What is Blackness?

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

Sep 11, 2023

I once asked a girlfriend, “What is Blackness?”

She was thrown aback by the question. My girlfriend had never thought about the meaning of Blackness before. She shared my question with her Dad who was this side short of terrified. Everyone in life went along and played the game of Blackness. No one thought to ask, to define our terms, our operating software.

I’m sure my girlfriend’s Dad did not welcome the question from a prospective (*maybe/maybe not) son-in-law. Blew up that bridge. Some inquiries are just off the table.

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“Do you want coffee, tea, or me?” Okay, that was a bad joke but I’m punchy right now. Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Endless night. Where art thou, glorious sun?

Every stewardess on the plane is black. At least my American mind has been conditioned and trained to view the lovely ladies this way.

So American of me. Even at 30,000 feet elevation over the Pacific Ocean, I perceive the world in a pedestrian American way.

What is Blackness?

All of the stewardesses have the skin color of my Mom. My unconscious mind associates brown skin color with a thousand and one pleasant memories. My neural pathways are biased in favor of my Mom’s skin color.

And yet none of these women serving me coffee and tea, water and food, are Black in an American way. In fact, they would not think of themselves in racial terms with their tightly curled hair and facial features common to Black Americans.

They would think of themselves in ethnic group terms. And so will I. Retirement from Blackness on my part demands I affirm how they see themselves.

Do you agree?

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As I read Wilson by A. Scott Berg and I hear the understated British accent of my stewardess, it occurred to me that skin color is a lousy way to create affinity.

I may be recoiled by President Woodrow Wilson’s racial views as a segregationist but I see part of myself in his life story. He was a preacher’s son. I’m the nephew of several ministers and the son of a Sunday School Superintendent. The Civil War informed Wilson’s sense of self as a boy. The remnants of the Civil War were all around me as a child in Chester, Virginia. The Civil War was the great thing in our past. Wilson was proud of his Virginia birthright as I am.

By way of contrast, I know nothing about the stewardess with my Mom’s skin color who serves me. I bet she did not grow up in the black Baptist church like my Mom. I suspect she was never hemmed in by Jim Crow segregation in the South. My stewardess never reported to her government her self identity as Black.

I am intrigued by these material and relevant distinctions in life stories. It is not skin color that gives me understanding into a person. To understand anyone means I want to know who are your heroes in life? What is your life story, the story you tell yourself?

I knew my Mom’s life story like the back of my hand. I knew the heroes in her life — her brothers, Rev. Billy Graham. I have no clue who the heroes are in my stewardess’s life. Nor do I know her life story.

Skin color alone won’t tell me.

The stewardess walked by again. She resembles my Mom but on the surface only.

Skin color tell us nothing about a person’s ancestral heritage…or sense of sense.

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Later in the day, a tribal chief gave me a tour of a sacred village. Before I could ask What is Blackness?, the chief declared with the force of royalty “We are not Africans!”

I did not press the point.