Written in 1963 as "the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon", this is as relevant almost fifty years later. The sheer ugliness of American racism is now embedded in the discourses that hide it, those gentile liberal nicenesses that serve exactly the same bourgeois lackey function in keeping hidden the vicious oppression of the ghettoised and oppressed in every 'liberal democracy' with their fine glows of meritocracies and equalities. Such discourses are from the pseudo-innocent who blithely act as cultural bureaucrats to perpetuate oppression, and while Baldwin states that “it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence that constitutes the crime.” he is a man of enormous love to understand their psychological states (based on fear) so that “…these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act upon what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.”It takes enormous courage and resilience to resist the definitions of identity forced upon one by oppressive discourses, and it takes enormous compassion and strength to achieve understanding as a prime requisite of positive resistance, to, for Baldwin, love America with all his heart and demand attention to its devestatingly negative impact on his own and a so many of his fellows' hearts, minds and identities.The first third or so of the book's main essay is a useful companion to Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain: here there is more commentary upon the desperate enticement of religion as an alternative to drugs, drink, pimping, despair as counters to utter oppression, yet Baldwin, whose every sentence is charged with ruthless honesty, confesses his intense rupture from the church as conceived in its sectionalised formation: “Being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked. I knew the other ministers and knew the quality of their lives. And I don’t mean to suggest by this the ‘Elmer Gantry’ sort of hypocrisy concerning sensuality; it was a deeper, deadlier and more subtle hypocrisy than that, and a little honest sensuality, or a lot, would have been like water in an extremely bitter desert.” Again paralleling the novel, he notes with distaste: “I don’t refer merely to the glaring fact that the minister eventually acquires houses and Caillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate. I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair.” As his point within the wider context of the essay is to universalise certain human tendencies regarding power, oppression and the masks of a convenient God, the hatred, self hatred and despair, to my mind, are undeniable aspects of much arid and hateful American Protestantism. This universalising, really an insight through intense experience, of deep human structures of thought is applied equally to his analysis of the Nation of Islam: he understands its appeal, he meets with Elijah Mohammed in a richly courteous setting to hear him talk of the 'white devils' put on earth by the Devil, and who will soon be eradicated, before leaving for a meeting with some friends, white devils themselves whom he loves dearly.For this divided nation (I mean today) either side of a Manichean polaritycould use the following structure as axiomatic starting point for justification or rebellion: "God going north, and rising on the wings of power, had become white, and Allah, out of power, and on the dark side of Heaven, had become - for all practical purposes anyway - black."Rather than pretend such polarity does not exist, "One cannot argue with anyone's experience or decision or belief", that the bedrocks of values and beliefs are not a potent part of our reality, Baldwin seems instead to take the tragedy of their existence as a part of the pain one must bear in order to be a Christian. I am inferring that Baldwin's Christianity is a basic one, in direct contrast with Christendom and the claims on Christ as justifier for all sorts of evil howsoever 'innocent' (and hence much of the pain is to be again disidentified - first as a Negro - and to be rejected, again, from the the community of goodness, to be in some ways to be without a church.) Experience is repeated by word and example, again and again. Although he generalises whiteness in terms of, for instance, not only its cruelty but also its own inner fragmentation (his couple of pages dealing with music are splendid: "White Americans seem to feel that happy songs are happy and sad songs are sad....Only people who have been 'down the line', as the song has it know what this (jazz,blues, 'tart and ironic') is about.") and is extraordinarily acute in his analysis of the deadly signs evidenced by (much) white culture as to the state of the individual psyche, he, throughout, is for understanding and forgiveness, the courage to face the pain of history and the courage to live, to forgive, to be. Yet there is no concession whatsoever to liberal culture represented by those "so helplessly, defencelessly fatuous that one dare not speculate on the temperature of the deep freeze from which issue their brave and sexless little voices". He talks of the "incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtusenss of white liberals" who can "deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man." They are the type who read lots of books but never learn anything new. To learn something new, what this essay is really about, is painful, scary, and, most terrifying of all, abandons delusions in the name of exposure. Or, to put the pain in Baldwin's words: “I was frightened because …. I knew the tension in me between love and power, between pain and rage, and the curious, the grinding way I remained extended between these poles – perpetually attempting to choose the better rather than the worst.” It's not equality or integration or acceptance by whites that Baldwin indicates is at stake, not these empty facades. For who would want to be 'equal' to, as the highest point of achievement, a white culture so clearly in turmoil, so unhappy and confused? Baldwin will not accept the American myth that having been "released from the African witch doctor... I am now - in order to support the moral contradictions and spiritual aridity of my life - expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist." And, bearing in mind the universalism of human thought structures I discussed above, Baldwin talks of the American and Muslim errors equally as they imprison " in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death". For ultimately, it is that great taboo around, and denial of death which for Baldwin is at the heart of America's crisis. There are existential refractions throughout: the welcoming of death as reality, the importance of face to face humanity, the richness of suffering, the ethical growth to resilience and forgiveness, and a demolition of labels, symbols, and so on. (Baldwin doesn't himself ever refer to any existential claims explicitly). For him, in a great reversal, to the Negro in history it is the 'the man', that is 'the white man', who is seen as a child, as only 'three fifths of a man' (as the Negro was once labelled in the Constitution). Like children, they actually believe deep in their hearts that "their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure." The Negro has a privileged position cleaned through a history of pain and suffering.This book is a call for action, not a modest entertainment. It suggests that the Black perspective on American history throws light on denial and reality. It was written in 1964 when "internationally, for many millions of people, we are an unmitigated disaster." References to the ideological function of the Cold War with Russia are outdated, an other has taken its place. Baldwin's views on the American nation are still precisely germane as the atavistic manifestations of hatred in that nation spew forth in ever more cases of virulent racism, and there is hardly a word needs changing to apply to America in the world today. Bravery and pain are called for:"If we do not now dare everything, the fulfilment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!"
Another book that I re-read recently. This book consists of two pieces; Baldwin's letter to his nephew and an essay. Both pieces gave me great insight into race relations and white racism.Baldwin recounts his childhood, growing up in Harlem, including reflections on his experiences in the church, his observations of poverty, and his run-ins with hustlers and the street-life. He combines this with a passionate and convincing psychological and sociological inquiry into racism.In both pieces, Baldwin offers a liberating discourse about race, in which he controversially holds blacks as responsible for ending racism. He councils his nephew that, contrary to popular discourse, it is not the white who is to "accept" blacks, but vice-versa. Blacks, with love, must accept whites, who are "an innocent people" who "have no other hope." They have been trapped by a myth that black people are inferior. Whites have been deluded by the belief that the imprisonment of blacks have made them safe (19-21). Baldwin effectively does two things here. First, he turns popular discourse on its head, turning blacks into liberators, and whites as victims, thereby empowering the former. He does this without turning blacks into a role of oppressor. Secondly, Baldwin gives us a new approach, a new rallying cry; love. It is love, not violence, for example, that is what we will use to liberate. Love is the lens which Baldwin uses to analyze white racism and love is the supreme value and guide for how we as humans are to relate to one another. For blacks to gain their freedom, they musn't use the same tactics of racist whites, for "whoever debases others debases himself" (113).Like Freire and others, Baldwin persuasively shows how whites are victimized by their own racism. We can appreciate this position more when we consider that in this historical moment, racism was commonly know as "the negro problem," thereby locating the issue in the black instead of the white. Baldwin deftly relocates racism where it properly belongs. In this, Bladwin offers an interpretation of whites' own self-perception as self-hate. He demonstrates that whites must first learn to love themselves and each other before we can expect the end of racism. He writes that whites project their problems with themselves on to blacks. The energy that whites spend on the "negro problem" is produced by the desire to to not be judged by non-whites for what they really are (dehumanizers!). At the same time, much of whites' anguish comes from the need to be seen as they really are. This paradox explains how whites project their fears and longings onto blacks" (129). Upon meeting Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam face-to-face, Baldwin asks himself whether love is not more important than color. Why must he reject his white companions (as the N.O.I teaches) with whom he shares love, in the name of black identity?In a beautiful passage, Baldwin rejects the N.O.I: "People always seem to band together in accordance to a principle that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releases them from personal responsibility" (110). Baldwin's ideas transcend race relations and become descriptive of human relations in general. He submits that all humans hide from the reality of life behind institutions such as nationalism, religion and myths; they hide from the fact of death, which is the only fact of life we have. Instead, he thinks that "one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with a passion the conundrum of life."Baldwin profoundly synthesizes his two broadest themes by asking the same question in two different scenarios. First, thinking back to his childhood days in Harlem, where he would see human beauty wasting away from poverty, he asks, "What will happen to all of that beauty?" Second, imagining the future that Elijah Muhammad envisions, where God's vengeance reigns down, Baldwin thinks of the beautiful black baby held by one of Elijah's followers, and Baldwin asks, "What will happen to all that beauty then?" (140).On a way less profound level, Baldwin's message of love as a way of struggle really resonated with my own activism. In traditional organizing terms, we are taught that anger and self-interest are the things that motivate and get people organized. These do not resonate with me. Out of struggle, I wish to see the oppressor to emerge liberated as well, not obliterated. This is not to remove focus from oppressed peoples; on the contrary, it gives more focus. Oppressed peoples are the ones who will liberate all. It well never come from those in power.
What do You think about The Fire Next Time (1993)?
The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moonand the planets, flowers, grass, and trees, but other people,has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, andif love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. Andif one despairs- as who has not?- of human love, God's alone is left.But God- and I felt this even then, so long ago, on that tremendousfloor, unwillingly- is white. And if his love was so great, and if Heloved all his children, why were we, the blacks, cast down so far?Why?The floor gave up no real answers. Cheek to bare hardness feet andpregnant in God's kitchen. Throat dried on the pulpit's carpet isprotest's only answer. The voice is after you have talked into themorning's future. The ceiling of which way to go is the Church.They big learn in that huff and puff building. Or one another'sbodies. A swaying hip the way tomorrow. Young girls everywhere lipreading no. The other side of the dance room are lusty thighsimprisoned in workman's pants. Tomorrow is too long and the comingweeks already spent. I always seem to feel trapped between this whatwill happen next. Will the hunted shoulders have to answer for morethan the everybody's dirty business will yield. I don't want to be thewanting something to laugh working men. I don't want to think aboutevery day after when the blow it down night makes it someone else'sproblem. I would feel my fists didn't break themselves against theunmovable when the tired voice walked both sides this way. JamesBaldwin's voice is edged with the cost. The streetlights turn on oneby one as you get closer to more all fall down. Is this the next stop?For when the pastor asked me, with that marvelous smile, "Whoselittle boy are you?" my heart replied at once, "Why, yours."Pockets and hands out are buying. They cover the butt and the spotabove the heart and where you walk with places to hold. I don't knowwhere you should go but I had this shadow following me of what couldhave happened if the church hadn't offered their four walls plus moresides to hold in more houses the primordial breathlessness. It feltman-made as a church and nature is one nasty bitch all around us. The voice buries alive.And then the streets poured into the river of the never endingconversation of your ears ring and the din. I don't believe in a Godfor white blood. But I can't say it hadn't stolen from me too. Gift shop last names emblazon key chains there is that history blood thread going back to which family was historically slavers (or if they share my Welsh surname took on the freers name. That anyone is only as free as other people agree they are is a thought I must push aside like pretending that time is real to go on and vote and pay bills). It may well be true that desegregation happened in part to appease future business dealings in Africa. The big picture of government is eaten by worms.I feel this hollow edged throat talking in my bearing of this man-man. What does God have to do with it. It has been this way foreverand being a white person who doesn't pin shapes in another's spacesdoesn't change that I see the same monsters rise up when I look fromwhere also lie. Not out of the questioning. There are more whites than surrounding my pupils to dilate in avoidance of others. But I think my throat hurt most when talking what I always wanted to say about the movement towards the pillow cold floors. In the fire of what if no one ever heard. When Baldwin knocks like this by going with them in cost. When he wants to be someone's boy, for a roof. When you feel the answer no, no, no and there is no one to ask in their flesh walls surrounding you. People always seem to band together in accordance to aprinciple that has nothing to do with love, a principle that releasesthem from personal responsibility.
—Mariel
Baldwin doles out some tough love to the American people, 100 years after Emancipation, and also writes to his 14-year old nephew about the race issue in America. I have never read any of Baldwin’s nonfiction so I was surprised at how frank and direct he was.The letter to the American people was more compelling to me than the one to his nephew. It discussed the racist realities in the USA, and also religion, Christianity (which James Baldwin adhered to, for a while at least) and the Nation of Islam (NOI). The meeting he recounted between himself and the NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad, was very interesting. Muhammad saw Caucasians as "white devils" while Baldwin's view was “whoever debases others is debasing himself.” Despite the fact that I am a Christian, I agree wholeheartedly with Baldwin’s analysis of the Christian church at the time, its racism (black people are a cursed race, descendants of Ham) and its hypocrisy. It's something I've thought about a lot.Again, I’m shocked about how little things have changed since the 1960s. Baldwin makes the point that: “…the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems.” Sadly, I think we can substitute "America" with pretty much any country on the planet.Despite the frankness, I don’t think this is an angry book at all.This isn’t a misguided rant about race, this was written based on Baldwin's personal experiences, and is hopeful and also offers solutions. As a writer during the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement, I feel Baldwin felt the real need to get things off his chest. I will never be able to understand how cruelly African-Americans were treated. No wonder Baldwin feared for African-Americans’ identity crisis, no wonder he felt the need to encourage and preserve the arts in his community. James Baldwin is amazing.
—Rowena
This is slim book of passionate essays is an important book, justifiably on lists of 'books white people should read.' As well as black people.I got it from the library but will keep my eyes open for a copy for my shelves. Besides the quotes on its main age I found this important (p. 102):Baldwin's father has died and his mother given birth to his youngest sibling on the same day: "I knew...that bitterness was folly. The dead man mattered, the new life mattered; blackness and whiteness did not matter; to believe that they did was to acquiesce in one's own destruction. Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law. "It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. The fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair."
—Nancy Mott
