James Baldwin

Richard Wright’s Native Son portrays the most horrific crimes of Bigger Thomas. The narration of the novel is so gruesome that I had to put down the book multiple times because of how difficult it was to continue reading what had occurred. While it is true that Bigger raped and killed his girlfriend, Bessie, it is unclear if he raped the white character Mary before accidentally killing her. The narrator makes it clear that Bigger was already afraid of bringing the highly intoxicated only daughter of the Dalton family into the house because of the racial differences between them which may lead to unimaginable conclusions. While there is an underlying suggestion that Bigger sexually assaulted Mary bringing her into her room with a moment of osculation and unnecessary groping before her blind mother comes in, that is the only extent to which the interaction went (if we are led to believe the narrator). If this is true, then we must note that this is not rape but sexual assault. In the trial, there was much debate about whether Bigger raped Mary before she died bringing Bessie as an object of evidence that Bigger is capable of such horrendous actions. While this caused a lot of controversy, I continue to believe the narrator’s retelling of the events, mainly because there is no reason to think otherwise. The narrator in any other setting had not misinterpreted the happenings of the plot as they were occurring. So then, why would a lawyer be willing to defend the atrocities of this man? I think this is the point of the novel. If you recall the interrogations of Bigger, you can see how much the legal proceedings were stacked against him. The prosecutor attempted to falsify a different narrative against Bigger: he was the perpetrator behind the killings of six other people, he was a serial killer, he raped more people, but, as we know, THIS DID NOT OCCUR. Bigger was not the mastermind behind other criminal activity, even though the detective said they had evidence and a witness behind the other offenses. I still believe the killing of Mary was an accident. Bigger did not want to get caught bringing Mary into her room, so he covered her face to minimize the noise without noticing he was suffocating her. After this first homicide, it took Bigger into a spiral. I agree that his further actions have no defense, rape is an atrocious thing, but the point of this novel is to outline the injustices against the Black man and the cruelty of the justice system put against each other.

That sentence struck me as particularly interesting, because it seemed counterintuitive to a lot of Baldwin’s thoughts on love. The confusion, hatred, shame, and desperation surrounding love, particularly at a young age, seems to contradict this sentiment, especially as they are expressed in Baldwin’s writing. Most of the conflict in Giovanni’s Room is centered on romantic love, and how it negatively affects the characters and their subsequent misery. After meeting Giovanni, the narrator is “utterly, hopelessly, horribly glad” (pg 254). The shame associated with the narrator’s immediate feelings for Giovanni is evident. Similarly, the narrator says “we simply stared at each other–with dismay, with relief, breathing hard” (pg 273) in describing he and Giovanni’s love and lust. The dual nature of shame and joy are rife in Baldwin’s descriptions of the narrator’s feelings towards Giovanni. Finally, it is heavily implied that love led to the events that caused Giovanni’s death. It seems plenty of people have died because of love, in stories and in real life. Love leaves many people miserable. But the deeper meaning of Jacques’ statement prevails. Feeling love has not killed anyone (generally, I guess exceptions could still be made). Love repressed, unaccepted, persecuted, or unspoken has led to pain, suffering, and death, but unrequited love has not. 

That sentence emphasizes Baldwin’s struggles with acceptance of his sexuality, love, and identity. Ambiguity and uncertainty lead to repression, fear, and shame, and the sense of those feelings pervade part one of Giovanni’s Room. The narrator’s own engagement to Hella, his disgust and reliance on Jacques, Giovanni’s dislike of Guillaume, and even the charade of practiced conversation in the bars all reflect the ambiguous, uncertain, and overbearing sense of fear in the novel. It seems logical therefore that Baldwin’s ultimate conclusion to these feelings is accepting love, not hiding it, repressing it, or fearing it. As Baldwin repeats numerously throughout his writings and interviews, accepting life is imperative to being human. The roots of this conclusion are very clear in Giovanni’s Room alongside Baldwin’s personal experiences with homosexuality and religion, but I think Toibin also makes a good point in referencing Baldwin’s influence from English and Lost Generation writers because a major emphasis of those writers is loss of innocence. Baldwin’s version of loss of innocence takes place a bit later in life and focuses more on the deeper, darker parts of human experience and the shame that accompanies them. For Baldwin, growing up is accompanied by a schism in identity, a battle between how he sees himself and how he feels. This lack of understanding and lack of acceptance leads to shame, guilt, and fear, and the ultimate answer is to, as Baldwin puts it, accept life and accept being human.

Go Tell It on the Mountain and the Bible

Gabriel’s relationship with the women in his past life is representative of how he believes in the lack of agency of women. He resents Esther for embodying his sexual desires in contrast to Deborah who is marginalized for her barrenness. Gabriel views Esther as a symbol of sin and temptation. Although she gives birth to his son, Royal, whom he is a stranger to, Gabriel cannot see Esther other than a woman sent to disrupt his holiness. In the Bible, Esther was living in exile before becoming a queen and Baldwin pulls from this narrative. Esther in Go Tell It on the Mountain is treated nothing like a queen but does live in exile from Gabriel to the point where he doesn’t even know his son. Further, Gabriel does not tell Deborah that Royal is his son, even though she knows. Deborah is depicted in complete contrast to Esther. She is characterized as a godly woman who represents all good parts of the church. In the Bible, Deborah is characterized as a judge and/or prophet. On her deathbed, Deborah conveys to Gabriel that she would’ve taken care of him. It didn’t matter to her that he wasn’t her child. This final judgment is indicative of how much Deborah was watching the people around her, especially Gabriel. While she may not resent Gabriel for his lies, she warns him that God is also watching him and that he should atone for his sins before it gets too late. This sort of prophetic warning is reflective in the way Gabriel treats John. He has not learned that the way he treats his children will have consequences. Esther and Deborah do not let Gabriel control their views on Royal or their life. Although he may condemn Deborah for not being able to have any children or Esther for being a “harlot”, he is judged more for his actions than anyone else in the novel. One can only wonder if Gabriel has limited control over his emotions and actions than he chooses to reveal. His own self hatred might be masked by the way he treats his children, especially John.

I Am Not Your Negro reiterated many of the things we’ve already seen from Baldwin in Go Tell It on the Mountian and The Price of the Ticket. Namely, Baldwin’s gospel of love and how it grew from his issues with the church, and Baldwin’s persistent belief in the cause of racism coming from White people trying to hide their shame and guilt. Baldwin paints a picture of the illusion of whiteness, how whiteness equates to power, not identity. I was particularly curious about the context of the film, being released in 2016, and how it was received by both the Black and White community. I saw a good amount of people question its relevance, and others praise it greatly. I think the film’s relevance is blatantly obvious, especially after 2016, where we have seen repeatedly, over and over, that there is no line the white community will not cross to justify itself or bury its own head in the sand. 

My mind is drawn to the debates over pulling down Confederate statues in public areas, and I lived very close to the University of Chapel Hill where a lot of that tension started. White people justified leaving those statues up because of their heritage. For a long time, a Confederate flag flew over I-95, right outside my hometown. And this is justified by heritage. By pride, in ancestors being Confederate soldiers, which constitutes a gross lack of self-awareness already. However, no one seemed to acknowledge that most of those statues in the South were erected in the 1930s, and later in the 1960s, as direct means of intimidation and hate against Civil Rights. White people put up those statues to convey their hate, then later, quite conveniently, forgot how they got there and got angry when people sought to remove such symbols of hate. As Baldwin says around the 43:40 mark in I Am Not Your Negro, “It is not a racial problem, it is a problem of whether or not you’re willing to look at your life and be responsible”. People were not willing to look at how those statues got there, and what they meant, because we all know what they mean. They are statues of traitors and dead men. 

Similarly, in my school in North Carolina, we were taught that the Civil War was fought over state’s rights and the southern economy. What drove that economy was not mentioned. Slaves. The Southern economy was built upon slavery. My school was often mocked for being woke and we didn’t even acknowledge slavery as the prime reason the war was fought. Even more recently, the banning of Critical Race Theory in Florida schools and the paranoia over book bans and “race being taught to children” indicate a resurgence of refusal by the white community and its leadership (being most facets of the government) to acknowledge even the most basic accountability for the state of Black people in America. It seems White Americans are hunkering down to deny and obfuscate even more, from justifying racism as heritage to replying with “All Lives Matter.” Baldwin is absolutely right that most of the efforts of White Americans is to cover up, repress, or explain away our shame. And I don’t know how to deal with that, which means I still am playing a part in a systemically racist society. There are so many other things we could be spending all of this time and energy on, like combating climate change, dealing with capitalism, addressing the innumerable global crises. All of this energy is being spent to repress the reality of race in America, on one side of the aisle, and because of that the problem of race in America is endless. As Baldwin writes in The Price of the Ticket and as it is later mentioned in I Am Not Your Negro, “they require a song of my captivity to justify their own”.  There are many points to addressing this that I could not even begin to describe, but I think the media has a crucial responsibility to swallow. I Am Not Your Negro shows a myriad of humiliating and stereotypical portrayals of Black Americans, many of which feed into the complete illusion of ignorance White Americans have built up around them. How information is presented by the media and the government, particularly as media and information become more and more intertwined with everyday life, has a vast effect on how people see themselves and the world around them. BLM protestors cannot be called a violent mob, while the rebels that flew a Confederate flag from the Capitol are “exercising their rights”. This woeful, willful ignorance is destroying us. I just don’t know how to remedy that ignorance on a larger scale.