberating, f…”
Williams: Half of Americans will view the 2024 election as illegitimate
“Fully half of the country, I think in 20, 24 Either way the election pans out will feel that the election was illegitimate, and that's.”
Williams: 2020 events created a state of exception transforming American institutions
“I think that 20, 20, the confluence of the pandemic, the racial reckoning after George Floyd and then the specter of Trump and the idea that American democracy itself was potentially going to end, that this was the most important election of in history, and th…”
Williams: Monolithic whiteness is a recent concept that flattens distinct ethnic histories
“The idea of monolithic whiteness is relatively recent and it's, It smooths over so many important ethnic trajectories into kind of one thing.”
Williams: Banning ideas is counterproductive to building an open society
“Banning is not the way to achieve the society that we want to achieve.”
Williams: Banning CRT cannot stop teachers using it as a methodology
“Also when you ban, you don't actually get, the true believers don't stop. Because they're not actually teaching specific CRT texts. It's a methodology. It's a way of seeing the world. It's a way of teaching.”
Williams: Liberalism treats people as individuals rather than avatars of identity groups
“Liberalism. Liberalism is about treating people as individuals, not as avatars of identity groups.”
Williams: Modern racial categories originated directly from the transatlantic slave trade
“The way that we do race, the way that we came up with color, abstract color categories that group people along a scale of hierarchy, this was handed down to us from the slave trade. This is the product of the collision of Europe and Africa and the New World th…”
Williams: UATX Is the First Major New University Effort Since Stanford and Duke
“There's so much wealth in this country. It's actually kind of amazing that this is the first time someone in a while since Stanford or Duke or something that somebody ambitiously is trying to start a new.”
Williams: Moderation Is Hard and Principled, Not Wishy-Washy
“It's actually, people think that being a moderate just means that like whatever people on the left or right think you just like are wishy-washy, but it's no, it's actually like very hard. You actually have to believe in compromise, believe in not getting all o…”
Williams: Private Beliefs Often Contradict Public Positions Among Elites
“You would be shocked, or maybe you wouldn't be shocked, but a lot of people would be shocked by what people believe privately compared to what their public positions actually end up being.”
Williams: Liberalism Is the Only System That Works
“It's the only system that really works. It's the system that's gotten us the kind of quality of life that We kind of take for granted to the point that we're experimenting with forms that have never worked in the past and won't work in the future. Liberalism m…”
Williams: Universal Early Education and Daycare Are More Crucial Than Later Interventions
“Well, I think that, you know, everything comes back to the kind of education you're exposed to early on, and the kind of cultural capital that you're able to access, and by the time you're talking about high school or college, you're already very late, so I th…”
Williams: Discomfort cannot be eliminated from the study of history
“The idea that you can eliminate discomfort from the study of history, you can't do that in any nation on earth because history is riddled with things that to our contemporary sensibilities are uncomfortable.”
Williams: France does not measure race or permit race-based affirmative action
“So in France they don't, for example, and this is not a perfect society, but they don't measure race. So they don't actually, everyone's just a French citizen. So you can't actually do affirmative action based on race in France because no one knows”
Williams: Building New Cultural Institutions Is Less Expensive Than Philanthropists Think
“If you genuinely care about things like the debates we're having around CRT, or how do we make a multi-ethnic society work, or how do we improve you know, outcomes for kids, I think investing in new institutions Which probably actually is a lot less expensive …”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Thomas's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 AMERICAN OPTIMISTLEDGER | Staff Writer, The Atlantic | 1 | 23 | 50% 1/2 | full record on American Optimist → |