Happy Birthday, Lonely Substack!

By W.F. Twyman, Jr.

One year ago, I started this lonely Substack. And what a year it has been! A dislocated shoulder, a nighttime obsession with William Shakespeare, Saturday morning inspiration, travel to the tropical island, Claudine Gay — a vault of the human condition through my eyes has been generated. Nearly 365 daily essays and I am still going strong. A warm Saturday morning thank you to all of my readers and subscribers. Your interest has kept me from the allure of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek (original series). If I ever close up shop, it will be because I have gone where no man has gone before.

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March 23, 2023 was a special date. My first book, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America was to be released on May 23, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Black-White-Correspondence-America/dp/1634312368 For four years, I wrote about my life with co-author, Jennifer (Jen) Richmond. The endeavor was always quixotic. As an individual, my life is not particularly racial. I was assigned race at birth but, quite frankly, my daily existence is a human existence. For example, my wife and I enjoyed dinner at Stone Brewery last night. We were as comfortable and content as could be. It occurred to me to switch on my race consciousness. My race consciousness switch is normally off. I strained to notice race. Out of 500 people, maybe 5 were other blacks. Race was non-existent. We did not need people who looked like us to enjoy dinner last night and gossip about the things husbands and wives gossip about.

My Wife and First Born

A guy who doesn’t live in race writing about race. An interesting angle.

My intuition suggested sixty days before publication of Letters in Black and White was a great time to start a lonely Substack. I wanted to build up a little head of steam and marketing before the big date of May 23, 2023. Sixty days of writing on Substack seemed about right. I knew my views were uncommon and unique in the public square. Even my own family members wished my writing away into the corn field. As a writer, I was alone and that was fine. Ideas are not a popularity contest.

So, I coined the phrase “Lonely Substack.”

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Why is my race consciousness switch turned off in life? Shouldn’t I be scarred by memories of Jim Crow Virginia, a segregated elementary school, a segregated church, an all-black neighborhood and racial slurs in grade school?

It is a good question.

There is an obsession with color consciousness from my perspective. I am old enough to remember a time when color indifference was the aim of a good and noble life. Even in a southern suburb ten miles from the former Capital of the Confederacy, teachers and classmates by and large created an ethos larger than race per se. It always struck me as the oddest thing that race consciousness seemed more strident in a 99% black public school in Richmond, Virginia than a 96% white public school in Chester, Virginia in the 1970s. Why did one setting generate raw race consciousness and the other setting did not so much?

Would I have the same neural imprint of race if I had attended 99% black Maggie Walker or Armstrong High School in Richmond? It is an interesting question. I don’t have the answer. I have the experience that I have.

I wonder if there is a genetic component involved. Some personality traits have a genetic angle. Openness to new experience, for example, is influenced by one’s hardwiring. Could it be that some individuals are not hard wired for the race consciousness switch to be turned on all the time?

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Angel Eduardo with the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) introduced me to Substack. Two years ago and on a whim, Jen and I decided to get together for drinks after the conclusion of a conference in Chinatown, Manhattan, New York. I am not a social person but I felt the feeling of an idea going viral. First, it was just Jen and Me. By the time we had ordered libations, a number of young writers and intellectuals were present, including Angel Eduardo. I regaled Angel with stories about differences within a Black American family. Families were not a monolith. Country mouse meets city mouse — that sort of thing.

One thing led to another. Angel asked me to draft an essay about my experience of a cultural clash within a Black American family. The result was an essay that tried to say too much in too little a space. The important thing is Angel kept suggesting I might publish on Substack. Well, I didn’t know what Substack was at the time. However, the idea stuck with me.

And it was through Angel that I got turned on to Substack. Thank you, Angel.

https://www.thefire.org/about-us/our-team/angel-eduardo

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It is a funny thing. Race doesn’t drive me to write every day. I have to strain to turn on the race consciousness switch. There is more to life. My wife has a good day at work. My oldest son is hanging out in Hawaii on Spring Break. I probably stayed in the law school dorms on Spring Break. My younger son has gone incognito. He is hustling through grad school. And my daughter — “wonderful, delightful, intelligent, strong-willed, difficult, and beautiful” — is back in New Haven.

So why write every day? Am I trying to be Prince or something?

Allow me to bare my soul this lovely Saturday morning. I cannot stand dogma. I detest slogan words. It’s that French Huguenot blood in me. So, I express myself and write. It is that simple. I don’t write for likes. I am not moved by number of subscribers. I am indifferent to social media. Just like I am indifferent to skin color and race.

I write so that readers can perceive a world larger than dogma and slogan words. The Black Sheep in a Black American Family gives voice to the human condition. All praise to the creator.

Happy Birthday Lonely Substack!