Part II, Trial by Text, A Sequence of Sublimation, Chapter 4, Teleology on the Rocks Summary and Analysis

When Williams is a student at Harvard Law, she feels all but invisible, ignored by fiercely competitive white men. However as a law professor she is highly visible, noticed by everyone, her race a fully public issue. Williams tells the story of a colleague and friend of hers who is held at gunpoint by a Swat team along with some of her friends in a white restaurant due to false allegations. The friend survives but the image of the black criminal that led to the false allegations is important as a form of oppression. In a related story, when some black men are walking through a white neighborhood in New York in the 1980s, someone...