I am teaching my James Baldwin seminar this semester, and this week we are reading selections of his writings from Randall Kenan’s edited volume, The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings. I love this book. The fugitive short pieces give the reader a sense of Baldwin’s capacious mind, the arc of his thinking across time, and the power not only of his prose writing, but of his speeches. The cadence and rhythm of a young preacher jump off the page. And I shout and write, “Yes!”
There is so much truth in this article that it makes my entire being anguish at what we white people have insisted on doing to anyone who is not white.
What Dr Eddie S. Glaude Jr. offers here is both powerful and true to James Baldwin: a clear reckoning with the lie at the heart of the American project and the danger of denying what one does. For that clarity, and for the force of the writing, I am grateful. If anything, the essay invites a further step. The lie Baldwin names does not operate only at the level of moral psychology, as obedience to illusion, but is sustained through the material structure of the world it helped create. What made it durable was its embodiment in the colonial order. In that sense, what I call the colonial present names the persistence of this founding arrangement into modern democracy. This is not only American. From Ancient Greece onward, Western democracy has been constituted through exclusion, defining freedom for some through the unfreedom of others. Here Giorgio Agamben clarifies the stakes: the Black body appears as homo sacer, life exposed to violence without recognition, not as accident but as necessity. It is this condition that allows democracy to sustain its image of freedom while disavowing the structure that makes it possible
Just magnificent writing- both Jimmy and Eddie- as always. Sadly, America is a myth founded on 'Greatness' based on a lie.Are all men(and women), Men? Are they created equal or are there exceptions to that? Are some more men( and women) than others?Are some more human than others? And whom, may I ask, is making this judgement?
Donald T**** is what you get after living a lie based on greed and white dominance for 250 years.These 'values' are what the majority of Americans have worshipped in their churches, synagogues, legislatures and courts. Now you have your King.
Never good to start any endeavor with 'a little white lie.' It always catches up to you.
Let's build on the best of what humans have in their souls- not glorify the worst of it. We are- we can be-better than what we have been.
Thank you for another brilliant and heartbreaking piece, Dr. Glaude. That lie seems so intractable to me, so entrenched by the untouchables. We can’t be at the end, can we? I am trying to shake that feeling by researching my mother’s family who didn’t back down despite the risk and despite the probability of failure. I just finished rereading one of the books that have been collected and carted around for a couple of generations, “Thirteen Days” by Jeannette Marks, in which she writes about the thirteen days covering the appeals and postponement of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 Boston. The judge in the trial didn’t bother to hide his disgust at the others - the subhuman and dangerous immigrants - whose indefensible lives were in his hands. Marks writes, “…on the evening of August 25th some eight thousand people were gathered before the doors of Langone’s waiting to go in to look upon the faces of the Italian martyrs. Very shortly after the doors opened, Mary Donovan, nerves at the breaking point after the long years of Defense work and those thirteen days of postponement and preparation for the execution, as some news and cameraman were about to take pictures is Sacco and Vanzetti, took her stand at the head of the coffins, in her hand a placard two and a half feet long and two feet wide. On it were Judge Webster Thayer’s words spoken while petitions for a new trial were still to be argued in front of him: “DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID TO THOSE ANARCHISTIC BASTARDS?” I know this story well; my grandmother, beaten, arrested, and threatened to be hung on the Boston Commons, is Mary Donovan Hapgood. At that time, Boston was controlled by the “Blue Menace” who were in charge of stopping the “Red Menace.” The Blue Menaced made good use of its “three arms of power, the secret service, hired police, and signed and unsigned propaganda.” They continued to tell the lie that these anarchists were not human and they and their ilk deserved everything that they got. It feels like nothing has changed. Can it change? There are always lies to cover up the Government’s corruption, failure, fear, and greed. Marks observes, “It is inevitable that selfish men should fear the change from one economic order to another.” She quotes James O’Neal, “The old faiths, old views, old war cries that once served mankind no longer serve. They harden into prejudice and become the handmaids of reaction and despotism. They become embedded in to law, are sanctioned by courts, and become fetters on human progress.”
As usual, your piece today is so timely and so much appreciated! My group has lately been watching and listening to James Baldwin and his gentle, direct messages that continue to broaden and clarify what many white people need to know. Thank you!
I like your sentence, "I want to believe, that even with the skyrocketing cost of bread, we do not live by bread alone." Now I'll go listen to William Barber's Palm Sunday sermon to further steady my moral compass.
Amen and ase to all that you have written. Sadly, far too many people who "think themselves white" and far too many people who think that they can purchase or acquiesce themselves into being white are willing to ignore the crimes upon which whiteness is built for what they perceive as the safety and profits of whiteness. As such, they willingly live by what Baldwin called "selective naivete." Thus, I wonder if data (the empirical) can ever overcome dogma (the ideological). And, though I'm not optimistic that data can overcome dogma, I appreciate folks like you who refuse to relinquish the "blood-stained banner" of our liberation struggle.
Well I don’t anguish at being white; I do wonder if trying to bring the country to a more equitable equilibrium has, in Itself, caused the social blowback. It seems almost every commercial played is populated solely by blacks or a mixed crew; forget Native Americans or Asians. If the commercial shows blacks and whites together, the white person is almost always the foil, the fool.
Do I believe commercials matter? What I believe is they reflect how the government chose to influence our society toward more equality. It reminded me of how the government exerted commercial messaging against cigarettes. Yes it was successful in creating a negative view of cigarette smoking and smokers. But vilifying and shaming for an addictive behavior is not the same as depicting an entire race as stupid, silly, or out of touch. And so, the blowback does not surprise me. And as division grows one must ask if this was not the intended purpose.
Wealth creates class; and class is where true disparity lives. So maybe, just maybe, as this government continues to overplay its hand, we will ignore the divisive messaging and refuse to be herded to the headcatch. We are all in this together.
There is so much truth in this article that it makes my entire being anguish at what we white people have insisted on doing to anyone who is not white.
A lot of Bible thumping White Nationalists never read John….
What Dr Eddie S. Glaude Jr. offers here is both powerful and true to James Baldwin: a clear reckoning with the lie at the heart of the American project and the danger of denying what one does. For that clarity, and for the force of the writing, I am grateful. If anything, the essay invites a further step. The lie Baldwin names does not operate only at the level of moral psychology, as obedience to illusion, but is sustained through the material structure of the world it helped create. What made it durable was its embodiment in the colonial order. In that sense, what I call the colonial present names the persistence of this founding arrangement into modern democracy. This is not only American. From Ancient Greece onward, Western democracy has been constituted through exclusion, defining freedom for some through the unfreedom of others. Here Giorgio Agamben clarifies the stakes: the Black body appears as homo sacer, life exposed to violence without recognition, not as accident but as necessity. It is this condition that allows democracy to sustain its image of freedom while disavowing the structure that makes it possible
Just magnificent writing- both Jimmy and Eddie- as always. Sadly, America is a myth founded on 'Greatness' based on a lie.Are all men(and women), Men? Are they created equal or are there exceptions to that? Are some more men( and women) than others?Are some more human than others? And whom, may I ask, is making this judgement?
Donald T**** is what you get after living a lie based on greed and white dominance for 250 years.These 'values' are what the majority of Americans have worshipped in their churches, synagogues, legislatures and courts. Now you have your King.
Never good to start any endeavor with 'a little white lie.' It always catches up to you.
Let's build on the best of what humans have in their souls- not glorify the worst of it. We are- we can be-better than what we have been.
Thank you for another brilliant and heartbreaking piece, Dr. Glaude. That lie seems so intractable to me, so entrenched by the untouchables. We can’t be at the end, can we? I am trying to shake that feeling by researching my mother’s family who didn’t back down despite the risk and despite the probability of failure. I just finished rereading one of the books that have been collected and carted around for a couple of generations, “Thirteen Days” by Jeannette Marks, in which she writes about the thirteen days covering the appeals and postponement of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 Boston. The judge in the trial didn’t bother to hide his disgust at the others - the subhuman and dangerous immigrants - whose indefensible lives were in his hands. Marks writes, “…on the evening of August 25th some eight thousand people were gathered before the doors of Langone’s waiting to go in to look upon the faces of the Italian martyrs. Very shortly after the doors opened, Mary Donovan, nerves at the breaking point after the long years of Defense work and those thirteen days of postponement and preparation for the execution, as some news and cameraman were about to take pictures is Sacco and Vanzetti, took her stand at the head of the coffins, in her hand a placard two and a half feet long and two feet wide. On it were Judge Webster Thayer’s words spoken while petitions for a new trial were still to be argued in front of him: “DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID TO THOSE ANARCHISTIC BASTARDS?” I know this story well; my grandmother, beaten, arrested, and threatened to be hung on the Boston Commons, is Mary Donovan Hapgood. At that time, Boston was controlled by the “Blue Menace” who were in charge of stopping the “Red Menace.” The Blue Menaced made good use of its “three arms of power, the secret service, hired police, and signed and unsigned propaganda.” They continued to tell the lie that these anarchists were not human and they and their ilk deserved everything that they got. It feels like nothing has changed. Can it change? There are always lies to cover up the Government’s corruption, failure, fear, and greed. Marks observes, “It is inevitable that selfish men should fear the change from one economic order to another.” She quotes James O’Neal, “The old faiths, old views, old war cries that once served mankind no longer serve. They harden into prejudice and become the handmaids of reaction and despotism. They become embedded in to law, are sanctioned by courts, and become fetters on human progress.”
As usual, your piece today is so timely and so much appreciated! My group has lately been watching and listening to James Baldwin and his gentle, direct messages that continue to broaden and clarify what many white people need to know. Thank you!
I like your sentence, "I want to believe, that even with the skyrocketing cost of bread, we do not live by bread alone." Now I'll go listen to William Barber's Palm Sunday sermon to further steady my moral compass.
So good! James would be proud of you!
Amen and ase to all that you have written. Sadly, far too many people who "think themselves white" and far too many people who think that they can purchase or acquiesce themselves into being white are willing to ignore the crimes upon which whiteness is built for what they perceive as the safety and profits of whiteness. As such, they willingly live by what Baldwin called "selective naivete." Thus, I wonder if data (the empirical) can ever overcome dogma (the ideological). And, though I'm not optimistic that data can overcome dogma, I appreciate folks like you who refuse to relinquish the "blood-stained banner" of our liberation struggle.
James Baldwin was a prolific writer!
Well I don’t anguish at being white; I do wonder if trying to bring the country to a more equitable equilibrium has, in Itself, caused the social blowback. It seems almost every commercial played is populated solely by blacks or a mixed crew; forget Native Americans or Asians. If the commercial shows blacks and whites together, the white person is almost always the foil, the fool.
Do I believe commercials matter? What I believe is they reflect how the government chose to influence our society toward more equality. It reminded me of how the government exerted commercial messaging against cigarettes. Yes it was successful in creating a negative view of cigarette smoking and smokers. But vilifying and shaming for an addictive behavior is not the same as depicting an entire race as stupid, silly, or out of touch. And so, the blowback does not surprise me. And as division grows one must ask if this was not the intended purpose.
Wealth creates class; and class is where true disparity lives. So maybe, just maybe, as this government continues to overplay its hand, we will ignore the divisive messaging and refuse to be herded to the headcatch. We are all in this together.
love me some JB
Brilliant.