Tuesday, March 16, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 3
Author encourages listeners to accept, embrace diversity
Speaker Patricia Williams fields a question from the audience after her speech, "Toward a Theory of Grace." She spoke at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union last night as part of the Humanities Lecture Series. Photo by Gus Kniffle / KANSAN
By Dan Curry
dcurry@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Equipped with genetics, our culture's lust for perfect beings may foster only the extinction of what we seek, said author Patricia Williams, addressing 175 people who filled Woodruff Auditorium last night in the Kansas Union.
In her talk, "Toward a Theory of Grace," Williams, also a Columbia University professor of law, traced an infiltration of racism into the human drive to produce flawless descendants.
They required the woman be 5-10 and have scored at least a 1400 on the SAT.
Williams said she wondered what would happen if, despite the prerequisites, the child turned out short, average and dyspeptic.
What was more troubling, she said, was that most people understood an unsaid requirement in the advertisement — that the child be white.
Williams presented an anecdote of a European woman of African descent who gave birth to a child using the ovum of a white woman. The woman reasoned that it would be better if the white baby were spared the troubles of racism
Williams also gave statistics about adoption practices, in which African-American children made up the largest available population for adoption but were among the least expensive to adopt.
"If breeding was all there was to greatness, tomatoes would taste better," Williams said. "I do worry that technology is amplifying the folly of human beings."
Williams suggested that the proper end of Darwinian logic be diversity, not perfection.
"Adaptability has been our saving grace," Williams said.
She said that by embracing diversity, we would encourage only the natural tendencies of human evolution — the constant refashioning of our species into different and diverse forms.
Williams told about a couple who placed an advertisement in college newspapers saying they would pay $50,000 for a woman's ovum.
"The test of our limits is the tolerance of a self, facing extinction." Williams said.
Ann Cudd, University of Kansas professor of philosophy, said that Williams was incredibly sensitive to cultural symbols of race.
But we should stop looking for baby geniuses and take them as they are. Williams said.
Marin Green, Lawrence junior said that she was reading one of Williams' books for an American studies class.
"Gifted children are an American dream," Williams said in her speech, which was the final lecture of the Humanities Lecture Series.
"It's very nice to get the opportunity to listen to the author of a book we're reading speak," Green said. "It's a very unique experience."
— Edited by Darrin Peschka
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