Twink Williams Burns '06 Is Not Okay: More Black Angst and Undocumented Oppression from Williams College

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - If you have a white child applying for admission to Williams College this year, you might want to peruse the Facebook comments of one of the school's most visible admission and financial aid staffers. 

Her name is Twink Williams Burns '06. She is lighting up the local news and social media with her frustration with Williamstown, MA and all things Williams College. For example, she claims a family member was not served at a business in Williamstown. She declined, however, to back up that accusation.

"The person who refused service to my family member no longer works at the local business," she writes, "Please respect that we do not wish to name to local business at this time."

Ms. Burns is a graduate of Williams College, and - according to her LinkedIn profile she majored in English. 

She has had a long-running, off and on, career at the school. For example, she started in her current role as a Strategic Adviser for Admission and Financial Aid in July 2019. However, she was the Associate Director of Admission for Diversity Recruitment between June 2013 and June 2015. As far as I can tell, her first job after her graduation was as an Admission Counselor at Williams between June 2006 and July 2008.

She is married to another admissions staff member, Markus H. Burns 06'. He currently serves as an Associate Director of Admission.

Perhaps to balance out his wife's outspokenness, he has a low profile on social media. Like his wife, however, he has moved in and out of employment at Williams. On LinkedIn, he reports he served as an Assistant Director of Admissions between July 2013 to August 2016. His current run as an Associate Director started in August 2019 after he spent three years as the Assistant Dean of Admissions at Princeton. 

Twink's story, but not her name, was recently addressed over at Ephblog. As far as I can tell, her frustration with her overwhelmingly racist neighbors is making waves. Here is a sample of a recent rant she posted on Facebook:

We’re a Black family, we live in Williamstown, and we are not okay.

We are scared for our physical safety. Yes, here in Williamstown.

We don’t know what to tell our kids without ending their childhoods. Yes, here in Williamstown.

A family member was not served at a business. Yes, here in Williamstown.

We don’t want our pictures taken for the Front Porch Project because we don’t want to be easily located by people who would wish us harm based on the color of our skin. Yes, here in Williamstown.

Someone posted earlier that the N-word is “regularly used by local kids”....how in the world do I tell my sons that someone will call them this word, a word used to enslave and lynch and oppress their family tree, because of something they cannot change? That’s here in Williamstown, and apparently widely dismissed.

Please, instead of asking me what I’ll say to my Black sons to keep them safe, ask yourself what you’re saying to your non-Black children to ensure they aren’t complicit in the oppression of my children, my family, me. Here in Williamstown.

We are a Black family, we live in Williamstown, and we are not okay.

******

Edit: the person who refused service to my family member no longer works at the local business. Please respect that we do not wish to name to local business at this time."

All in all, her posts on Facebook sparked a great deal of consternation. She was particularly vocal at the Williamstown Select Board meeting on June 22, 2020. According to Stephen Dravis, a reporter with iBerkshires.com, she let loose on the group: 

Burns, who wrote a well-circulated Facebook post about her family's experience with racism, said she did not plan to speak at the meeting and that she was "deeply disappointed" that it took a social media post to bring the issue to the forefront in the town.

"How do I tell my children that this place that calls itself loving and progressive and welcoming is actually going to be a place where they have to get used to the fact that one of their peers is going to call them the 'n word' because their parents aren't bold enough to talk to them about it?" Burns said. "We're doing all of our children a disservice. Not just my children. We're doing your children a disservice when we don't talk about this. And I'm not just talking about in our school, I'm talking about in our town. I'm talking about in our homes. I'm talking about whenever we're out and about.

"If we don't fill that space with important information about the way that we've all been conditioned to see other people in this country that's built on white supremacy, we're basically co-signing that it's OK for our white youth to slip in the 'n word' when it's fun with their friends. Because they've never been challenged to think about it in a more critical way."

Amazingly, the Select Board even considered the idea of decorating the town with Black Lives Matter banners. Theoretically, these banners would replace the ones that routinely hang from the lamp poles in the downtown district, those are the seasonal banners that advertise local museums and such. The obstreperous Twink was opposed to that too.

"I don't understand why we're spending so much time talking about banners versus paint versus whatever," she Burns said. "I love that someone said earlier that we need to have some sort of physical sign that Black people who visit our town should feel welcome here. I would love for that to be true.

"But right now, putting up the sign would be a lie. … I don't think Black people should feel comfortable in our town."

At the very least it looks like the greedy grievance bureaucrats at Williams College have run out of soft targets for their ire.

Due to COVID-19, they no longer enjoy the advantages of working through student proxies and using what ex-professor Eric Knibbs has aptly called a high low strategy. With nothing left to do, they have focused their attention on the gentle, fragile, seemingly easily intimidated, residents of the town.

To me, Twink's histrionic rants are powerful evidence the demand for racism exceeds its supply.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.