Foreword to LETTERS IN BLACK AND WHITE

A New Correspondence on Race in America

Race

FOREWORD to LETTERS IN BLACK AND WHITE

A New Correspondence on Race in America

Erec Smith

Editors’ note: Today, May 23, 2023, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America, by friends-of-FBT Winkfield Twyman, Jr. and Jennifer Richmond, was published. FBT president and co-founder Erec Smith wrote the book’s Foreword, which we share below. You may purchase the book directly from the publisher here.

As a rhetorician, I am especially sensitive to the failures in communication across differences that are beginning to define American society, if not Western Civilization, as a whole. I have my theories about this communicative breakdown that could be reduced to xenophobia, tribalism, and the misunderstanding of others’ values. When considering all of this, I often feel like I am drowning in negativity and hopelessness. However, every once in a while, I am thrown a lifeline. Letters in Black and White is that lifeline. 

This book’s authors, Winkfield Twyman, Jr. and Jennifer Richmond, provide a much-needed paradigm in our current culture war of race: simple and honest dialogue between two good-faith interlocutors. The fact that one correspondent is a black male and the other is a white woman is not an insignificant factor; it models ideal communication and saves the ability to dialogue across differences from becoming a lost art. 

But these contributions to race relations are easy to discern. What people may miss in reading this book is its tacit promotion of collaboration at the local level. As the authors put it in their preface, “Millions of people cannot talk or correspond with millions of people. However, one person can correspond with another person and achieve meaningful truth.” This is one of those situations in which less is more. Changing minds en masse is a very tall order that takes time and energy many don’t have. However, starting small, addressing the issue in small groups, even only as a pair, can produce long strides in mutual understanding, tolerance, and equality. And if those conversations can be chronicled, like they are in this book, readers can be shown the way and follow the direction in which these strides can move us toward what the authors call the “Blessed Society.” 

I want to be clear. I am not saying that Twyman and Richmond represent the black and white experience, respectively. They are two individuals with unique perspectives. However, what I am saying is that the book is both a source of key insights, considerations, and facts and a model performance of what dialogue can be. We’ve lost sight of the efficacy of dialogue in the midst of social media and the confinement of 280 characters. This book can remind us of what good-faith conversation about difficult topics can look like. It can drive home the fact that racial congeniality is a superordinate goal—one that is important for the well-being of all involved, regardless of skin color, class, gender, etc.

Twyman and Richmond provide us with profound lessons: the power of immersion into cultural pluralities that shed light on our commonalities while appreciating our differences; the detriments of dogma and empty sloganeering; the necessity to define ourselves by our present and not our past; the importance of a black history that celebrates triumph as much as tragedy, etc. I could go on—and the reader will no doubt uncover their own lessons—but my main point is that a dialogue between two people can hold a trove of insights, considerations, and facts that power us toward that Blessed Society.

Personally, I find this book to be both familiar and novel. Regarding familiarity, I see significant parallels between my life and Twyman’s. We were both black males who found ourselves in predominantly white spaces at a very young age. We have both been insulted for our optimism and seen as too naïve to see what’s really going on between races. We are both seen as overachievers, by both blacks and whites, in ways that shroud us in suspicion. We are both unafraid of the full history of black Americans. I do not want to reveal any more here, for fear that the reader will lose the sense of discovery I had reading the book, but I will say that ultimately, we are both personified antitheses to the preferred narrative of black suffering: “Blackness is Oppression. Nothing Else Matters.” These words, which you will encounter in the pages that follow, continue to ring in my ears long after having read the book. I personally take such a belief to be defeatist and unnecessarily hopeless, and I am willing to stand by that conviction despite the social, professional, and even familial risks. Before you form your own opinion one way or another, I would only encourage the reader to consider Twyman’s trenchant, powerful, and personal response to this statement. 

Richmond’s life experiences, on the other hand, were often quite foreign to me. In fact, they were foreign to me. In fact, they were foreign in a very literal sense. Richmond’s experiences abroad as a child and teen not only affected her career choice but also inadvertently immersed her in cultural plurality that opened her eyes to the fact that, at the end of the day, we are all human regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality. She brings this insight into both her correspondence with Twyman and her dealings with the world at large. Because of her experiences, she sees current trends in antiracism—trends that, I believe, rest on a foundation of tribalism, resentment, and learned helplessness—as profound and tragically unnecessary phenomena. I couldn’t agree more with her views on this current trend, and I think that readers will find many of her comments and insights persuasive.

Perhaps the authors’ biggest contribution to contemporary race relations is their willingness to address how their views on race affect their personal lives. Both Twyman and Richmond recount times in which their viewpoints—for example, disagreeing with some tactical aspects of antiracist activism—ether ended relationships or caused significant contentiousness with family members. Both authors expose to us how close to home these issues are for them. Both authors have my admiration and respect for talking about this openly and, again, modeling what it takes to negotiate these issues effectively. 

Let me close by saying that I am glad you are reading this book. I truly believe that it is exactly what we need at this moment in the American culture war of race relations. Not only does it provide perspectives one does not get from mainstream accounts of “whiteness” and “blackness,” but it also shows the benefits of mature and honest dialogue, the need to embrace America’s virtues in the face of its vices, and the promise of classical liberal values. But please don’t take my word for it. Turn the page and discover for yourselves. 

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Erec Smith is Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania. He is a co-founder and president of Free Black Thought and a co-editor of the Journal of Free Black Thought. His scholarly and extra-scholarly research focuses on the rhetorics of anti-racist activism, theory, and pedagogy. He is a Visiting Scholar of Politics and Society at the Cato Institute, a Writing Fellow for Heterodox Academy, a Senior Fellow for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), and an advisor for Counterweight, an organization that advocates for classical liberal concepts of social justice. His book, A Critique of Anti-racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment, appeared in 2019, and his book, The Lure of Disempowerment: Reclaiming Agency in the Age of CRT, appeared in 2022. Follow him and Free Black Thought on Twitter.