Causation and Reparation
Don’t aim for power and dominance. Search for meaning and purpose. -W.F. Twyman, Jr.
By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
What motivated me to write this extended essay about a proper accounting for reparations for American Slavery? I could be watching yet another episode of Star Trek (original series). Nothing beats Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock on a lazy, warm Friday evening. So why bother with events from hundreds of years ago?
A friend wrote “many stories are replete with crime and poverty that are claimed as holdovers from slavery. I actually think there is truth in a lot of these stories.” This belief pushed me from my couch to the keyboard. And then I remembered a spokesman for Black Lives Matter of Chicago proclaiming “Looting is Reparations!” My heart could take no more. So, this essay was born.
Let’s explore this connection between crime, poverty and American slavery a little. Name a slaver from the 1600s or 1700s who caused a mob of black teenagers to flash mob, and rob, a drug store in Philadelphia in the year 2019. Any slaver’s name will do. How about Mr. Willis, the ancestor of one of my friends. What is the actual causation between, say, slave catcher Mr. Willis in the 1790s in Tidewater Virginia and the crime in the drug store in 2019? Even proximate causation would do for me. How does a slave transaction in New Orleans in the 1800s cause an overweight, under educated poor black woman to assault a fast food retail worker in 2019 in any inner city? Either actual or proximate causation would work. How does ownership of Charlotte Twyman in the 1840s in Madison County, Virginia cause her descendant to have children with sketchy men in 2003? Once again, show me the actual causation. Show me in logical progression how the status of Charlotte’s bondage creates a poor choice leaving to poverty in a 3x-great-granddaughter? Let’s try another one. How does slave ownership of a 4x-great-grandfather in Pittsylvania County, Virginia “holdover” and compel a 4x-great-grandson to steal a candy bar from a store and to lie about it? Show me the logical, actual causation, not a sad song narrative of sorrow but crisp, logical compulsion.
Show me how a broken spirit is passed down parent to parent, particularly when intervening grandparents and great-grandparents were some of the proudest, resilient, indomitable people on the planet. I get a little testy when these sweeping statements are made about the lingering effects of American slavery without hard proof of causation, either actual or proximate.
So, that is my challenge to you. Connect the dots in a concrete, specific way.
Personally, so much of this is genetic and personality and character. Wealth rarely passes down through three generations (all praise to the Dead Hand of Daniel Brown). Why would crime and poverty pass down through five or more generations? Why would a broken spirit be an inheritance if intervening generations were building assets? I reject whispered poverty mindsets. American Slavery has…absolutely…nothing to do with crime and poverty in the year 2020.
Anyone who says otherwise can never prove direct and actual causation.
The comeback of American Slavery in 2021, amazing.
Now when I challenged my friend, J.D. Richmond, to give actual or proximate causation between crime, poverty and American slavery, what did she do? She fell back upon a story in the 1619 Project about a black man who was thriving before his murder in Alabama in 1947. She talked about failure of the Freemen’s Bank after the Civil War. She talked about successful black towns like Wilmington, North Carolina (1898) and Greenwood, Florida (1921) being attacked and destroyed. And she talked about red-lining of neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s and how poor, black folks were left poor, and black, because of slavery.
My friend meant well but I was going to hold my friend to a higher standard of proven causation, not talking points she may have picked up in graduate school from a Critical Race Theory professor.
And I told her — “I’m going to push back on your macro-analysis of causation. You’re just tapping into the common discourse about causation between long ago American Slavery and poor impulse control today in 2021. I get that but, as you probably suspect, I am unconvinced and unmoved.”
I turned inward to family memory for my critique of my friend’s talking points and slogans.
Let’s start with my family, with the last slave named Twyman, Scott Twyman (1848–1939).
There are no stories of the lingering effects of slavery passed down the family line about Scott Twyman. No crime or poverty or broken spirit was directly inherited by me from my slave ancestor Scott. And that was my specific, concrete challenge to my friend, American Slavery. I didn’t ask about Jim Crow or stolen property/murder in Alabama in 1947. Nor did I ask about Reconstruction or racism or the Freedmen’s Savings Bank or Wilmington (1898) or Greenwood (1921). I know about these scars on our American past.
I asked my friend about American Slavery (1655–1865).
I asked my friend to connect with causation, actual or proximate, a slave’s bondage in the 1840s with a descendant’s choice to lie down and bear an illegitimate child with a sketchy (married) man in 2003. My friend skirted around my direct call for clear causation at the micro level.
I asked my friend to show how an ancestor’s bondage before the Civil War compelled a teenaged descendant today to steal a candy bar from a store and to lie about it. My friend offered me nothing in her response. Wilmington (1898) is not relevant or material to causation and the candy bar, be it actual or proximate causation.
I asked my friend to show me actual causation between the slave catcher, Mr. Willis, in 1790s Tidewater, Virginia and the actions of a flash mob of black teenagers. I got talking points from the Woke Academy.
We can’t have an honest, quality conversation about the lingering effects of American Slavery if we are not concrete and specific about whether the hand of the slaver drives the low impulse control black teenager to rob a store in 2020. My friend had not demonstrated causation, either actual or proximate.
And so I was unconvinced. I concluded there was no causation. I would look for other causes and effects for crime and poverty in 2021. Crime and poverty were not shown to be “hold overs” from American slavery to my satisfaction. Nor did an inherited broken spirit from a remote slave ancestor my eighty-six year old dad never knew seem plausible.
This logic brought me to my own felt resentments.
I was hoping my friend would make light of nebulous concepts like Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. My friend failed to do so. Where was the humor? The wit?
If I don’t laugh about the comeback of American Slavery in 2021, then I just become resentful. I resent these discussions occupying space in the public discourse. I resent the manipulation and control of people vulnerable to seeing everything through the lens of race and tribe. Isn’t it racial abuse to remind the descendants of American Slavery over and over and over again that American Slavery effects are ever present in our lives today?
That is a falsehood. I swear I have thought more about American Slavery this year than I ever thought about American Slavery between 1961 and 2018. And I was born in Richmond, Virginia! Why is that? Whose agenda is being served when descendants of American Slavery are spurred on to nurse old resentments and grudges?
Life is too short and joy is too precious to live in the past. Star Trek and the future beckons….
When my friend read my response, she feared she had depressed me. Au contraire. I’m simply tired of sad narratives and excuse-making for low impulse people in the here and now. I appreciated my friend’s well-honed thoughts from the Woke Academy and we agreed to disagree. That is what friends do.
(Note to self — if someone cuts you out of their life because you disagree about an idea, then that person was never a genuine, true friend. Friends can disagree without being disagreeable.)
I remain unconvinced, for example, that American slavery placed the gun in the black man’s hand who killed a woman in La Jolla last summer. And if folktales are sewn together to connect the slaver from the 1790s to the tragedy of a drive-by in 2019, then I regard these folktales as lies and falsehoods.
So, given the lack of proven causation due to American slavery, I would look for other causes of current poverty and crime. I would tune out the larger world engaged in myth making.
I take this strong position because to do otherwise would suggest something uniquely weak and fragile about Descendants of American Slavery. I know that’s not the case. If I came from a long line of troubled people in and out of jail, Black Fragility due to American Slavery might appeal. But I’m sorry — I’m on the right side of the Bell Curve, not the wrong side. Imagined demons of cosmic harms are distasteful to me.
My friend then suggested reparations seemed a reasonable policy response for uncompensated slave labor. We disagreed once again.
How would reparations for uncompensated labor be just and moral? My uncompensated slave ancestors are long dead and their remains have turned to dust. Dust in the wind. Who’s to say that, if my slave ancestors had been compensated for their labor, that that compensation would remain in my family to this day? I highly doubt it. Wealth doesn’t sustain itself over five generations or more in this country save for very rare exceptions like the Rockefeller family and the Du Pont family and the Vanderbilt family and others. It is very probable that any antebellum compensation would have been long spent and squandered at the local saloon or with a lady of the evening or in a poker game. Compensating me for uncompensated labor of a 3x-great-grandparent is just an undeserved windfall created to make the giver of largess feel good.
How could it be otherwise? Backpay presumes there is something to be compensated for. Where is the proof that even free black families kept compensation in the family since the 1790s, let alone descendants of slave families? (And by the way, some slaves were hired out and allowed to keep a percentage of their wages earned for the owner. How would one ever dissect and discern thousands of examples of partial compensation to slaves when they were hired out? Why should their descendants receive 100% on the dollar if compensation was received on a partial basis due to hiring out?)
This difficulty with the supposed soundness of reparations for uncompensated slave labor leads me to a larger question — Why am I, as a descendant of American slaves, adamantly opposed to reparations and you (my friend) as a descendant of an American slave owner, are supportive of reparations? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Am I missing something about the whole reparations discussion? Are you missing something about the whole reparations discussion?
At this point, I drove to my concluding point with Star Trek beckoning me in the distance:
Claims for uncompensated slave labor are not hereditary. Even if a slave ancestor had received compensation for his labor, who’s to say he would have drafted a will and left his property to a descendant? There is a long, sad history in my family of people not drawing up wills. Would the Government be imposing some fictional descent of property when most slaves and descendants probably didn’t have wills and allowed their property to escheat to the State?
[Ancient Aliens tone: Could it be you want reparations for uncompensated slave labor because you see descendants as poor?
Could it be I recoil because I see descendants as proud, enterprising, self-reliant folks who have a couple of free black slave owners in the family tree?]
Conclusion — There is nothing static in the human condition. Even while living in a world of American slavery, there were people who set sail for a better tomorrow. We are not always mindful of black pioneers before the Civil War. Woke culture unfortunately is cancel culture for free blacks. These voices cry out to be seen and heard, not forgotten and shunned. A sense of love and community and connection and intimacy is only possible if all Americans know the relationship of free blacks to the American Story. A sense of healing will ensue. We do not love our full history as Americans if we cancel out stories of black achievement during a time of bondage. It is about self-love, loving the humanity of the human spirit. This is the way we should be understanding one another.
Division is a chronic disease. I want to be in a loving place.
There are simple things we can do to foster quality interaction as Americans. One simple corrective is to see beyond slave holding. Contrary to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, there is much, much more to the Black American Experience than oppression and slavery. There is a hunger within all Americans to see the humanity in others. When progressive activists beat the drums of centuries-old slavery, what does that drumbeat do to the spirit of little black boys and girls? Are they empowered or embittered? Are they uplifted or denigrated? Who wants to learn only that one’s ancestors were slaves and nothing more? Like the slave owners of old, those who only see black Americans as descendants of slaves and nothing more are playing mind games with black children. One is little better than a slaveholder at heart if one can never recognize freedom, know freedom, in the ancestry of black Americans.
The same holds true for white children captive in classrooms across our country. Isn’t it misleading to teach white children that blacks in the American past were always and only oppressed? Doesn’t that stir resentment and guilt in the human mind? So much suffering comes from when we can only see people as the Other, as different. Wouldn’t it bring us together if all children learned achievement was in black and white throughout American History? This is the value of honesty and full disclosure about black achievement in the American Past.
I worry about the unintended consequences of concealing the strength and resiliency of black Americans. We could be witnessing spiritual devastation. While a more honest review of slavery in the classroom is a welcomed and necessary addition to any curriculum, the current dialogue creates caricatures that entrench stereotypes of weakness. Black Fragility is a real thing. Read about the racism of dogs, the eternal hopelessness of blackness and some writers in need of therapy in my opinion on Medium. Similarly, while a review of the ways that whites have enjoyed racial privilege helps to generate a needed empathy and understanding, blanket narratives of privilege fail to capture complexity and nuance of life, fostering further division. In our effort to simplify the world into, literally, black and white, we lump groups into categories that become parodies, moving us further away from genuine truth, reconciliation, and love.
Even the word “individualism” has been singled out as a “coded” word of white supremacy. No, try competency supremacy. An individual with a unique history that may differ from the group identity will always be a threat to the psychology of group think. I raise my arm in solidarity with the individuals of the world.
It will not surprise you, dear reader, to know my opinion on reparations for American slavery. I view this creeping issue as the fire bell in the night for our country.
I bid you adieu as I return to Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and the Enterprise.
*Grab a drink and join us in our podcast discussion with J.D. Richmond, and co-hosts Daniel Wolf and W.F. Twyman, Jr., as they debate some of the assertions Twyman makes in this week’s podcast essay.*
In the Hold My Drink Podcast — navigating the news and politics with a chaser of civility — Episode 14, Causation and Reparation — W.F. Twyman, Jr and Daniel Wolf discuss their opposing views on reparations. All discussed with a chaser of civility, of course, and a glass of champagne.
Hold My Drink welcomes all people with all kinds of beverages to join us as we discuss what it takes to imagine a new American identity, together.
Find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch the conversation unfold on YouTube, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
W.F. Twyman, Jr’s Readings
American Slavery As It Is: A Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, Theodore Dwight Weld
Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks — and Racist Too, David Horowitz
An Open Letter to Ta-Nahisi Coates, Commentary Magazine, Jason D. Hill
Daniel Wolf’s Readings
Caste: Origins of our Discontent, Isabel Wilkerson
The Case of Reparations, The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Why we need reparations for Black Americans, The Brookings Institute, Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry
W.F. Twyman Jr is a former law professor and descendant of George Twyman I (1661–1703), W. F. Twyman, Jr. lived on Twyman Road in then-Chesterfield County, Virginia until the age of eight. Everyone living on Twyman Road was a Twyman. Twyman is the author of essays and articles in the South Carolina Law Review, the Virginia Tax Review, the National Black Law Journal, St. Croix Review, the Pennsylvania Lawyer, the Intellectual Conservative and the Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience. His self-published works are On the Road to Oak Lawn: Truth, Reconciliation and the Twymans (December 1, 2018) and Gotterdammerung (July 3, 2019). A lawyer, writer, husband, and Dad, the author lives in San Diego, California with his wife, Schuyler a descendant of Congressman Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887).
Daniel Wolf, CEO and Founder of Democracy Counts! is an experienced entrepreneur, organization builder and creative with a demonstrated history in complex problem analysis and resolution, strategy, management, executive mentoring, business and securities law, political analysis, and invention. He is skilled in negotiation, business planning and strategy, and a respected professional, J.D., Harvard Law School, Political Science Ph.D (abd), University of California, San Diego.
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