In The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor, author Patricia Williams describes the dangers of creating illusionary spaces of coherence where issues of race and color can be ignored or politely blended to an unobtrusive, neutral shade:

"Perhaps most people never intend to be racist or oppressive or insulting, but by describing zones of vulnerability, by setting up regions of conversational taboo and fences of rigidified politeness, the unintentional exile of individuals as well as races may be quietly accomplished and avoided indefinitely (65) .

Just after making this statement, Williams goes on to describe a moment when she experiences a sense of inclusion, and as a result fails to speak out about the anti-Semitic comments of several salesclerks in a clothing store:

In discussing what she feels is her obligation to speak out, Williams makes the following claims: "I think that the hard work of a non-racist sensibility is the boundary crossing, from safe circle into wilderness: the testing of boundary, the consecration of sacrilege. It is the willingness to spoil a good party and break an encompassing circle, to travel from the safe to the unsafe...it is a sinful pleasure, this willing transgression of a line, which takes one into new awareness, a secret, lonely, and tabooed world -- to survive the transgression is terrifying and addictive. To know that everything has changed and yet that nothing has changed; and in leaping the chasm of this impossible division of self, a discovery of the self surviving, still well, still strong, and, as a curious consequence, renewed" (129-30).

Two responses follow

The first response: The party we spoil may be our own.
It occurs to me that perhaps I will need to spoil the quiet of a moment spent sitting on my front steps and contemplating the hard work and good luck that has resulted in a beautiful midsummer garden; a moment when all I want is to rest, to be whole, unfettered, unmarked. At this moment, when my skin is a light caramel-brown, my hair is pulled into a careless ponytail, and I am not wearing any makeup; I am not white or a woman, I am a gardener.

It seems simple. But to be a gardener I am a homeowner and I am a homeowner because I am a married white woman whose husband has a "good job," as my grandmother (who was a housemaid) used to say. For me the struggle is not the boundary of the cocktail party where I refuse to accept a racist remark, or even the boundary of a relationship I might sacrifice to the upholding of a non-racist principle. To me the struggle is to see the racism and the garden -- to hold them up against one another and attempt a reconciliation.

The Second Response: Williams is addicted to the transgression of the line.

My problem is that I want create spaces -- pockets of reality -- where the lines don't exist. This is also an addictive process, the creation of an illusion, and it appears to be similar in many ways to the processes by which racism is enabled. However, I am wondering if it might not also be a process which has productive possibilities. There are gaps in my life where racism (for myself and others) is lessened by a sense of familiarity. These are gaps which encompass whole friendships as well as miscellaneous moments of connection.

Is it possible that these gaps can be used to dis-able racism? Not , of course to erase it, to hide it -- but to resist it? I believe that moments of familiarity and connection can be used not simply to create a peaceful gap in a painful world, but to reflect on ways to enable coherence, and to see and examine the ways we might understand ourselves and others more clearly.