The Joy of Writing

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

"My deepest apologies to those who were in attendance at my presentation today on ‘America at the Crossroads: Social Justice Approaches to Teaching and Learning’ at the American Humanist Association's 83rd Convention. The Q&A session that I had agreed to facilitate was hijacked by the AHA's new CEO Mr. Fish Stark who began muting me, refusing to let me address questions posed to me from the audience as I had agreed to, and engaged in a tirade/rebuttal in response to points I raised that he felt were objectionable. Mr. Stark's inappropriate actions managed to demonstrate the illiberal rejection of viewpoint diversity and to highlight the ways that Critical Social Justice Ideologues like himself attempt to and do silence others they don't agree with. As a Lifetime Member of the American Humanist Association, I am embarrassed by Mr. Stark and the organization will falter under his illiberal leadership. It was wrong for Mr. Stark to disrespect me as a speaker and those who had posed questions to me and were hoping to hear answers from me, not him. I will keep speaking and people will keep turning away from the toxic ideologies that you promote and that you are attempting to make the vision of an organization that used to welcome viewpoint diversity and free thinking. Mr. Stark, it's sad to see you and others like you drive AHA into the dumps; you and your likeminded comrades do not have my support." -- Tabia Lee

It has been my sad experience to know Tabia Lee’s fate. When expressing non-conforming views on race before a Black History panel at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2014, I was treated like a pariah. Fellow black professors literally ran away from me rather than engage me in free thought. I was shocked at the time but, ten years later, Tabia’s drama is more of the same.

We have lost the grand tradition of disagreement without being disagreeable. Well, I have not as an individual but others have as conforming minds of dogma and slogan words. What is Justice? What is Social Justice? What is Critical Social Justice? I guess Fish Stark knows the answer but no one else does.

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Rather than be bullied in the dogmatic world, I prefer the delicious joy of writing in solitude. I don’t write for applause. I don’t write for likes. I don’t write for subscriptions. I write to better understand myself and the human condition free of dogma and slogan words. When I sit down at the keyboard after a long day, I can write for me free of bullies on a public stage. I can pose ideas and express myself creatively to my heart’s content. If I want to write about pietas in black American families, I have the freedom to do so. No censor in view. No one to mute me. If I want to speculate about dragons in the southern night, there is no one in the room to suppress me or talk over me. No sensitivity reader in sight. All due praise to Substack and to Angel Eduardo with FAIR for turning me onto this platform.

It is glorious to write as a free man. I create in the joy of writing. Star Trek plays in the background. My wife is engaged in the travails of Captain Kirk.

This organic essay about systemic racism is dedicated to the free black thought of Tabia. Black is sometimes upper case and sometimes lower case because, well…I don’t do dogma.

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The question before us this evening is a simple one for non-conformers to mull over and digest — at what point in time did systemic racism cease to exist? When was the moment in time? Not an easy question but easy questions do not force us to grow in thought.

To answer this question, my starting premise is one which I always feel whenever I read about systemic racism. I was born in 1961 in a segregated colored hospital in Richmond, Virginia. You know, that Richmond, the former Capital of the Confederacy. When I entered school, a race-based system was embedded in all laws, customs and practices. Where one could attend school was defined by race. Black children here, white children there, red children somewhere else. It always intrigued me to learn there were three different schools systems in Charles City County, Virginia. One for blacks, one for whites and one for indians.

Race defined neighborhoods with the force of law. When traveling to Pittsylvania County, Virginia as a young kid, my Mom once was in a playful mood. She boasted that she could tell white neighborhoods from black neighborhoods. And she was probably right as she was born in 1940, a time of relentless and unyielding Jim Crow residential segregation in Pittsylvania.

If one were in a Virginia courthouse, one was segregated by race under the power of state law.

Race dictated mundane details of life such as barber shops and where one could obtain a haircut.

Even the funeral industry was defined by race. If one was black, one was buried by a black mortuary and buried in a black cemetery.

So, systemic racism as a matter of state action existed in 1961. My body knew this world.

Federal civil rights legislation dismantled this world of systemic racism before I was self-aware. It is truly amazing how fortunate the timing of my birth was. Had I been born thirty years earlier in Richmond, I would have a different mindset. I would see life in black and white like many activists and woke true believers today.

However, my first memories of life occurred in January 1965. The 1964 Civil Rights Act rendered race discrimination in public accommodations illegal. I have no memory of a segregated drinking fountain or dining counter. The 1965 Voting Rights Act assured that people could vote without regard to race, although there is faint oral history that my Grandma was voting years before the 1965 Voting Rights Act. I would not be surprised since the family had juice at the courthouse.

As I always, always say, if there are over 40 million black Americans, there are over 40 million black stories, experiences and perspectives.

When I turned six years old, the federal government passed the 1968 Civil Rights Act which outlawed segregation in housing. Change did not come right away but the pivot had been made in the relationship of race to residential homes. I came of age in a new America, a New South.

The final nail in the coffin of systemic racism (state action) was the Green v. New Kent School Board decision, 391 U.S. 430 (1968). The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school boards had a constitutional mandate to root out the vestiges of public school segregation. In my life, this decision altered my sense of self and racial identity. I transitioned from the all-black Hickory Hill Elementary School in the 1968-69 school year to the formerly all-white E.S.H. Greene Elementary School in the 1969-70 school year. This was the watershed event in my young life. My Rubicon was not systemic racism but the opposite, the dismantling of systemic racism through public school desegregation and the closure of an all-black public school, a child of systemic racism.

Did systemic racism cease to exist for me the moment I stepped into third grade in the fall of 1970? This is a great question. It depends how one defines systemic. I define systemic as state action. In Constitutional Law courses, I learned that state action had a singular importance. The driving impetus behind the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Civil Rights Act, and the Green decision was the eradication of race-based state conduct. Once those measures of state action were eradicated, the systemic in systemic racism was gone.

Sure, private prejudices and bigotry remained which is rightfully the New Frontier. Why are Asian men not marrying Black women in proportionate numbers? Are Black women removing themselves from the dating pool for Asian men? Why are Black students choosing in a post-systemic racism world to attend 90% black colleges and universities if these places do not reflect the larger world? Why are more black men not pledging Sammy, the Jewish fraternity? (I just learned close relations are now in Jack and Jill. Why do we celebrate passing on segregated social networks to our children?)

For me, systemic racism has ceased to exist. Was the moment the day in the fall of 1970 when state enforced race segregation was no more for me? I could argue this was the moment in time for me. However, if I wanted to be conservative and since old habits died hard, I would refine my assessment and peg the moment in time when larger forces were advantaging me over my classmates because they were white and I was black. I would peg this moment in time when the larger world pressed the racial lever in my favor as the fall of 1978.

Why the fall of 1978? What do I mean by pressing the racial lever in my favor? I recall a day in Advanced Placement (AP) English class. I was the only black student in my class. I was also Student Council President, so I was not oppressed by the school system /triple smile. The conversation circled around to race-based affirmative action. The consensus in the classroom was that I would have an easier time of it in college admissions than my classmates. I was asked by several classmates to not state my race on my college application. I declined to do so since I wanted every advantage at my disposal. I was tapped for the Echols Scholars program at the University of Virginia (UVA). The program was invitation-only for the top 5 % of the entering class. None of my classmates in AP English were invited into the Echols Scholar program.

In this moment, I felt the great impersonal forces in the universe were propelling me forward because of my race, in part. Systemic racism against me as an individual was now dead. That was 45 years ago. And to think I know someone who said on April 21, 2018, Blackness is Oppression. Nothing else matters.

Conclusion: The death of systemic racism occurs for each individual at different moments in time. Depends upon one’s definition of systemic racism. If we are honest with ourselves and introspective, we must acknowledge that the world of my birth at the segregated colored hospital bears no resemblance to the world of my elder years in San Diego. I suspect Lee would appreciate my analysis on the death of systemic racism. She might not agree but the point is to hear others out and respect the individual experience.

My southern, small-town classmates