Sometimes Dr. Kinyon began class by asking us if we liked what we read, and for some reason, I always found that question complicated. It should be simple to say if we liked Baldwin\u2019s writing. After all, this is an English class, and that is perhaps the most basic question she could ask of us. However, I think what made the question difficult for me to plainly answer is the content and context of Baldwin\u2019s writings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The America Baldwin describes is divided by racism and hate, so much so that he and other Black American writers left for Europe. In fact, Baldwin\u2019s America and America in 2021 are quite similar. The very title of our course refers to the progress that still needs to be made in this country. \u201cJames Baldwin, From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter.\u201d We have had class discussions about how slavery became Jim Crow which became mass incarceration or The New Jim Crow<\/em><\/a>. While I consider Baldwin\u2019s writing captivating and smooth, I have not liked what I have read. A white family bringing their young son to witness the lynching of a black man. A black woman being raped by multiple white men. I do not like an America that allows, enables, and even encourages these situations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I argue that Baldwin\u2019s goal was not for us to like what we read. In many ways, he wanted us to feel the opposite. Upon reading \u201cThe Price of the Ticket\u201d and \u201cOn Being White and Other Lies,\u201d we all felt a desire to change this country. Baldwin wrote about America\u2019s racism in the time of the civil rights movement, and now he calls us to think about it and write about it in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement. Though this is my final blog, I know this won\u2019t be the final time I think of Baldwin\u2019s arguments and consider how they inform our world today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes Dr. Kinyon began class by asking us if we liked what we read, and for some reason, I always found that question complicated. It should be simple to say if we liked Baldwin\u2019s writing. After all, this is an English class, and that is perhaps the most basic question she could ask of us. … Continue reading The Final Blog Post<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3914,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","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\/3914"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}