In this series of six lectures given at Harvard University in 2016, Toni Morrison analyzes the arguments of racism in order to establish and maintain the domination of a single category of individuals. From slave narratives to the evocation of lynchings and recent police violence, the author demonstrates that the "definition of the inhuman" supposed to justify the sadism of the "enslaver" can in truth only apply to the latter. But if color has been used to deny the individuality of the "Other", many authors, such as Faulkner or Hemingway, have also largely maintained it, even exploited it.

In this period marked by globalization and significant population movements, often perceived as threats, the writer's fight against this "obsession with color" could finally allow us to admit that the foreigner is, after all, only an unrecognized part of ourselves.

Through the finesse of her historical, psychological and literary analyses, Toni Morrison deploys all the elegance of her power of conviction, also proving that nothing that is human is foreign to her.