What Does It Mean To Be Black?

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

My older son came home today. He was only home for an hour, if that. Our place is a way station between La Jolla, Los Angeles, Seattle and places unknown to Mom and me. He hugged me with genuine warmth, both coming and going, not the too cool for school embrace of adolescence or even college but something more meaningful and poignant. Does he feel the onset of a Dad’s loss of his Dad one day? Perhaps, I am overthinking things. Perhaps, a hug is just a hug.

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I once asked my first girlfriend What does it mean to be Black? Such a simple question. I mean, we use the descriptor Black all the time. Shouldn’t the answer be simple like 4 is the sum of 2 + 2? My girlfriend looked puzzled. She could not answer my question. She asked her Dad. My curiosity was not well received. If one were to ask a fish What is Water, I suspect the befuddlement would be the same. David Foster Wallace “This is Water” Commencement Speech See 00:00 to 01:00.

In this essay, you are probably expecting me to rip into slogan words like systemic racism or structural racism, oppression or privilege. My friend Dan may be expecting another swing at reparations for American slavery. Or, you are anticipating an eloquent discourse against the sins of dogma. Some may place their bets on another Son of a Southern Small-Town elegy, my unique life version of Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Like David Foster Wallace, I over intellectualize stuff. One or two readers may sense a saucy critique of Jack and Jill lies ahead.

I want to talk about Blackness in America as water.

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As I wrote my book over four years with my co-author Jennifer (Jen) Richmond, it occurred to me that blackness can be everything and nothing at all at the same time. My natural default setting is color indifference. I don’t take my cues from the outside world. I decide for myself the meaning of blackness. Most of my life, Blackness equaled Enterprise. Most Igbo immigrants from Nigeria and Jamaican immigrants define blackness the same way. I have been confused for someone from the Islands for this reason. Is prejudice and bigotry a thing? Of course, it is. Hogan and Hartson law firm partner Vincent Cohen once said, prejudice is like the rain. One puts up one’s umbrella and keeps moving on. This mindset was always blackness for me, until I encountered dogma and slogan words.

I retired from Blackness when the meaning of Blackness no longer aligned with me.

Many like Jen have been conditioned to perceive Blackness as oppressed people, unprivileged souls, poor and inner city black youth, the pitiful ones. When one stands on the shore, one sees water and assumes all fish experience water the same way. But every fish has a unique experience unseen to those on shore. Every black American has a unique and peculiar relationship to blackness.

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We must teach all Americans how to think about blackness. Blackness ebbs and flows through millions of American souls. My Dad and I stand in different relationships to Blackness. My Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity Son and I perceive blackness in diverging ways. Same name, one American born in the 1930s, one American born in the 1960s, one American born in the 1990s. Why would anyone assume Blackness carries the same meaning for wildly divergent generations?

My experience tells me I know best how I understand life. I don’t know how any other human experiences blackness. If there are over 40 million black Americans, there are other 40 million stories, experiences and perspectives. We should be well-adjusted in our race literature. There is no one black meaning in American life.

Learning how to think about race means choosing to focus on the individual first and foremost. Understand internal locus of control. Discard external locus of control. I cannot write the prime directive with more pressure. We write too much about systems of oppression and not enough about one’s inner life.

Conclusion: There is no answer to the question what does it mean to be Black. In the modern age, the answers are as plentiful as millions of human souls. But doesn’t one drop of black blood render one black? No, one is made human before one is a race. But what about the evil white cop? I have lived over 60,000 days and I have zero police stories of note. I don’t believe in urban legends and distorted reality. But mass incarceration? We jail criminals, not groups. But they are going to put you in chains? Nope. But black people do not see themselves on the silver screen. Wrong again. Blacks are over represented in advertisements. But structural disparities define blackness in America. Explain why Nigerian immigrants are 77% of black doctors.

The meaning of Blackness today is like water. Water is all around but we lack the dry land perspective to discern meaning in Blackness today. I suggest the meaning can be found somewhere beyond dogma and slogan words. How about pietas as the meaning in Blackness? A Call for Pietas That’s my thought this evening.

Meaning is hidden in plain sight around us every day.

Good Evening!