“There are people out there and have been forever, who, like Mary, wake up every day and have to make this decision of where to live in this gray area and have to live unapologetically in that because they’ve chosen the life that they’ve chosen.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/m... #thetroubleofcolor
#NUCSSH Prof. of Law and Humanities Patricia Williams spoke on Martha S. Jones’s new book #TheTroubleofColor with Michael Kelleher for @literaryhub.bsky.social. Prof Williams discusses major themes in the book, including colorism, cultural histories, and families.
lithub.com/patricia-j-w...
Ripped from the headlines! #thetroubleofcolor
Of course! I am on my second read of #TheTroubleofColor! 💪🏾
You may recall that when President Obama, when confronted with evidence of slave holders in his mother’s family past, replied something like “That is American history.” So too is the family of the new Pope, again being evidence for all of us, for the world to see. #thetroubleofcolor (8)
Many of you have told me your family stories of lines crossed: color, culture, faith, language, gender and more. Some are passed down, others revealed. They arrive via the archives and DNA. Some hurt, others enlighten or amuse. Hard ones we sit with quietly for a long time. #thetroubleofcolor (7)
Our 21st century ways of knowing and even challenging #thetroubleofcolor are ours. Still, I hope that in these days we extend to the new Pope and his family the compassion that all our families deserve. Not because we are above reproach but because we are families that reflect a troubled past. (6)
Our family stories are not side shows. They are not spectacle. They are not merely signs of shame or fear or dishonesty or subterfuge, though they may contain these elements. Our family stories are a record of the stories our ancestors needed to tell. #thetroubleofcolor
I’ve learned that #thetroubleofcolor is a defining version of the American family story. Some us are born knowing this story. Others of us discover it only in time. For others still, it is a story that remains to be discovered. (4)
What I’ve learned in my travels, talking with so many of us about #thetroubleofcolor is that the new Pope’s family story is a very American, as in U.S., story. The branches of our family trees are twisted, dense, and not always easy to see or to know. (3)
There is lots we don’t know. Questions that can only be answered by the new Pope himself and his family including who knew what, who chose what what, and what it meant for them to live in skin that could trick the eye, even in the race conscious U.S. #thetroubleofcolor (2)
Waking up this morning to discover that the new Pope’s family story is “troubled” by its encounters with the jagged color line. #thetroubleofcolor (1)
Thank you! #thetroubleofcolor
“Most of the 22 men were shot in the back while fleeing, despite wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army.” Men in my family were among those USCT enlisted at Camp Nelson, and lived to tell of it. Thanks to those working to tell the whole story. #thetroubleofcolor archaeology.org/news/2025/05...
Moments from #OAH2025 #thetroubleofcolor
“To be greeted by an osteologist who explains her role is the stewardship of human remains and hands me a small envelope, really a folded piece of paper, which I undo and there is really a curl, you know, a lock of my grandmother’s hair.”
#thetroubleofcolor
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...
“What it means to be mixed race where members of your family have walked a tightrope of racial identification.” #thetroubleofcolor kinterested.blogspot.com/2025/03/new-...
“What it means to be mixed race where members of your family have walked a tightrope of racial identification.” #thetroubleofcolor
"I don't think our work or our purpose as Black folks is to police one another. I don't. I think it's to understand and to care for one another." #thetroubleofcolor www.audible.com/blog/martha-...
"I don't think our work or our purpose as Black folks is to police one another. I don't. I think it's to understand and to care for one another." #thetroubleofcolor
Wednesday in Brooklyn! #thetroubleofcolor
“I'm someone whose so-called racial identity has been ambiguous enough over time that I am taken and mistaken for things that I am not. I come from people who are descended from Africans and from Europeans … this was my 20th century, 21st century problem.” #thetroubleofcolor #thinkingwithdubois
