James Baldwin's Radicalism
Persuasion | Sahil Handa
An excellent, poetic essay on the nuance and power of James Baldwin. While some attempt to mold Baldwin to their narratives on race, Handa argues that the scope of Baldwin rejects narrow interpretations. “James Baldwin did not tell a shallow story. Nor did he tell a black and white story. He asked people to discover an entirely new story… Baldwin loved America in the same way that he loved himself: fiercely, relentlessly and, most of all, critically. Contained within the country’s ruinous past was a magnificent potential…”
Some key excerpts from the article:
“The American Negro had been formed in America, and he did not have a future anywhere else. America contained the source of both his subjugation and his possible freedom… Baldwin did not want a white nation, and he did not want a black nation; but neither did he want an America that was white and black. Baldwin wanted to build a nation that was neither white nor black: a nation of individuals who were more concerned with what lay inside each other’s skin than outside.”
“Baldwin loved America in the same way that he loved himself: fiercely, relentlessly and, most of all, critically. Contained within the country’s ruinous past was a magnificent potential that would never be fulfilled by reifying the categories of color that had trapped it in a racial hierarchy since its birth.”
“He did not present himself or black people as innocent, and others—white people—as guilty. He tried to do something more honest. He tried to show that he, every other person, and therefore America, was a mixture of both.”
“Politics is a game of competing stories about national identity. And in our present moment, too many people are trying to tell a shallow story. James Baldwin did not tell a shallow story. Nor did he tell a black and white story. He asked people to discover an entirely new story: We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.”
“For now, our stories are too simple, our labels too rigid, and our hearts too closed to the contingency of our histories. Creating a new national identity means confronting the horrors that we face as a collective and finding what we have in common; emphasizing the promise of America, the paranoia in America, and the potential love that lies deep in America.”
