Race Is Beginning to Bore Me

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

In a text message today, I informed my co-author Jennifer (Jen) Richmond that race was beginning to bore me. Let me explain what I mean by boredom.

My original impulse behind writing Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Black-White-Correspondence-America/dp/1634312368 was a family member’s declaration on April 21, 2018 — Blackness is Oppression, Nothing Else Matters. Over the course of six years, I have penned hundreds of thousands of words to the contrary. I have appeared on tens of podcasts to proclaim the good news, that Blackness (however defined) is something more spiritual, more ephemeral. In the process, I have probed into my own life and perspective on the human condition. I have honored my ancestors who were never fatalists.

I wrote a book, a promise I made to my Mom by the kitchen sink one day long ago.

Now I have reached the outer limits of boredom. I feel for our American cousins in England but none of the essays about the race riots on The Equiano Project or the podcasts on Triggernometry move me. The problem is me, not these fine platforms across the pond. I attempt to dredge up a spicy exchange with Jen about the meaning of Blackness and the effect feels flat. There is no one way to be Black, so perhaps it is folly to define Blackness in a world context or American frame of reference.

I can already imagine the counter arguments about the One-Drop Rule. Does anyone really believe one drop of Sub-Saharan ancestry makes anyone black today in America? We are not living in the 1660s, the 1760s, the 1860s or even the 1960s any more. We are living in a place and a time where race can be as fluid and non-binary as gender. Walter White And I recount the ancestry of Walter White, the first black head of the NAACP — “Of his 32 great-great-great-grandparents, only five were black, and the other 27 were white.^[9] All members of his immediate family had fair skin, and his mother, Madeline, was also blue-eyed and blonde.” Would White self-identify as a Black American today in the year 2024? The choice would be up to White and he might well choose to self-identify as black given societal benefits and privileges nowadays that flow towards those of black descent. Then again, maybe not but the choice would be White’s call, not some outdated, fossilized One-Drop Rule.

I note and recognize that Walter White was the great grandson of President William Henry Harrison.

But these facts are old facts to me. I wonder if Black History, true and authentic history including the positive and enterprising, matters in the public square compared to sad narratives. Black History is more than sadness.

My mind wanders as I listen to podcasts where light-skinned black people are debating dark-skinned people. These quarrels are unserious to me. Random people on You Tube videos speak of “white people” and “black people” as if the individual exists no more. I tune out as I immediately reject caveman caricatures of groups of people, doesn’t matter the race. I grow bored with race when people wielding the race card trumpet their prejudice and bigotry in the public square —

It is my belief that most white people have a negative attitude towards Black people and it doesn’t matter if they’re from the US, UK, Canada or elsewhere in the world…

Scott Adams said to get the f—- away from Black people, but it’s young people white people I get the f—- away from as fast as I can.

I have no young white friends and I don’t care to socialize with them.

Conclusion: These words of race hate and prejudice bore me. These are words of soul less resentment and grudge holding, a limited mind of low information. I don’t live in such a world. I live among individuals, not “white people” or “Black people.” So, what keeps me from hanging up my writing saddle and retiring to science fiction?

Lately, I am intrigued with the corrective wave up in the S&P 500 index. I will write about this week in the market tomorrow.

I have a special place in my heart for light, bright and almost white black Americans. My grandmother’s grandfather, Daniel Brown (1833- 1885), had no physical trait of his African heritage. Daniel was a voluntary Negro in his place and time who founded a family. His story never bores me.

I leave you this evening with an insightful podcast into American identity and a voluntary Negro, Walter White. This podcast gives me hope and keeps me engaged. White goes against type. He displays the best in the nobility of the human spirit. And the podcast host is the great grand daughter of a great-grandmother who passed for white. She gets it, the nuance and complexity of human stories in black and white.

What makes Walter White a Negro in Atlanta, Georgia in 1906? Why does the outside world question his racial identity? Why do some choose to embrace their blackness in times of a nadir? These are the questions that do not bore me. These are the embers of identity that engage my curiosity, passing for white and passing for black and retirement from race at the end of our days.

Enjoy this intimate review of a man called White.

Walter White (1893 - 1955)