What Is True Is Not Popular

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

“I have a dream today that, one day soon, we will judge ourselves not by our race assigned at birth but by our sense of self. It is a dream deeply rooted in humanity. Behold the rise of the Transracial American!” — Speech of Senior Carmen Delgado, Class of 2048, St. Paul’s School, New Hampshire, USA. ( Fifteen years later, Delgado would pen and sign the Declaration of Transracial Independence in Congress)

Hot off of the news press —— reason 1,001 why Blackness Does Not Equal Oppression.

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I know a wonderful young adult woman. Jack and Jill legacy.

https://www.jackandjillinc.org/

I have known the young woman since she was young in grade school. Love her parents. Have met her grandparents. Generations of accomplishment and achievement.

“Alot of my Jack and Jill friends….”

Anyway, I overhear…things.

Bright and smart throughout school, the legacy attended a solid public charter school. A graduate of a fine university back east.

The legacy is now enrolled in a MBA program at an Ivy League institution. Her parents are solid, stand up professionals. A historic name or two hangs up there in the family tree.

The legacy young woman applied to five MBA programs. How many programs did she get into? She got into all five MBA programs. Doesn’t sound too oppressed to me but I digress.

The story gets better.

4 out of the 5 MBA programs offered our legacy a 100% full scholarship ride. Turn my head. I wish Harvard Law School had offered me a full ride back in 1983. Would have been easier on my Dad.

One MBA program was more…frugal. “We will only give you 75% of your costs.”

To her credit, our legacy shared her 4 other full-rides with the 75% Ivy league holdout. It was time to negotiate. “Can you match these other four 100% offers?”

I don’t know the details (drats) but I do know she convinced the Ivy League MBA program to sweeten its offer.

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The grand daughter of a former President of Howard University and the great granddaughter of a Harvard Law School professor, Carmen Delgado owned the campus at St. Paul’s School.

https://www.sps.edu/

She was fated for great things in the world, like most Jack and Jill legacies. Her non-conformity drove Carmen to question terms like marginalization, exclusion, and White Privilege. She began to read dangerous books like 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell, Colorblindness by Coleman Hughes, and her favorite, Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. In her dreams, she began to sense the parallels between her alienation with racial dogma and Dr. Zhivago’s alienation with Soviet dogma.

One night, she woke up in a cold sweat in her dorm room. The insight came to Carmen in the hazy twilight between being asleep and woke. What Is True Is Not Popular. Just those words changed Carmen’s life forever.

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Conclusion: “Girl, I Can’t Even Tell You!”

I live in a black culture where young adults benefit from overlapping layers of generational privilege. When I am told Blackness = Oppression, I laugh. The outside world sees all black people as an undifferentiated mass, a mass of raging caricatures and stereotypes, cardboard figures living the street life of crime and babies out of wedlock, walking victims of trauma from American slavery.

When I write what I know, some ignore and dismiss me as fringe.

“Bartender, I’ll have a glass of Gaslight on the rocks!”