Month: November 2023

As I reflect on this class, the many readings I have done, and the various blog posts I have written, primarily on the work of James Baldwin, I am happy to see how I have grown as a writer and have grown in understanding the complexities of race, sexuality, and identity throughout literature. 

From beginning with Native Son and exploring the character of Bigger Thomas to reading the multiple representations and renditions of James Baldwin that he presents in his essays and books, one common theme is present. Throughout all of Baldwin’s works, there is a complex exploration of identity and a demonstration of the profound impact that societal norms, prejudices, and expectations of individuals have on that identity. Baldwin’s perspective on the societal issues of race in America, homosexuality, identity, and more serve as a powerful lens through which I can now view many of the complexities of race, sexuality, and the human experience outside of his works. Although Baldwin’s perspective on society that is seen in his work is one from long ago, many of the topics he covered and the insights he provided are still extremely relevant today. I am glad that Baldwin’s writings continue to serve as a timeless guide, sparking crucial conversations about social justice, equality, diverse identities, and the ongoing struggle for human rights. 

I am not going to lie, before this class, I had no clue who James Baldwin was and what his contributions were to the world of literature and social commentary, especially concerning the Black experience. However, through the pieces we read, I found myself immersed in Baldwin’s writings and found myself captivated by all of the things Baldwin had to say. As our class comes to a close, I feel as though I have a much richer understanding of James Baldwin. During the semester, oftentimes I failed to comprehend the things I read and failed to connect what we were reading to the larger picture but now, things make a lot more sense. 

From grappling with the character of Bigger Thomas to dissecting the relationships in Giovanni’s Room, each of Baldwin’s works taught me something new. I am glad that this class has expanded my understanding of literature and expanded my appreciation for Baldwin’s intricate storytelling and the layers of meaning embedded in his work. 

How’s the foreigner?

Blair, Gabriel is from North Carolina. That’s in the United States.

Not by choice. Let me remind you of a little thing called the Civil War.

Gossip Girl, Season 2, Episode 23.

Every year in the days preceding Thanksgiving, my hometown friends and I get together to watch reruns of our favorite television series, Gossip Girl. Half engaged in a conversation with the group and half paying attention to the show, I turned my full attention to the screen when I heard the conversation (quoted above) taking place between two of the main characters, Serena and Blair. In this moment, I was instantly reminded of our discussion in class on Monday about assumptions made about the North in contrast to the South, and, more specifically, my own biases against the South. Though Gossip Girl is by no means the most academic example of Northern antipathies towards the South, I was struck by this random episode’s coincidental relevance to our discussion of this very theme in James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name. It is worth noting that, while my judgements of the South are undoubtedly primarily a product of my upbringing in the North, it is clear that they have been reproduced and reaffirmed by various forms of media, making this supposed North/South divide even more pronounced, widespread, and, ultimately, concerning. 

Despite all our efforts in the North to present racial bigotry, discrimination, and violence as “unique” to the South, James Baldwin reminds me that we are guilty of the same problems in the North. In “Faulkner and Desegregation,” Baldwin insightfully captures the relationship between the North and South in writing, “The North escaped scot-free. For one thing, in freeing the slave, it established a moral superiority over the South which the South has not learned to live with until today; and this despite– or possibly because of– the fact that this moral superiority was bought, after all, rather cheaply. The North was no better prepared than the South, as it turned out, to make citizens of former slaves, but it was able, as the South was not, to wash its hands of the matter” (213). I find the phrases “moral superiority” and “wash its hands of the matter” to be especially appropriate in describing the North. Not only do we often express disdain for the South’s history of racism with a paternalistic tone but we also consider ourselves to be absolved of any similar sin. In doing so, we ignore the gentrified neighborhoods like Hyde Park in Chicago that push low-income Black residents into unsafe and unsanitary public housing, police brutality resulting in the murders of Black people like George Floyd in Minneapolis, and mass incarceration of Black men like my Inside-Out classmates at Westville Correctional Facility in northwestern Indiana. This reality is further evidence of Baldwin’s contention that “the racial setup in the South is not, for a Negro, very different from the racial setup in the North… Segregation is unofficial in the North and official in the South, a crucial difference that does nothing, nevertheless, to alleviate the lot of most Northern Negroes” (203). Baldwin emphasizes that racism is thus an American problem, not one contained to the South, as much as Northerners, myself included, would prefer to think (for the sake of our consciences). How can we ever move forward as a country if White Americans, no matter where they live, deny the long and continuing history of denigrating Black people?

While reading No Name on the Street, I found the way Baldwin talks about his family to be very interesting. Baldwin has talked about his family a lot in his past essays, as well as hosting unique family dynamics in books such as Go Tell it on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room so similar to his own.

Baldwin writes, in some of the few opening lines of the book, ”I was so terrified of the man we called my father; who did not arrive on my scene, really, until I was more than two years old.” I feel as though this adds to the ongoing view of Bladwin’s family. In Go Tell it on the Mountain, seeing as Roy and John were not related by blood and had an stiff animosity that surrounded them. It is an overall on going relationship inside of Baldwin’s books/essays. With No Name on the Street sort of touching on the Civil Rights movement, it made me think to another reading that I did in another class.

In that class, we talked about the effects of slavery on the black family. For example, the last names were taken away from the mother and children because fathers would typically be sold for the highest bid and were highly unlikely to see their children again. In this sense, the woman were expected to care for not only their children, but the children of their masters as well. They then become the maters property, stripped of their heritage and roots and most importantly, their name. They did not have the power to continue on having the family that they might have had in their home, they had to all live with the fact that they (black slaves) were not their own anymore. This set a course for the matriarch inside of the black family. Mothers and children were typically kept together and in turn, a sense of the mother only family became widely accepted. Today though, we hear about how more often it is the mothers choice or fault to be the one who raises the children alone. Baldwin writes ‘I knew – children must know – that she would always protect me with all her strength. So would my mother, too, I knew that, but my mother’s strength was only to be called on in a desperate emergency.’ Baldwin is talking about his Grandmother and his mother in this line and I feel that you ge the sense of the importance of the matriarchy in this line.

In another section, when Baldwin visits his friend, he writes ‘This was no revealed by anything she said to him, but by the fact that he said nothing to him. She barely looked at him. He didn’t count.’ Granted, this was another view of the stepfamily that Baldwin had. I just found it to be interesting that Baldwin almost defends his friend by saying ‘I always think that this is a terrible thing to happen to a man, especially in his own house, and I am always terribly humiliated for the man to whom it happens.’ I find this interesting because of how Baldwin typically writes about the fatherhood relationships in his books and essays as a negative. This is almost making me question if in other of his works where Baldwin mentions he hates his father, does he truly just find unjust father/son relationships to be wrong, or in the case of his friend and the stepdaughter, did he just find the lack of respect to be wrong.

While we have talked a lot about race and Blackness this semester, one specific group of individuals within that discussion that we have not touched on is Black women. Just like Black men, Black women have faced many, even more, challenges to achieving racial and sexual equality and their stories and voices are just as important.

Audre Lorde was a key figure in the Black feminist movement that sought equality and liberation for Black women. In her essay “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Lorde explains how during the Black feminist movement and the Civil Rights Movement, women responded to racism using anger. Lorde writes, “Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence…stereotyping, misnaming,” and more (Lorde, 1981). For Lorde and many other Black women at this time, anger was the only response that would be productive to their activism and their fight. Black women faced a unique set of struggles because they were disadvantaged by being Black and were disadvantaged by being females. Nevertheless, they were able to challenge the systemic inequalities and prejudice they faced, not only pushing the boundaries of the Civil Rights Movement but the Feminist Movement as well, advocating for their unique equality and justice as Black females. Through anger, Black women were able to defend their rights and demonstrate the seriousness of their struggles. Furthermore, because Black women were denied equality, rights, and justice even longer than Black men were, they had anger built up in them that would be strategically used when they would eventually advocate for their liberation. Black women “have lived with [their] anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, [and] learning how to use it,” and it was, in fact, used against “oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being” (Lorde, 1981).

When reading Audre Lorde’s essay, I could not help but think of the stereotype of the “angry Black woman” and how perhaps that stereotype was derived by instances like this where Black women were forced to use anger to elicit some sort of response and change that focused on their inclusion and equal rights. I find the stereotype of “the angry Black woman” to be quite demeaning. Even in the context of Lorde’s essay, using such a stereotype is done in an attempt to undermine Black women and the sacrifices they have had to make to fight for their rights and justice. It almost is like labeling a Black woman, when she tries to express her disdain for the challenges she faces in society and when she is trying to liberate herself, as an angry Black woman is a form of silencing her and many other women’s voices which is what the anger, the Black feminist movement, and more aimed specifically not to do.

It is sad to see that no matter how hard they try, Black women and their valid emotions are often dismissed and their experiences are not given the full recognition and empathy they deserve. Audre Lorde’s essay is incredibly insightful in seeing why anger is necessary for Black women to use as a response to the racism and sexism they confront. Unfortunately though, not many understand the role and significance of anger in the activism of Black women and how essential it is in their work towards fighting oppression, inclusivity, and more.

Aside from the usual prose and profundity, Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name left me even more surprised than usual due to the simple fact that a Northerner somehow depicted the South more accurately than most Southerners can. Baldwin’s account missed a couple details, but in general, his understanding of Southern nature is incredible. 

Baldwin describes many aspects of the south that are still overwhelmingly true today.  Details like Black communities in Southern cities are situated on the far side (usually East side) of the train tracks are still relevant in every Southern city I have been to. In Durham, you can walk down the railroad tracks with high-rises on the left and projects on the right. It’s the corner of E Main St and Angier Blvd, conveniently where the police station sits. That corner is also where two of my dad’s students got shot when I was twelve. 

Baldwin also accurately recounts how pointless Southern education feels, and some forty years later this is what I remember from my school. All of the boundaries, mostly from money which is inherently tied to race in America, meant that all that time studying was useless. Even with a greater emphasis on college and going to higher education, a lot of people didn’t see a point. Anyone who got out alive and with a plan was either lucky or privileged. So much of what Baldwin talks about is still very much the case in Southern cities. 

Eerily, Baldwin described the status quo in the South perfectly. If I were to pick a single detail about the social structure in the South, it would be the status quo. Nothing ever changes meaningfully, it’s all about keeping the peace and keeping things quiet. Baldwin describes this as dealings between the Mayor and the wealthy Black community, each playing the game of ceding publicly but resisting privately. In my hometown, the status quo is maintained by the police and the gangs. Shootings happen weekly, especially on the East and North side, and there’s no backlash, no action from the police. The Durham Police keep most things under wraps, they monitor the “dangerous areas” and they throw their weight around, but never publicly enough to incite any more than a few people. And if the shootings get bad enough or if they cross that line on Angier where the police station sits, then the raids start, the public action, the media broadcasts and the investigations. Just the way it goes. 

But aside from the city descriptions, education, and status quo, the thing that stood out to me the most was Baldwin’s understanding of Southern nature. He touches on this most in regards to Faulkner and how Faulkner’s idea of a middle-of-the-road approach is nothing more than wishful thinking. Baldwin’s objections to this are as always pertinent, and a lot of the well-meaning, older white men I know take the middle-of-the-road way. As Baldwin rightly points out, this is emotionally dishonest at best. At worst, it is a middle-ground between hatred and love, which is ultimately ridiculous. But Baldwin gets to the very heart of the matter when he says, “Men who knew that slavery was wrong were forced, nevertheless, to fight to perpetuate it because they were unable to turn against ‘blood and kin and home’” (213). This might seem dramatic at first but there is nothing more accurate of a Southerner than this. That does not mean that Southerners weren’t motivated by hate, fear, and racism, we absolutely were, and are in some cases still. But it adds an extra layer as to why the South is the way it is. Because a Southerner will always choose blood and kin and home. Even if that Southerner hates their kin and home and disagrees with all of it, nothing is more important to a Southerner than home. That is still relevant today, in the people I grew up with, the people I worked with, and in myself. There is something about being a Southerner that means being resigned to suffer for home, that I have yet to see elsewhere. 

And I don’t think most people understand this, or understand why it leads to Southerners hating the North so much. Cause we still do. I say we because as much as I would like to distance myself from that hatred, I am still part of the culture I was raised in. I don’t think the North understands how much the South still hates it. As Baldwin writes, “The North was no better prepared than the South, as it turns out, to make citizens of former slaves, but it was able, as the South was not, to wash its hands of the matter,” (213). Southerners still see the North as condescending, uncaring, lazy, and corrupt. Because even though the South was wrong (which it definitely was/is), Southerners will take being wrong, being hurt, or being dead, over revoking their home. And the North destroyed our home. Rightfully so, again, I am not qualifying or trying to reclaim any morality in the South’s positions throughout history, there is no morality in this pride. This pride does not justify anything. But it exists. Because as much as I hate what my home stands for, hate what it has done to me and the people I care about, I would still die for my home. And that notion allows for so much ignorance, hatred, manipulation, and stubbornness to be overlooked, all in the name of home.

We cannot be free until they are free.

James Baldwin, Collected Essays, 295.

Given the recent revitalization of efforts to whitewash United States history, James Baldwin’s commentary on mid-twentieth century race relations, especially as documented during his travels throughout the South, is ever relevant. Perhaps most egregiously, Florida’s new teaching standards include instruction on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” (Atterbury “New Florida teaching standards say African Americans received some ‘personal benefit’ from slavery”). Florida is joined by over 11 other states, predominantly located in the South, that have enacted restrictions on teaching the long (and enduring) history of racism with the intent to avoid making (White) students feel guilty for their race. 

In my own conversations with friends and family about these very pieces of legislation, I often hear some variation of the phrase “I am not responsible for what my ancestors did” in response. Likely a result of my strong aversion to any form of confrontation, especially with loved ones, and despite my wholehearted belief in the necessity of learning the complete and unfettered history of the United States, I have always struggled to enunciate a compelling counter to their protests. For this reason, I found James Baldwin’s “My Dungeon Shook” especially useful. In this essay, Baldwin redefines our understanding of accountability, offering a new perspective on what it means for White people to acknowledge and own their responsibility and contributions to the oppression of Black people. On the centennial anniversary of the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin writes to his nephew James, “You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free” (295). This freedom, Baldwin argues, is contingent on love; in this same text, he calls on Black Americans to “with love, force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change” (294). Yet, 80 years later in 2023, the White majority continues to flee from this reality via the aforementioned attacks on school curriculums, continuous acquittals of police brutality, and more.

Sure, maybe White people are not to blame for what their ancestors did. But we are certainly presently guilty should we continue to turn a blind eye and exhibit indifference while the pain and denigration of our Black peers, coworkers, professors, friends, and bosses are not only overlooked but erased altogether. As Baldwin emphasizes in “My Dungeon Shook,” we cannot move forward towards a true future of racial equality and national brotherhood without first knowing, understanding, and acknowledging our past. Without doing so, White people, let alone Black people, are not free, to use Baldwin’s language, to be part of this path forward. We have a duty to run to this dark history, not from it.

 “Why James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time Still Matters” by Orlando Edmonds is a great demonstration of how Baldwin’s exploration of racism is not limited to a specific era. Many of the questions that Baldwin poses and the topics he addresses in The Fire Next Time and in many of his other pieces, are problems that those involved in Black liberation movements are still confronting and attempting to solve today. This article focuses on the Black Lives Matter movement and states that “critics fault BLM for reintroducing the problem of race and its significance in a supposedly “post-racial” society” (Edmonds 2016). The article also introduces criticisms on how “the Black Lives Matter movement is [often] interpreted cynically, with emphasis placed on its eruptive quality, rather than seeing the outburst as a consequence of its calmer voices going unheard” (Edmonds, 2016). Oftentimes, many think that when African Americans, in our contemporary world with BLM and during Black liberation movements like the Civil Rights Movement, spark liberation movements in an effort to seek better conditions, equality, and justice for the way they are treated in America, they are seen as being confrontational, aggressive, violent, and anti-white. However, this is truly not the case. 

In “The Ballot or the Bullet” a speech given by Malcolm X in 1964, he speaks on this issue. Malcolm says that in speaking about radical forms of liberation and Black nationalism, which is a movement that advocates for the establishment of a separate and unified Black identity in a more radical way, “it doesn’t mean that we’re anti-white, but it does mean we’re anti-exploitation, we’re anti-degradation, we’re anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn’t want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us (Malcolm 1964).  Like Malcolm is saying in “The Ballot or the Bullet” and Orlando Edmonds is saying in this article, because the respectful and peaceful forms of protest have not been successful in the past, it is through these radical forms of expression that Black Americans can truly reach their goals (Edmonds, 2016). Furthermore, it is not that Black Americans are protesting against white people and white dominated and governed systems because of the conflicts with race in what is supposed to be a post-racial society. The protests are in an effort to correct the injustices that still exist today. Baldwin would have most likely agreed with this approach as well. As he writes in The Fire Next Time, “now there is simply no possibility of a real change in the Negro’s situation without the most radical and far-reaching American society itself – its fundamental assumptions and underlying logic – needs scrutiny” (Edmonds, 2016). 

The assertions made by Edmonds, Malcolm, and Baldwin all align with the idea that in order to dismantle the systemic injustices and racism that existed during Baldwin’s time, during Malcolm’s time, and now during our time, the problem of race needs to be reintroduced to society and a critical examination needs to be made of the structures, systems, and even people that perpetuate these injustices. It is very important to recognize that the problem African Americans face is a systemic one that they deserve to fight against either by being radical, respectful, or protesting in movements like BLM today. Furthermore, the problem is certainly not an inherent opposition to any specific group. It just so happens that it is one specific group that is continuously inflicting oppression and racism. Insights like Malcolm X’s, Baldwin’s, and Edmond’s often go overlooked and unnoticed by many. Understanding something as simple as this is one of the keys to understanding the purpose and reasoning behind Black liberation movements, including the Civil Rights Movement and BLM. The fight and movements toward equality and justice is not about being anti-white just because. The fight and protests are justified because oppression, exploitation, and degradation of African Americans still exists, perpetuating a cycle of systemic inequalities and injustices that unfortunately continue to plague America today. This persistent cycle and denial of African Americans’ basic human rights and dignity necessitates a collective effort to dismantle these structures and pave the way for true liberation, justice, and equality which is what both Malcolm X and Baldwin encourage African Americans to do in their work.

In “My Dungeon Shook,” Baldwin’s letter to his nephew is very personal and shows a side of Baldwin unlike the one portrayed in his fiction. In the letter, Baldwin is preparing his nephew for the racism he will soon confront in America and which he will soon begin to realize is an aspect that will affect his everyday life. However, despite the racism that has corrupted and plagued the world, Baldwin has hope for his nephew. Before even getting into the intricacies of the letter, Baldwin writes, “I tell you this because I love you, and please don’t you ever forget it” (Baldwin, CE, 291). 

As someone who has clearly developed wisdom through his own experiences, Baldwin begins with a powerful line, “you can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger” (Baldwin, CE, 291). Baldwin gets straight to the point. Rather than advising his nephew on how to navigate the world as a Black man, he is preparing his nephew for the white problem not the Negro one. As Baldwin writes earlier in the letter, it is because of what the white people said that his brother and his nephew’s father died. “He really believed what the white people said about him” (Baldwin, CE, 291). This line reminded me of another passage by Baldwin in No Name in the Street. In the passage, Baldwin ‘exposes’ white people and calls out how they are the perptrators of racism and “the Negro problem” in society. Baldwin writes, “ 

The failure of the private life has always had the most debating effect on American public conduct, and on black-white relations. If Americans were not so terrified of their private selves, they would never have needed to invent and could never have become so dependent on what they still call “the Negro problem.” This problem which they invented in order to safeguard their purity, has made of them criminals and monsters, and it is destroying them; and this is not from anything blacks may or may not be doing but because of the role a guilty and constricted white imagination has assigned to the blacks” (Baldwin, CE, p. 386). 

The role of the guilty that was assigned to Baldwin’s brother and his nephew’s father and his belief that he really was the nigger the white world viewed him as is what killed him. As something almost inevitable because whites choose to privatize their life and operate on racism and fear, Baldwin wants to avoid this for his nephew. 

I found Baldwin’s transition into emphazising the power of perception in shaping an individuals’ reality very important. By highlighting that it is because of the racist mindset that white Americans possess that has nothing to do with what Black people are actually doing, Baldwin cautions his nephew and all Black people against internalizng the derogatory names imposed by the white world, the guilt, and more. The “private life” of white people has a negative effect on Black people more than many understand and realize and it has a great potential to create even worse impacts if Black people are to believe the nonsense white poeple create to rationalize their private life. As “authors of devastation,” white people are not innoccent. “It is the innocence which constitues the crime” Baldwin writes (Baldwin, CE, p. 292). The privilege that white people posses that grants them the power to assign these roles and impart these ideas onto society has more to do with white Americans using Negros and inventing the Negro problem as a way for them to grapple with their own insecurities and fears, making them the true “criminals and monsters” (Baldwin, CE, p. 386). Due to all of this, Baldwin explains to his nephew that “you were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason” (Baldwin, CE, p. 293). “You were not expected to aspire to excellence” thus, you should not “testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear” (Baldwin, CE, p. 293). 

Baldwin’s encouragement to his nephew to cultivate a sense of himself, remembering his humanity, his generation, and his history, in relation to the external narraitves that seek to define Negros as the problems and the monsters in society is phenomenal. He does something here by revealing the dynamics and attitudes of white people that not many do. Nevertheless, “A Letter to My Nephew” is very significant and continues to be relevant in understanding the complexities of race relations in America. Instead of placing the burden solely on Black people, Baldwin (in his political era) directs the attention to the problems within the white community and challenges the conventional narrative that does not often place responsibility where it belongs.

I watched the MLK/FBI movie before reading Baldwin’s No Name in the Street, which ultimately offered me a much more nuanced approach to the tapes and FBI targeting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I was aware of the tapes and their revealed contents, but the extent to which the FBI’s involvement in trying to take down MLK surprised me, especially given how personal a task this was for J. Edgar Hoover. I did appreciate the reiteration at the end of the movie that the actions of Hoover and the FBI were fully funded and supported by the state, regardless of how personal its motivations were for Hoover. The White House’s involvement in the surveillance and exposing of MLK’s private life is a direct violation of constitutional rights, but that is still undercut at every turn. This should not have surprised me as much as it did. McCarthyism, Red Scare tactics, and the government’s actions against the Civil Rights Movement seem criminally under-taught, partially because they obviously show the government has no real care for its citizens, and partially because omitting these contexts leaves out a lot of nuance to very important events. Obviously doing so would erode trust in the government, which is already at an all-time-low, but I think constructive distrust of the government is warranted. 

This movie also highlights the absolute ludicrousness of modern complaints about being in a leftist police state. Claims that lawsuits and basic accountability are political tyranny while Civil Rights and BLM protestors are shot, tear-gassed, assaulted, wire-tapped, bugged, defamed, and assassinated are utterly ridiculous, and the ultimate double standard on what it means to be White versus what it means to be Black in America. The involvement of the Kennedy’s and LBJ made the FBI actions under Hoover a literal police state. 

As for Baldwin, he offers a far better insight while talking about the different worlds of public and private life. Baldwin refers to his far more intimate relationship with MLK and also points out that many people, like his friend back in Harlem, completely idolized MLK without knowing MLK himself. Not that this takes away from MLK’s character, it just serves as a very valuable reminder that we tend to idolize public and historical figures that we do not know. Remembering that those figures are people like us, with flaws like us, would make the contents of the tapes, while still being problematic and indicative of another double-standard against women in the Civil Rights Movement, be less consequential to the controversy and legacy of MLK. And there should be no challenge to the legacy of MLK. 

Lastly, I am honestly unsure about the revealing of the tapes in 2027 as the movie references. I think they should be publicized for nothing else but transparency, but I ultimately think Baldwin’s point is the most important one. We should not ignore those tapes, but we should not let them make us forget that the people on the other side of the line, whether that’s race, culture, wealth, status, or history, are people too.