Racial Privacy Racial Privacy
Ward Connerly, figurehead for California's anti-affirmative action Proposition 209, is up to more mischief. This time it's a push to prevent California's public agencies from cl...
May 30, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
Racial Prescriptions Racial Prescriptions
A recent front-page story in the Boston Globe proclaimed that New England leads the nation in Ritalin prescription levels. Somewhat to my surprise, the prevalence of Ritalin in...
May 16, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
For Which We Stand For Which We Stand
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has been traveling around the country recently as part of a nationwide post-9/11 effort to promote debate about civic values in schools and co…
May 2, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
Sensation Sensation
A friend and I were sitting around commiserating about the things that get to us: unloading small indignities, comparing thorns. "So there I was," she said, "sitting on the bus a...
Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Patricia J. Williams
Tests, Tracking and Derailment Tests, Tracking and Derailment
As state budgets around the country are slashed to accommodate the expense of the war on terror, the pursuit of educational opportunity for all seems ever more elusive. While sta...
Apr 4, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
Contractions Contractions
It all began with a missing sheet of homework. "Contractions," my son had written very clearly in his assignment log. "What's this?" I asked when he announced he'd finished every...
Mar 21, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
Virtual Reality Virtual Reality
In my last column, I mentioned that most actual drug users are young white people, even though most of those "profiled" as drug users are people of color. Indeed, according to th...
Mar 7, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
Better Safe…? Better Safe…?
In my last column, I called the expansion of profiling that has occurred since September 11 "equal opportunity." I meant it ironically, but a surprising number of people took me ...
Feb 21, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
Bad Hair Day Bad Hair Day
We have reached the point that the idea of liberty, an idea relatively recent and new, is already in the process of fading from our consciences and our standards of morality, t...
Feb 7, 2002 / Column / Patricia J. Williams
The Beloved Community The Beloved Community
In this most emotionally charged of times, I think that many of the moral issues we face are overlaid by an oft-expressed tension between the need for security and the full prote...
Jan 24, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Patricia J. Williams