A Call for Pietas
By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
In modern race literature, there exists many competing ideas about the path towards the coming of a better time. Ian Rowe in his book Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power, calls for the adoption of timeless values and attitudes — Family (F), Religion (R), Education (E), Entrepreneurship (E). Glenn Loury has oftentimes urged the development of social capital for the poor and low-income. The young writer Coleman Hughes courageously goes against trend and encourages a return to color blindness as a better mindset than color consciousness. See The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. Thomas Chatterton Williams believes we should unlearn race altogether as we become more and more detached from the infamous one-drop race and fossilized definitions of Blackness. See Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race. And then there is Sheena Mason who urges us to delete “race” from our culture and consciousness altogether. See The Raceless Antiracist: Why Ending Race is the Future of Antiracism.
Maybe it is a family thing but, after listening to a splendid Lex Fridman podcast this evening about ancient Rome, Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire - Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443, it occurred to me that the Roman virtue of pietas has a place in the race discourse as well. Pietas is one of my favorite words. Pietas resonates with me, although the virtue has gone out of favor in race discourse. I have written about pietas before. The Virtue of Pietas And for good reason.
Ancestral reverence is available for everyone because we all have ancestors. You might believe pietas is all well and good but what does a Roman virtue have to do with black American families today? Here is the creative association I draw this evening between Roman families and my family and possibly all modern families.
According to Gregory Aldrete, a passionate reservoir of knowledge about Ancient Rome, the past informed and framed family life in Roman times. The relationship with the past was not abstract or ideological. The past was a concrete thing in the family. Families were obsessed with the past. The past had power. Ancestors were important and cherished.
For example, one entered a Roman home and, upon entry, one would be staring at the faces of ancestors. Death masks of ancestors were stored in the entryway. Think about that culture. Every child would memorize every accomplishment of every ancestor —the career, the battles fought. At funerals, the family would gather around and talk about all of the things ancestors had done. An individual was just the latest iteration of the family.
I am reminded of my home. Every ancestor on the wall of our ground floor was born in the 1800s. Everyone on the wall. I believe when young children grow up and see a great grandfather on the wall in a place of pride or a great great great grandfather welcoming descendants home at night, one learns family began centuries before one was born and family will continue centuries after one passes away. These are good virtues for any children to internalize, regardless of race.
This sense of ancestral connection is what I mean by pietas. More ancestral connection as a value is a constructive good for Black American families. After church service was over on Sunday mornings, I would walk to the Sunday School annex and gaze up at my great grandfather, Robert Daniel Brown, on the wall. I would leave the church building, stroll through the church cemetery and gaze upon the tombstone of ancestors like Robert Brown and his wife Amy Wilson Brown. I always felt part of something larger than myself. A part of my deceased ancestors lived on in me. I had a duty to live a life worthy of these people.
Aldrete continued on with his passionate depiction of pietas in Roman families. Young and old Romans all felt an enormous weight to live up to deeds of ancestors. They were obsessed with the family past. If you asked a random Roman about his family, said Roman would be able to tell of ancestors going back centuries. One of the joys of genealogy for me has been the chance with genetic advances to advance my family tree well past the earliest known Twyman slave, Scott Twyman (1848-1939), to the first Twyman in Virginia, George Twyman I (1663-1703), and various notables in Europe back to 562.
Conclusion: As we survey the abundant unconventional and non-conforming ideas about advancing black culture and consciousness, there is a place for the virtue of pietas. Pietas is a simple thing. It doesn’t require wealth. It doesn’t require a PhD or graduate degree. Any family can begin a tradition of remembering, and honoring, ancestors of enterprise who achieved and brought honor to the family. All it requires is a change in mindset, a sense of self rooted in family.
Aldrete passionately concludes pietas as social capital performed a valuable service for the Roman individual. One gained strength, connection and guidance from ancestors. The power of the past was constructive and positive. Remember your ancestors. If more black American families viewed the prime directive in life as pietas, maybe we would witness a Golden Age in Black Culture and Consciousness.
We undercut the super power of pietas in black families when we only speak of the black American past as a darkness filled with dragons. Our relationship with the past matters. The Human Condition
See 8:58 to 15:34