I found myself looking back at Baldwin’s writing in light of the recent conviction of Derek Chauvin. There have been several discussions in the media about the unprecedented nature of the trial, the verdict, and the general activism shown in the height of the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer. Chauvin was the first white Minnesota police officer to be convicted of murdering a black person and his guilty verdict stands out in a legacy of acquittals in the cases of Rodney King, Antwon Rose Jr., Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and so many others. This exceptionalism creates tension between seeing hopeful, new instances of progress and asking the never-ending question: Why is this still happening?
Baldwin’s writing is still needed today to help us frame progress and question success in modern social justice movements. Baldwin pushes against the idea of linear progress and reminds readers of on-going hardships that continue even with social advancement. In “The Price of the Ticket,” Baldwin writes, “Yes: we have lived through avalanches of tokens and concessions but white power remains white. And what is appears to surrender with one hand it obsessively clutches in the other” (839). This becomes especially complicated when white people believe we have achieved peak racial progress and have entered a “post-racial utopia,” completed with the first Black president and Notre Dame’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
Baldwin cautions against this early celebration writing, “They congratulate themselves and expect to be congratulated… not only that my burden is (slowly, but it takes time) being made lighter but my joy that white people are improving…My black burden has not, however, been made lighter in the sixty years since my birth or the nearly forty years since the first essay in this collection was published and my joy, therefore, as concerns the immense strides made by white people is, to say the least, restrained” (839). Baldwin understands that although these victories deserve to be celebrated and used as a model for further activism, they cannot be used to ignore problems that remain. Baldwin’s work should not be by present-day readers just to compare how much better off we are today, but rather used to also acknowledge how history repeats itself, how humanity jumps from one convoluted web of issues to another, and how things may look very different, but underneath hatred can stay largely the same. In a letter to his nephew, Baldwin attempts to convey this reality and prepare his nephew for the fight that is far from over. He writes that, “your countrymen have caused you to be born under conditions that are not far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago (I hear the chorus of the innocents screaming, “No! This is not true! How bitter you are!” – but I am writing this letter to you, to try to tell you something about how to handle them, for most of them do not yet really know that you exist” (292).
While this reality seems bleak, Baldwin once again centers his message in the hope for love and growth for his country. He offers words of resilience saying, “I know how black it looks today, for you. It looked bad that day too, yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none of us would have survived…great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become” (293-294).