As we enter the month of March, it is easy for most people to relegate Black history to the back of our minds and priorities until Black History Month comes around again next February. Yet we are living through momentous times that call for a deeper understanding of our nation’s racial history as we set the course for our shared future. With that in mind, I want to lift up the work of the great writer and racial justice activist James Baldwin. His insightful writings from the tumultuous era of the 1960’s still resonate with the tumultuous era of the 2020’s. One of the essays in the collection titled The Fire Next Time is in the form of a letter that James Baldwin wrote to his nephew James in 1962. The letter is a powerful and poignant reflection on the painful realities of systemic racism that impact Black people in general and the Baldwin family in particular including his 15 year old nephew. In the following quotes from the letter, James Baldwin encourages his nephew to claim his own humanity while at the same time accepting the truth that a major source of racial injustice is that most white people are trapped in perpetuating a history that they do not understand:
Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words “acceptance” and “integration.” There is no reason for you to try to become like white men and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it…But these men are your brothers, your lost younger brothers, and if the word “integration” means anything, this is what it means, that we with love shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it, for this is your home, my friend. Do not be driven from it. Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become. (Click here for a link to the entire letter)
Baldwin is clear about engaging in the struggle for full racial equality and justice. At the same time, he maintains that loving one’s adversaries is an essential part of that struggle. The kind of love that Baldwin calls for is not weak, vague, or sentimental. Rather it is a powerful love based in reality that is meant to free the oppressors as well as the oppressed. It is the agape love revealed and embodied by Jesus and to which he calls his disciples of all eras. As we move toward our national elections in November, the final phrase in the quote cited above is particularly important, “we can make America what America must become.” Instead of looking back to an idealized and false version of our nation’s history, we can face the hurtful reality of past and present racial injustice in order to bring changes that move toward greater levels of healing for all of us.
The video posted below is from a recent discussion of Baldwin’s work The Fire Next Time. It features the historian Professor Eddie Glaude whose work includes a focus on the importance of the legacy of James Baldwin for today. Please take the time to watch and reflect on the video.