The Virtue of Pietas

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

This morning, I want to talk about the Roman virtue of pietas.

Pietas is the reverence for one’s ancestors as a way of being in the world. One honors one’s parents as a default. Moreover, more honor is accorded one’s grandparents because they made one’s parents possible. In turn, one respects one’s great grandparents even more as they generally set into motion the trajectory of one’s family through history over the course of a century. The logic continues with one’s great great grandparents who gave birth to hundreds of first, second and third cousins. And so on and so on into the most distant past. I have the greatest respect for our ancient ancestors from the 1700s and even more so for those hardy souls who created the genesis of the American Dream at Bermuda Hundred, Chesterfield County, Virginia around the year 1613.

As fate would have it, I attended Thomas Dale High School, the same Sir Thomas Dale credited with the creation of the idea of the American Dream. I grew up ten miles from roots of the American Dream referenced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his “I Have A Dream” speech.

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Pietas contemplates acceptance of imperfect ancestors. No ancestor was perfect because no humans are perfect. I learned this week in a century-old family home that a Brown cousin murdered his father. Years ago, the murder took place in a major American city outside of the South. (Black Americans lost their minds when they left their roots in the suburban South/just kidding people.) The cousin fled and was on the lame for years. He was eventually discovered at a hotel and brought to justice. One doesn’t honor this distant cousin because murder of a parent is despicable. However, that cousin is part of our American story and we are less complete as a family if we do not know our family’s full story.

This is why I accept my full Brown heritage. My genetic story includes black and white ancestors. I am equally a descendant of a former slave turned mansion house owner, Daniel Brown (1833 - 1885), and Col. William Browne (1600 - 1664), an immigrant from England who came to Virginia in 1622. I have crossed the color line in my mind and discovered a larger world of kinfolk. One day, I will have a conversation with a distant 5th cousin, Mark Brown, who happens to be white. Mark and I are both descendants of Col. Browne, according to 23 and Me.

We need more examples of Americans who live in pietas across the color line. My American story does not begin with the arrival of Africans at Jamestown in 1619. I have discovered no genetic tie to these Africans. I am linked by blood and family name to Col. Browne who set foot ashore in Virginia in the year 1622.

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The human drive for pietas is instinctive. When I met my daughter at the main train station in Richmond, she marveled at the opulent lobby and the feel of southern architecture. We exchanged pleasantries and our mutual excitement that she was in the land of our ancestors. My daughter said she wanted to know more about my Mom. My Mom passed away in 1990, so my Mom was a mystery spirit to my young adult daughter.

I expressed my eagerness to answer any and all questions. Mindful that I could frame my daughter’s perception and understanding of her grandmother, I completely refused to volunteer areas of inquiry. I gave my daughter full reign to ask any and all questions. We visited my Mom’s grave and took several pictures of my daughter hugging my Mom’s tombstone. I talked about how happy my Mom would have been with her grand daughter as a poised young woman, well-educated and driven to do well in life.

My daughter said she always felt a hole in her life. She grew up among no cousins in San Diego. She did not know her Dad’s Mom. I grew up amongst a plentitude of first, second and third cousins. My Dad’s Mom babysat me, so I knew my Grandma well at her home on Terminal Avenue and at the family church down the road and across the railroad tracks. To use a slogan word of the Left, I was privileged in a way my daughter would crave and lament.

What better place to learn about the power of pietas than on the drive with one’s Dad to Twyman Road?

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Those who are only capable of understanding black American life through the rigid prism of an oppression framework are blind to the human instinct to understand where one’s family came from. There is no one Black American family. There is no one Black American story. And to the extent activists and dogmatists force students to believe such falsehoods, said activists and dogmatists are creating a reality that will not hold up in the face of a human desire to know one’s individual past. Who was my Dad’s Mom? I want to know free of dogma and slogan words.

I want to know my Grandmother like my Dad knew his Grandma.

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Conclusion: Pietas humanizes us. It makes us whole. Slogan words like oppression and privilege will never create reality. Reality is too nuanced and complex. I live in pietas privilege compared to many Americans. I live in pietas privilege compared to my daughter. As I answered my daughter’s many questions about my Mom, one word never came to my mind. And that word was….oppression.