The Case for a Trans Racial Consciousness

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

If there are over 40 million black Americans, there are over 40 million life stories, experiences and perspectives. There is no “one size fits all” caricature.

=========

When does an individual become Black?

The lazy answer is simple — one is assigned race upon birth by parents and the system. I was born in the segregated colored St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. I hasten to say more about Blackness and a sense of self. Over the weekend, my daughter cautioned me that anyone born before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should retire from the public square, the public discourse. Those of my generation have aged out as it were. Our place and time is over.

Time for the Tik Tok generation to assume the reins of power. And still I write. And still I persist in giving voice to a forgotten generation, the first southerners who knew and lived public school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s.

Think of Blackness as a spectrum with millions of dimensions. One dimension is whether Blackness is extremely important or very important to one’s sense of self versus the opposite end of the spectrum being those for whom Blackness is of little or no importance to one’s sense of self. I am on this end of the spectrum. My kindred spirits are the likes of Thomas Chatterton Williams, Adrian Piper, Jean Toomer, Sheena Mason and my third Cousin Brenda.

Why do I consider Cousin Brenda a kindred spirit in Blackness? Although I have retired from Blackness due to the attempt of the Harvard Club of San Diego to impose racial dogma on me, I retain a muscular memory of blackness as a Black American. See my recent Free Black Thought podcast. Free Black Thought liked your post Ep. 6 - A New Correspondence on Race (Winkfield Twyman Jr. and Jennifer Richmond). I am an outlier like Brenda who diverges from the norm in black culture and consciousness. Brenda is around 25% West African and 75% European in ancestry. She attended a majority white high school as I did. And Brenda has wearied of talking about race with some blacks who believe Brenda’s physical appearance renders Brenda’s life experience inauthentically black. Brenda and I absolutely love conversing about blackness as two dissident souls.

Brenda remains an active Black American whereas I have chosen retirement.

One can be assigned race at birth and choose alignment with one’s sense of self in the twilight of one’s years. Oftentimes, the break with Blackness snaps like a twig in the forest underbrush (“Blackness is Oppression. Nothing Else Matters”). Other times, it is a vague feeling one was wrong about race-based affirmative action, tis’ better to be the Big Man on Campus at a large state university than struggle at the absolute bottom of the class at Williams College. I felt repressed and silenced for too many years in racial conformity….until the Harvard Club of San Diego broke me in two and released me into a larger world of retirement from Blackness.

To quote someone in another context, “I wish I had not felt repressed and depressed for 25 years, from my teenage years until my mid-30s, because I knew I was gay. I married and had two sons because I knew society and my family clearly demanded that of me. When I finally broke free in my mid-30s, I experienced joy and fulfillment and self-confidence…I could be the real, gay me.” Class Memory of Richard Langston Snodgrass, Yale 1963 at 60, page 336.

Amen, brother. Amen. What a feeling to break free….

What does it mean to live as an individual in Blackness? I once asked my mother-in-law over Thanksgiving dinner. Her brain could not register the question.

Those of us who are individuals know the answer. Too often, we fear the disapproval of in-laws, a father, a spouse. To feel complete as individuals, we must let go of a binary conception of blackness. There are many ways to exist in this wonderful world if one was assigned race at birth. One’s sense of self can run the gamut from everything is Black in one’s life all the way across the aisle to nothing in one’s life is Black.

We may preach inclusion but we don’t always live inclusion. The other day, a relative commented that a promising young woman of indeterminate ancestry applied for a scholarship from a black sorority. Skin color tells us nothing about a person’s sense of self. And yet the estimable sorors saw no evidence of commitment to Blackness. Did it occur to the estimable sorors that, perhaps, this young woman wore her race lightly like a scarf? Such a sense of self was unacceptable and the young lady did not receive a scholarship.

=========

The brave new frontier is understanding how the outer limits of Blackness are populated by trans racial individuals. The parallels with trans gender individuals are striking.

Let’s review how one retires from Blackness. Sense of self is an ever evolving continuum. In my life, I gravitate towards individuals. I take people at face value. I do not project ancestral mishaps upon the living in my daily life. Nor do I allow others to define me. I define myself. Whispers of “systemic this” and “structural that” push me away. I do not conceive of the world as an eternal quest for power where slogan words are used to manipulate others. Nor do I believe Blackness is Oppression. Nothing else matters.

I scoff at these falsehoods.

Imagine a bad marriage high in conflict. Neither spouse speaks the love language of the other. Every sentence is filtered through an opposing personality and worldview. Pretty soon, divorce is appealing as a release. This is how I feel communing with a community where 76% believe Blackness is extremely important or very important to one’s sense of self. Conversations become exhausting. The individual is never affirmed, only the collective. Authenticity is devalued in the name of solidarity. Discrimination against non-blacks is good, not bad. Those who understand themselves from the inside first are treated with disdain, called names and dismissed. It is a racial shame how black colleagues treat Columbia Professor John McWhorter, a creative and independent thinker. I do not engage bullies as a life philosophy. I hope Professor McWhorter shares my worldview.

If you would know me as “a whole person,” forget my assigned race at birth for a few minutes.

Close your eyes.

Imagine you were colorblind and you only knew the following 48 dimensions of me, the individual me —

48 Dimensions of the Individual Me

(1) I am a Dad of three children, two young men and a young woman fated for great things.

(2) I am a Husband of a unique woman, rooted in family tradition and Jack and Jill and Alpha Kappa Alpha and sports for our children when young and survivor of a brain tumor.

(3) I am the brother of a deceased unpublished poet, a diabetic woman on dialysis who loved her two children and weathered emotional distance from different fathers of her two kids and caused me stress in my life.

(4) I am the son of an elderly man, a man who worked two jobs while I was growing up and whose stubbornness drove me away emotionally and whose name I bear with pride because I am a “Jr.”

(5) I am the son of a visionary Mom, orphaned as a teenager who dedicated her life to the uplift of her children and who was described by her sister-in-law as the hardest working person her sister-in-law knew.

(6) I am the uncle of two children whom I do not know.

(7) I am the nephew of fifteen uncles who inspired me like it was nobody’s business. They taught me by example that fifteen strong opinionated men could have fifteen different opinions about any issue under the sun and that was expected since no two people are alike.

(8) I am the grandson of a woman who split up her family out of a sense of duty during the Great Depression because she could not afford to raise her seven children in a manner to which they had been accustomed.

(9) I am the grandson of a man from Orange County, Virginia who died alone at Central State Hospital.

(10) I am the grandson of a woman, a blue-eyed country mom whom I never knew.

(11) I am the grandson of a man from the Virginia side of the Virginia/North Carolina state line who had no use for white people and whom I never knew.

(12) I am an insatiable intellectual who rolls out of bed on a Saturday morning, fires up the tv screen, and listens to the latest Jordan B. Peterson video with a Swedish interviewer.

(13) I am a writer compelled by an idea that much of what passes for thought in Black America today is self-defeating and unhealthy.

(14) I am a man who has been told by several people at several times in different states that I should write more about race.

(15) I am a frustrated historian who lacked the courage of my convictions in 1983.

(16) I am a small-town kid who grew up within two miles of Jefferson Davis Highway.

(17) I am a guy who suffers from asthma, an inherited condition which has reduced my small airway lung capacity to three percent at times.

(18) I am an adult who has reached his peace with my profession as a lawyer.

(19) I am an idealist who believes in the power of the idea.

(20) I am a proud graduate of the University of Virginia.

(21) I am a graduate of Harvard Law School.

(22) I am the descendant of Igbo peoples and Colonel Richard Lee I, Bamoun peoples and George Twyman I, Hausa peoples and George Twyman III.

(23) I am a survivor of a school bus accident which rendered me unconscious for at least thirty minutes as I laid prone on the road at the corner of Hawthorne and Albatross in San Diego.

(24) I am the survivor of being brushed by a speeding car at the age of four years old.

(25) I am the survivor of a mugging in West Philadelphia (not born and raised) in 1984 by two young black men.

(26) I am a conscientious person to the nth degree.

(27) I am a reader of books about great lives.

(28) I am devotee of Barnes and Noble Bookstore.

(29) I am weakened by a view of the Pacific Ocean at sunset, a sunrise over the Palm Springs desert floor, a stroll down the heart of Julian, California during autumn time.

(30) I am a former Capitol Hill staffer who was working on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives when my Mom passed away of cancer.

(31) I am a cousin to a kaleidoscope of people, some I love, others I don’t know, and some I affirmatively do not like (I do not use the word “resent” because I have worked through my feelings with that first cousin.)

(32) I am a sucker for my daughter’s whims.

(33) I am a strong believer in private school education, the better the school the more reason the school should be sought for one’s children and grandchildren.

(34) I am a fan of Ron Chernow, Keith Richburg, John McWhorter, Anne Lamott, and Ralph Keyes.

(35) I am an introvert which means I am reserved, reticent and prefer a good book and time alone and not sizzling parties.

(36) I am a feeling person which means I view the world through the prism of my feelings as I make choices and reach decisions.

(37) I am a strong intuitive prone to belief in the infinity of possibility which is why I framed the following inspiration that graces our entryway — “We go through hundreds or thousands of possible things before arriving at the ones that are most promising.”

(38) I am a perspective person in that I enjoy viewing any idea from different perspectives.

(39) I am a literal person who can get stuck on strict construction in casual family conversations.

(40) I am a sentimental person who relieves my childhood by watching the original Star Trek episodes.

(41) I am drawn to science fiction when I want to be entertained.

(42) I am an open-minded person who accepts white ancestors as just a part of me and my genetic past.

(43) I am a fan of Joel Osteen despite the overwhelming dismay of my immediate family.

(44) I am sickened by seafood, particularly crab and shellfish.

(45) I am someone who cringes at the sound of much rap and hip hop music favored by my children. (ergo Congratulations by Post Malone and Come Through and Chill by Miguel/J. Cole/Salaam)

(46) I am an aficionado of great hotels like The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia (Go Jefferson!), The Plaza Hotel abutting Central Park, and The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.

(47) I love the Lex Fridman podcast.

(48) I grew up in a southern, suburban small-town of which I have the fondest memories.

You can open your eyes now.

There are those who would say my race is the absolute most important thing about me today in San Diego in 2023. Does that ring true? Does race as the central fulcrum of my existence resonate with you? Could it be that there are hundreds of dimensions to me, that race is one of a multiple of things that make life meaningful for me? What many intellectuals do is isolate one part of my life like a neurosurgeon might remove a brain tumor in an operation. Then, the surgeon declares this is the source of all that ails you. This is the reason you were disabled with an affliction. That’s the analogy. I suggest that, as the brain tumor is not my wife, race is not all of me, far from it.

The individual is the bedrock of me. That is the core of us all. Therein lies peace at the center. If I had the space to list a hundred more, nay, a thousand more of my unique individual dimensions as a person to weaken group think, I would gladly do so.

Self-awareness is how one retires from Blackness.

========

The Case for a Trans Racial Consciousness

We don’t live our lives as avatars for a racial group. We live our lives as individuals. And since racial lives fall along a broad (over 40 million person) spectrum, the next logical step is to affirm trans racial consciousness in the public square and discourse.

Imagine a world where young children are urged to explore the larger world and to discover their deepest sense of self, a sense of self divorced from superficial skin color. Sure, we are assigned a race at birth but isn’t race an artificial social construction…just like gender? If we really want to remove racism from public life, shouldn’t we remove “race” per se as a legitimate slogan word from public discourse? This idea is not original and I fully credit Professor Sheena Mason’s Theory of Racelessness, the way of the future. The rise of a trans racial consciousness would move us from a world of racism to a world of a profound sense of the individual.

Isn’t that the point of human dignity and sense of self?

In my personal life, I now fully embrace and understand myself as the product of many heritages across the globe. And my sense of self is stronger as a result. I wish the same mental freedom for Cousin Brenda who, in genetic heritage, is more trans racial than me. I encourage readers to read Thomas Chatterton Williams’ work on unlearning race and how to move beyond the black/white binary. https://www.amazon.com/Self-Portrait-in-Black-and-White-audiobook/dp/B08128YXR5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38NTO7QQ9PLNW&keywords=%22Unlearning+Race%22&qid=1692071743&s=books&sprefix=unlearning+race+%2Cstripbooks%2C142&sr=1-1

We must take heart from our trans gender brothers and sisters. The same language used by trans gender individuals is now available for the trans racial individual to deploy in scholarship and literature. There is a “fundamental right” for individuals to live their lives “authentically.” Supporting trans racials aligns with “equality” and “non-discrimination.” Shouldn’t the law recognize the trans racial as a “protected class?” “Trans racial” identity is a deeply personal core of a person’s sense of self. People should have the right to express their “trans racial” identity and to be treated with “dignity and respect” in the public square. “Trans racial” individuals should have the same protections as “trans gender” individuals. We must understand “race” as a spectrum. There are diverse ways that individuals experience and express their race. A more “inclusive” society demands that trans racials are treated the same as “cis racials”. For too many years, cis racials in society have imposed their oppressive norms on the outliers, the dissidents, the trans racials. We all know a Cousin Brenda. Every Black family contains a suppressed trans racial whose sense of self deviates from assignment of race at birth, from racial conformity.

Notice how the parallels are there for a creative intellectual to create a coherent theory of trans racial consciousness and liberation? (Did I just write that/smile?)

Sense of self is more vital to our humanity than theories rooted in the structural and systemic.

To the extent Critical Race Theory (CRT) fails to affirm trans racial identity, would CRT be guilty of perpetuating racism against the trans racial? Open your eyes.

Isn’t race an artificial social construct born out of systemic oppression? Does color consciousness perpetuate racism and oppression against the individual outside of racial conformity, the dissident and marginalized trans racial who identifies with one’s full ancestry and heritage and the larger world?

These are questions I raise in good faith for your consideration.

=========

Conclusion — Despite my assigned race at birth in St. Mary’s Hospital, a segregated colored hospital in Richmond, Virginia, I did not become black in consciousness until the fall of 1969 when I encountered prejudice and bigotry. It was the personal touch in my private life that gave me blackness, not the public sphere since I was too young to be aware of the outer world of law and public policy. My entire world was black during public school segregation and race did not matter in my young mind. As with Thomas Chatterton Williams, the individual me became Black in a memorable clash with private and personal prejudice.

I retired from Blackness for the same reason. The Harvard Club of San Diego defined me through the lens of race.

I define myself.