James Baldwin

Audre Lorde boldly proposes radical empathy in the work of redefining identity as a liberating form of resistance. This outlook, which grows out of Baldwin’s assertion that love transcends, renews the life force fighting against the intersecting oppressions of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. Radical empathy opposes stagnation by emphasizing unity and harmony through difference and understanding.The way forward requires active listening. For example, Lorde challenges white women in the academy to examine “the needs and living contexts of other women” (Lorde). Lorde doesn’t stop by challenging white feminists to a more honest, nuanced, and selfless allyship. She also acknowledges her own personal strivings to witness to her fellow WOC’s pains. She demonstrates how to listen by sharing “If I participate, knowingly or otherwise, in my sister’s oppression and she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only blankets the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy” (Lorde) For Lorde, the stakes of this call to radical empathy are high. They demand an ego death that allows for unity and real witness. It requires a transcendence of paralyzing guilt, which Lorde identifies as “only another form of objectification” (Lorde). Lorde seems to carve space into the civil rights movement for the wisdom and power of Black women with this approach. It is both bold and welcoming in its intersectional embrace. 

This carries on the legacy of Baldwin’s artistic empathy and passion. His gospel of love lays the foundation for the kind of listening that makes Lorde’s intersectionality possible. After the different moments of misogyny in this course, it was striking to hear Lorde call out toxic masculinity, stating “it’s so entrenched in him that it’s part of him as much as his Blackness is” (Baldwin and Lorde). Like in our discussion of Native Son, Lorde points out the way certain conceptions of Black masculinity rage against emasculation and impotence in a way that needlessly kills Black women. It was refreshing to hear our class’ critique validated in this way. Baldwin then shows us how to push forward, beyond guilt, in difficult conversations. The pair practice radical empathy and witness by allowing different experiences of gender to inform and harmonize their insights.

The interview between James Baldwin and Audre Lorde invites readers to investigate if all of Baldwin’s material is applicable to women or if some of his messages only apply to Black men. Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room specifically looks at issues found in same-sex relationships between men and the shame of male homosexuality. I felt limited in my essay on Giovanni’s Room and Baldwin’s queer politics because the passages from his novel and various Bible passages only applied to male homosexuality. Naturally, Baldwin’s overall message of love in queer relationships can be beneficial to queer women; however, centering the plot around Black men’s experiences in male-dominant circles creates distinctions on the issues experienced by Black men and women.

These distinctions continue in Baldwin’s essays as he focuses on highlighting the physical violence suffered by Black men while addressing sexual violence and early teen pregnancy Black women experience. In “A Fly in Buttermilk,” Baldwin writes about the negative experiences Black students suffer at low-income schools. He writes, “G. is just about at the age when boys begin dropping out of school. Perhaps they get a girl into trouble; she also drops out; the boy gets work for a time or gets into trouble for a long time. I was told that forty-five girls had left school for maternity ward the year before. A week or ten days before I arrived in the city eighteen boys from G.’s former high school had been sentenced to the chain gang” (191). Although studies show that Black and Latina girls are more than twice as likely as white girls to become pregnant before they leave adolescence, I wondered about the impact of placing emphasis on Black women’s fertility as their struggle while emphasizing the physical violence and assault Black boys suffered.

In her interview with Baldwin, Lorde also addresses Black girls getting pregnant early, but identifies this as a struggle for Black boys as well. She says, “There are little Black girl children having babies. But this is not an immaculate conception, so we’ve got little Black boys who are making babies, too. We have little Black children making little Black children.” Baldwin and Lorde discuss distinctions between typical experiences of Black men and women. Baldwins speaks of the male experience saying, “Do you know what happens to a man when he’s ashamed of himself when he can’t find a job?… When he can’t protect anybody? When he can’t do anything?” Audre Lorde responds, “Do you know what happens to a woman who gives birth, who puts that child out there and has to go out and hook to feed it? Do you know what happens to a woman who goes crazy and beats her kids across the room because she’s so full of frustration and anger?” However, Lorde also addresses that Black women suffer physical violence in the same ways Black men do, “Do you know what happens to a lesbian who sees her woman and her child beaten on the street while six other guys are holding her?” In our conversations about intersectionality, it is important to examine distinctions between the adversity Black men and women experience and the portrayals of these distinctions.

Being that I am going into the field of education after graduation, I was very touched and humbled reading G.’s story in “A Fly In Buttermilk.” The evils this young boy faced and his reaction to them was a very shocking read, but the thing that did not surprise me at all, but which I believe Baldwin found shocking, was G.’s silence. He did not speak of any of the traumatic experiences beyond stating that there was “name calling” and one case of him being tripped in the hallway. But this is what a lot of kids, in my experience, tend to do: they internalize their experiences. And this is probably the biggest fear of mine in becoming an educator, that I will not be able to help children achieve the ability to vocalize their experiences.

One line that particularly affected me upon reading this essay was Baldwin’s take on the general public’s reaction to integration: “admiration before the general spectacle and skepticism before the individual case” (CE, 188). This attitude toward integration is generally what I believe is the current state of education today, and it perpetuates the silence of students. I do not believe anyone in this country would argue that education in and of itself is an objectively bad thing. However, I agree with Baldwin’s claim in “Nobody Knows My Name” that most Americans “have so little respect for genuine intellectual effort” (CE 201). This is the experience I myself faced attending public high school in New York, as I would consistently see kids attempting to coast through school without actually desiring intellectual stimulation, and their parents would perpetuate this behavior by consistently arguing with teachers and administrators. Those who cared about their education were the most silent, and those who did not were the most vocal. Generally, people admire the spectacle of school: playing sports, socializing, and hopefully getting a diploma by the end of the whole experience. But with regards to the individual case, the few kids trying to learn something to bring value to their own intellectual stimulation, people are skeptical, and this is why the silence of those who care for their education continues.

G.’s story is inspiring, but not surprising to me, because he and his family genuinely desired a good education and not the spectacle of school as so many families in American society do. His silence as a “weapon,” as Baldwin describes it, is then logical to me because it is the sign that he was able to put his mind toward his education and not let the spectacle distract him. G.’s silence is a sign of his dedication to his education and it is a powerful weapon because it allows him to not fall victim to the retaliation that would lead him into the side of school that is spectacle. But the weapon of silence also has a fatal downside, because while it helps individuals ignore the general spectacle of our current system of education, it does not stimulate any change in that system. Individuals can get by if they are one of the few “truly exceptional” students as Baldwin notes, but this is generally not the case. So, while silence and pride protects the individual, they do little to improve universal school reform. I do not know what the solution to this issue is, as all of Baldwin’s statements in these essays still have vast implications today. But if America somehow learned to love learning and be vocal about that love of learning, I believe some of the issues of our current school systems could be solved. I am sorry if this was a very niche and unorganized post, but I have a lot floating around my mind when it comes to education issues of the past continuing into today and I would love to hear other people’s thoughts.

In recent years, the term “white feminism” has entered the common lexicon as a way to describe an ideology that seeks “not to alter the systems that oppress womenーpatriarchy, capitalism, imperialismーbut to succeed within them” (Solis). While Audre Lorde does not use the term “white feminism” in “The Uses of Anger,” she highlights examples of how this approach to feminism fails to effect substantial change and instead promotes the continuation of a system that excludes and oppresses women of color. In her article “When Feminism Is White Supremacy in Heels,” Rachel Elizabeth Cargle discusses how she and her fellow black feminist activists responded to the murder of 18-year-old Nia Wilson. Cargle and her black activist community called upon white feminists to use their platforms to acknowledge the senseless murder of a black woman. While many white allies did, a large number of them also grew defensive and lashed out. 

This situation is analogous to Lorde’s example of white women addressing racism on college campuses. They blame their inability to properly confront racism on the fact that no women of color attend their events. Lorde writes, “In other words, racism is a Black woman’s problem, a problem of women of Color, and only we can discuss it.” This sentiment is apparent in the defensive responses of those white feminists. Too often in modern-day activist circles, black women are charged with the responsibility of educating white women and white people in general about the oppression they have faced. White feminist activists should prioritize stories like Nia Wilson’s instead of waiting for black activists to ask them for support. And when black activists encourage them to use their platform, white people should respond with genuine willingness instead of with their ego. “The Uses of Anger” aligns strongly with Cargle’s article, as Lorde states, “Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity. Black women are expected to use our anger only in the service of other people ‘s salvation, other people’s learning.” White women’s rights activists should listen to Lorde’s words and work to educate themselves instead of waiting for black women to take on that emotional labor.

Megan, in her presentation last week, spoke about Foucault and power in Giovanni’s Room. She mentions that “the power that David holds and does employ actually works towards his own oppression. Thus, it is not in spite of his power but because of his power that David experiences a sort of ‘death’ in Giovanni’s Room.” Before this presentation, I was unaware of Foucault’s idea of power not being autocratic or liberating, but being another form of oppression. I saw this in Baldwin’s Going to Meet the Man as well. Jesse’s power is derived from his memory of the castration of a black man, which is an incident that makes him think of himself, a white man, as superior to a black man. This power is bestowed upon Jessie by this incident and through society that believes a white man is superior to a black man. Power really becomes a form of oppression for Jessie, because without thinking about it, he cannot do something as simple as make love to his wife. He is a slave to this power which oppresses him. When a black man in jail is singing to him, disobeying Jessie’s command, Jessie cannot help but beat the man up, to retain his mental superiority. Additionally, this power consumes his life to the extent that he cannot stop thinking about it even when he is trying to fall sleep. It is only after recalling a hate crime against a black man that Jessie can get an erection. Baldwin writes that Jessie “thought of the morning and grabbed her, laughing and crying, crying and laughing, and he whispered, as he stroked her, as he took her, ‘Come on, sugar, I’m going to do you like a nigger, just like a nigger, come on, sugar, and love me just like you’d love a nigger.’” (Baldwin 348) Jessie is oppressed by his power over black people because it consumes his life, in the day and in the night.