This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1318414
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1318414
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Thought provoking to read this as a white person. Also, it’s probably wrong that I am now patting myself on the back for having been unenthusiastic about Native Son and unable to finish it.
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[“It’s difficult to do that when all people want is a performance of what they think all black people must be feeling.”] (emphasis mine)
And there’s the rub.
I believe the “people” and the “they” in this sentence represent individuals scared to death to be in a heterogeneous environment in which people of all colors interact with a shared feeling of equality.
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This reminds me of Baldwin’s observations in The Fire Next Time that America’s racial “problem” was the one white people had, not black people. Allow me to quote the passage: “I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be ‘accepted’ by white people, still less to be loved by them…White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this–which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never–the Negro problem will not longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.”
In order to remain white–that is, in order to continue not to know and accept themselves as they are–white Americans need black Americans to be a “problem,” of one sort or another; the bigger, as the author here writes, the better; this allows them to affirm their whiteness as racially unproblematic.
Baldwin’s blackness is absolutely essential, but he is one of the few really great American writers–not solely African-American, but American. He understands Americanness as well as anyone, partly because of how powerfully he shows that one cannot identify as white and also understand one’s Americanness.
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My wife and I have been discussing this article for the past hour. Good read. As a black woman she says it helped her articulate a few feelings she has. I’ll let her give her full thoughts if she wants to though.
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I greatly appreciate this article. Thank you.
I live in a white world and refuse to burden my few black, latinx, indigenous, and gay friends with my ignorance. I am instead trying to be a more ethical, aware person and am educating myself.
It ain’t easy. Being of a certain age, I was never introduced to minority literature or voices in school. My edgy youthful self assigned reading was My Name is Asher Lev and Black Like Me. Now I am reading Baldwin, The Root, minority SciFi authors, trying to do better.
It seems to me that the spirit of @tmulcaire’s on-point Baldwin quote is that whites must heal themselves and not expect blacks to do it for them. Should I focus on me and mine? Should I focus on talking withother whites why it’s inappropriate to expect minorities to bear the burden of white myopia? Will they hear? Should I have responded when a white friend asked on Facebook: “My black friends, I know why I can’t use the N word, but how come you can?”
I do know that I want Mr Squire’s to write in his authentic voice.
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Aurin, thank you for your essay. I’m an old white woman who grew up in an intensely racist environment who is still trying to learn. Your fine words are are an excellent lesson.
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Well said.
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I’d like to thank
@grandpajoe, @junebug, @tmulcaire, @bloomingpeonie , @pmaroneyb,
@bunnyvelour
For your comments
cc @kelaine and @cervantes
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Thanks for the heads-up.
We’ve been out most of the day and so I just saw the article.
Which I’m now reading and re-reading.
Jimmy would appreciate it, you have to know.
If Black Lives Matter, then all of them do … the nuanced ones, the biracial ones, the ones who are right-wing, left-wing, the sarcastic ones, the cynical black voices that stand askance the political correctness and feel castrated, the black voices who don’t want a white liberal pet or to be treated like a baby needing protecting. The full scope and dimensions of black voices matter, not just the ones performing blackness for white media.
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They may be scared, but they threaten death, physically, professionally and economically to anyone who doesn’t share their narrowly defined parameters of acceptable.
The Key & Peele Substitute Teacher sketch is hilarious and deeply troubling. It’s put on as reversing that white pronunciation bigotry, but it is a longstanding behavior in the US. Historically names got anglicized at immigration centers, or by the individuals themselves because they couldn’t get a job as a . You can’t compare it to the black experience, the name change allowed people to pass as white completely in most cases, but the stripping of history was real.
What I can’t understand is why so many people of immigrant ancestry can’t see the discrimination and in many cases become the flag bearers for melanin based racism. Bigotry in this country is a mile wide a mile deep swift running.
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Keep giving us this kind of work TPM. I thought my eyes were open before. Now I understand that I was just not ready to see. Lots of learning yet to do.
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Fascinating. I had heard the criticism of Wright a long time ago (being a person of a certain age) but never in this context. I had also never thought of Baldwin as a ‘gay black artist’.
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Human societies generally define themselves against an Other subculture living in their midst. In ancient Athens, having slaves around made the male citizens feel free, and “bad” women made the citizens’ wives feel virtuous. In Rome, barbarian populations made the citizens feel more civilized. Interestingly, it was 19th-century European and American scholars who defined the Greeks and Romans as white, because the scholars themselves were obsessed with whiteness.
Thanks for sharing the Baldwin quote. I’ve obviously been missing out by not reading him.
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What junebug said. This article gave me many new ideas to ponder.
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Or a “question”! This reminds me of what Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about the way anti-Semites define who is a Jew in Réflexions sur la question juive:
If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.
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I have not read Native Son.
I never read Baldwin when I was younger.
A long time ago, I once thought that I could be a writer. Then I finally read and listened to Baldwin, and I wanted to slap myself upside the head! Who the hell did I think I was fancying that I could be a writer?
I have since read some of his essays and letters, and his novel Another Country. I love his work. I love his work in a similar way that I love Orwell’s work. They both so beautifully force me to think about uncomfortable truths. Though it scares me, because I also think either man could have made me believe anything.
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“We have laughed, planned protests, organized petitions, and lamented all the ersatz virtue signaling with kente cloth and black squares.”
Yes! Sneering at allies has always been a valuable tool of successful social change…
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Even as I write these words, I know that it will annoy some readers that I’m implying black people code switch and have a triple consciousness, because my reality isn’t judged on what my black friends and artists live: it is based on how comfortable white readers can feel about hearing me
@deerpath, Like you, my daughter is biracial
Several years before she was born, a biracial friend of mine in Philadelphia explained “shading” to me. He would make himself whiter or blacker (purely by mannerisms and speech) depending on the situation and the audience, which probably included me. Is that something that you have experienced?
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As someone who is Jewish culturally and genetically, it’s weird to go through life aware that I look “white”, but I basically think of myself as “white*”.
*depends on what your definition of “white” is.
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