{"id":637,"date":"2021-04-25T23:40:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T03:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=637"},"modified":"2021-04-25T23:41:48","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T03:41:48","slug":"anger-over-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/04\/25\/anger-over-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Anger over love?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I found the conversation between Lorde and Baldwin quite illuminating. Baldwin reacted to Lorde with some resistance. At one point in particular, Baldwin asked, \u201cBut you don\u2019t realize that in this republic the only real crime is to be a Black man?\u201d and Lorde responded, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t realize that. I realize the only crime is to be Black. I realize the only crime is to be Black, and that includes me too.\u201d I loved this response, and I was sort of surprised by this comment from Baldwin. Given the impression of Baldwin that I have gotten throughout the course of this semester, I suppose I would have expected him to empathize with the position of Black women, but it seems that even he too lacked a deep understanding of it. This conversation reminded me of the mission of the Combahee River Collective–which Audre Lorde was also a part of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement, written by Black feminists and lesbians, states the following: \u201cWe realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us…Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.\u201d Occupying arguably the most oppressed position in society, Black women are truly the \u201coutsiders-within,\u201d as Patricia Hill Collins described them. We have had extensive conversations this semester about what it means for Black people to be strangers in America, but as we can see from this conversation, Black women are even strangers to Black men. Baldwin states, \u201cThere\u2019s a real difference between the way a man looks at the world…And the way a woman looks at the world. A woman does know much more than a man.\u201d Lorde responds, \u201cAnd why? For the same reason Black people know what white people are thinking: because we had to do it for our survival…\u201d It is interesting that Baldwin incorporates this idea so heavily into his work, yet seemingly fails to understand how it operates between Black women and Black men. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reconsidering Baldwin with intersectionality in mind had me thinking about Baldwin\u2019s biggest message being love as a means to liberation, and Lorde\u2019s being anger as a means to liberation. I had never had doubts about Baldwin\u2019s message until now. Perhaps taking up love as arms is only a possibility for those in a more privileged position. Perhaps anger is a means of achieving love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I found the conversation between Lorde and Baldwin quite illuminating. Baldwin reacted to Lorde with some resistance. At one point in particular, Baldwin asked, \u201cBut you don\u2019t realize that in this republic the only real crime is to be a Black man?\u201d and Lorde responded, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t realize that. I realize the only crime … Continue reading Anger over love?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120219],"tags":[502517,502416,120191,502060,18079],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","tag-anger","tag-combaheerivercollective","tag-intersectionality","tag-lordebaldwin","tag-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}