{"id":681,"date":"2021-05-02T21:33:31","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T01:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=681"},"modified":"2021-05-02T21:33:32","modified_gmt":"2021-05-03T01:33:32","slug":"woke-white-liberals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/05\/02\/woke-white-liberals\/","title":{"rendered":"Woke White Liberals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our conversation surrounding The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> and its appeal to the martyr complexes of white women has caused me to reexamine the role of white liberals in social justice and their reception of Baldwin\u2019s writing. Audre Lorde draws attention to the passivity found in white women in issues of racism and discrimination in \u201cThe Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism\u201d saying, \u201cI have seen situations where white women hear a racist remark, resent what has been said, become filled with fury, and remain silent because they are afraid.\u201d We continued this discussion in class and considered how the largest perpetrators of social racism are white liberals that adopt \u201cpolite racism\u201d and excuse their own racial prejudices while denouncing systemic discrimination. I think comedian Bill Burr\u2019s opening joke for SNL about white women and woke culture sums it up nicely: \u201cSomehow, white women swung their Gucci-booted feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line.\u201d The issue of white women using sexism to refuse to accept their white privilege undermines racial progress and intersectional feminism. Also, performative activism executed by white liberals over the summer during the public surge of the BLM movement undermined effective change that the movement was trying to bring about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil rights activists like Baldwin and King have both had to deal with the backlash from white audiences and must have considered whether or not to adapt their messages to gain the support of white liberals. In \u201cWhy James Baldwin\u2019s The Fire Next Time<\/em> Still Matters\u201d Edmonds calls attention to the shift in Baldwin\u2019s writing and his growing dismissal of the white gaze\u2019s influence. He writes, \u201cLyne\u2019s article narrates the history of Baldwin\u2019s writing in conjunction with the development of his politics, that is, from being \u2018the darling of the white liberal establishment” to developing a politics that \u201cpushed him beyond the boundaries of canonization.\u201d Baldwin’s later work is described as becoming more bitter, but also more radical as it shifts away from cold war liberalism. Edmonds expands on this saying, \u201cWritten during the middle period of his career, The Fire Next Time <\/em>bridges these categories. Although it doesn\u2019t reflect the \u201cBlack Marxism\u201d Lyne finds in Baldwin\u2019s later works, it isn\u2019t interested in liberal integrationism either.\u201d However, after this work’s immediate publication, it was criticized by white audiences for trying to goad white people into action and Kenneth Rexroth in the San Francisco Examiner<\/em> wrote, \u201cThe Fire Next Time<\/em> is designed to make white liberals feel terribly guilty and to scare white reactionaries into running and barking fits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering this context, I wasn\u2019t sure what to make of this line in \u201cMy Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew\u201d where Baldwin asks his nephew to find a level of forgiveness for white people. \u201cThe really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them with love. For these innocent<\/strong> people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand<\/strong>\u201d (294). I thought Baldwin was being rather generous here and I struggle to see his view of white innocence in a history they \u201cdo not understand,\u201d yet created and continue to repeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our conversation surrounding The Handmaid\u2019s Tale and its appeal to the martyr complexes of white women has caused me to reexamine the role of white liberals in social justice and their reception of Baldwin\u2019s writing. Audre Lorde draws attention to the passivity found in white women in issues of racism and discrimination in \u201cThe Uses … Continue reading Woke White Liberals<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3920,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[200,203,204,202],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son","tag-handmaids-tale","tag-polite-racism","tag-the-fire-next-time","tag-white-liberals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","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\/3920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}