Is it possible to reject the idea of race even while acknowledging the persistence of racism?

Thomas Chatterton Williams will be here to talk about his new memoir, Self-Portrait, and Black and White.

How did the CIA get involved in brutal mind control experiments?

Stephen Kinzer will be here to talk about his new book, Poisoner In Chief.

Alexander Alter will give us an update from the publishing world.

Plus, our critics will talk about the latest in literary criticism.

This is the Book of View podcast for The New York Times. I'm Pamela Paul.

Thomas Chatterton Williams is here now to talk about his new book, Self-Portrait, and Black and White.

Unlearning race, it's reviewed this week on our cover by Andrew Solomon. Thomas, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

So race and identity are pretty hot button issues right now.

And with this book, you're kind of placing your finger directly on that button and pressing down.

Like, why do that?

I did it because I felt I had to.

I very much bought into and really believed in the American racial binary that says a drop of

black blood makes a person black. I grew up in New Jersey with a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant

mother and a black dad and defined myself simply as black and never checked two boxes on any census

even once, after 2000, once you could. And I even wrote in retrospect a kind of, I think,

glib op that in The New York Times, the year before my daughter was born in 2012,

arguing that my kids would be black period. And then it was really in 2013, my daughter Marlowe's

birth in Paris that really made me rethink the way we box each other into categories. And it made

me wonder what it means if I'm a black person that can have a blonde-haired blue-eyed white skin

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