Gone With the Wind, a nostalgic tale full of the myths of the Southern belle, Southern culture, ‘good food and good manners,’ is still the second most popular book in the USA after the Bible. And the story of slavery in America is not over. It lives on in how we speak to one another, in how we treat one another, in how our societies are organized. Our ability to dehumanize one another can be traced all the way from the plantation to a US President’s Twitter account.  

Patricia J. Williams is University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and Director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives. Her award-winning column, “Diary of a Mad Law Professor,” appeared in The Nation Magazine for two decades, and she is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and a MacArthur fellowship.  She is the author of six books, including The Alchemy of Race and Rights, which was named one of the “feminist classics of the last 20 years” that “literally changed women’s lives” by Ms. magazine; and one of the 10 best non-fiction books of the decade by Amazon.com.    

Join Malcolm Clemens Young in a conversation with Williams about her latest book Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone With the Wind and how when you begin to unpick current debates around immigration, freedom of speech, the culture wars and wall-building, beneath them lies the unexamined history of enslavement in the West. 

Watch

Patricia Williams on The American Dream 

About the Guest

Patricia J. Williams is University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, and Director of Law, Technology and Ethics Initiatives.  A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, she is also Professor Emerita at Columbia University School of Law.  She is the author of six books, her latest being Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone With the Wind, from Harper Collins.  Her award-winning column, “Diary of a Mad Law Professor,” appeared in The Nation Magazine for two decades. She is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and a MacArthur fellowship.   

About the Moderator

The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.    

About The Forum

The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.  More about Grace Forum Online

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