Finding a Different Urgency in James Baldwin’s Writing
Today James Baldwin is remembered as an eloquent advocate for racial equality and a talented writer of the Harlem Renaissance. But during his lifetime Baldwin was often a controversial figure, refusing to align himself with political and artistic movements. We can see it in his fiction which, despite being political, is first of all a work of art; and in the essays, in which Baldwin poses difficult questions, and explores them honestly and fearlessly. Then as now Baldwin’s writing may seem to lack the urgency of the activist’s call to action. But his prose, in fact, reminds us that the political struggle can take different forms, and that the slow work of writers and artists may be a vital counterpart to the faster pace of protest.
I first read Baldwin when I was about twenty. Go Tell it on the Mountain was one of the few books by Black authors on the English curriculum. I read the book almost in one gulp, becoming immersed in the world of Baldwin’s Harlem childhood and experiencing the young protagonist’s trials and epiphanies along with him. At the time I didn’t give much thought to the novel’s politics, but it was clear that the characters were living under oppression, and that the protagonist was struggling against it.
I learned more about Baldwin’s politics years later when I began reading his essays and watched the excellent documentary I am not your Negro, which includes excerpts from interviews. Baldwin always spoke fearlessly against racism, but he was often uneasy with the ways in which his contemporaries took up the battle against it. In “Notes of a Native Son” Baldwin interweaves a reflection on his troubled relationship with his father, his confrontations with Jim Crow racism, and protests in Harlem. The essay is deeply personal, but it also arrives at a controversial political conclusion.
The question at the core of the essay has to do with anger. The anger that Baldwin’s father felt toward white America, and that Baldwin himself experienced when he faced racism as a young man. Baldwin’s father, a preacher, was an intimidating presence in the household and toward the end of his life became consumed with anger. When Baldwin himself feels this kind of anger, he decides that he must master it so as not to become ruled by it.
The essay is as much of a literary masterpiece as any of Baldwin’s novels. He relates his encounters with racism in devastating, almost surrealistic detail, allowing the reader to experience it along with him:
I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people. I acted in New Jersey as I had always acted, that is as though I thought a great deal of myself — I had to act that way — with results that were, simply, unbelievable….I did not know what I had done, and I shortly wondered what anyone could possibly do, to bring about such unanimous, active, and unbearably vocal hostility.
Baldwin goes on to describe how, after being refused service at a restaurant, anger began to skew his vision and dictate his actions:
This was the time of what was called the “brown-out,” when the lights in all American cities were very dim. When we re-entered the streets something happened to me which had the force of an optical illusion, or a nightmare. The streets were very crowded and I was facing north. People were moving in every direction but it seemed to me, in that instant, that all of the people I could see, and many more than that, were moving toward me, against me, and that everyone was white. I remember how their faces gleamed. And I felt, like a physical sensation, a click at the nape of my neck as though some interior string connecting my head and my body had been cut.
In this state of mind, Baldwin goes into another restaurant and asks to be served. When the waitress refuses, Baldwin picks up a water mug and throws it at her. The woman moves out of the way and the mug shatters against the mirror at the back of the bar. With the help of a friend Baldwin just barely escapes from the restaurant, and later realizes that the incident could have easily cost him his life.
Baldwin closes the essay with a complex and daunting statement, a dictum that, I gather, suggests a way of fighting without resorting to anger:
It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength.
I’ve never experienced this kind of racism, but encounters with other forms of discrimination made me skeptical about this conclusion. Why isn’t anger an acceptable response? Can’t it also take the form of positive engagement? And why should victims be held to such a high spiritual and emotional bar?
I don’t know if Baldwin himself found this conclusion satisfying. He doesn’t seem to insist on it in other essays, most of which are imbued with a righteous anger that’s entirely appropriate to their subject. He also spoke in support of movements for racial equality that didn’t adhere to this philosophy.
What seems important at this moment is that Baldwin wasn’t afraid to think and write in a way that was sure to attract criticism. Even though in “Notes of a Native Son” and other essays he writes about racism, he explores the topic from a wide perspective. In “Down at the Cross,” for example, Baldwin’s ostensible subject is race and religion, but the essay goes on to reflect on the idea of freedom, the cultural state of white America, and the need for a real, usable Black American history.
When we read James Baldwin — and especially if we only read quotations and extracts — we can wind up with the false impression that achieving Black equality and protecting Black lives wasn’t as urgent for him as it was for other writers and activists. His body of work, however, shows clearly that it wasn’t the case, but rather that Baldwin thought differently of the writer’s role within the political struggle.
Writers may well be activists — and many are effective in both roles — but for Baldwin being a writer meant a wholehearted commitment to close observation and honest reflection, which couldn’t coexist with an equally strong commitment to a single political cause.
The urgency that we feel in Baldwin’s prose isn’t synonymous with immediate action. It is the urgency of insight, of understanding, of using language to “describe and thus control [one’s] circumstances” (as Baldwin puts it in another essay). It’s also the urgency of finding a common language, and creating a path to healing and reconciliation.
In today’s social-media driven debates, it’s all too easy to dismiss those whose views don’t fall into well-defined categories or don’t seem progressive enough. Baldwin’s essays remind us of the importance of being open to more varied, less constrained modes of thinking and feeling, even — or perhaps especially — in volatile times.
