Review of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Book Link: Amazon (smile)

My company provides Juneteenth not as a holiday (yet), but as a day of reflection, listening, and learning. I used the time in June to watch the Netflix documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" about James Baldwin's life. I knew the name but not much more and the documentary was not only incredibly well-done but very insightful into his life and starkly different approach (Compared to MLX and Malcom X) and involvement in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I wanted to explore more about him and his life and this biography(?) came highly recommended. I say biography but I'm not sure it actually is in the traditional sense as This is more about the author (Eddie S. Glaude Jr.) and his journey and exploration through Baldwin's life and reactions to events juxtaposed to current (2019/2020) events and movements. The book does a very effective job of evoking the pain and passion while carefully dancing between the guarded optimism and pessimism through the decades and draws clear threads between the Reagan and Trump administrations and how The Lie has been perpetuated for centuries.

Some highlights/thoughts from my reading: 1. “Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy of justice.” 1. In each instance the country chose to remain exactly what it was : a racist nation that claimed to be democratic . These were and are moments of national betrayal , in which the commitments of democracy are shunted off to the side to make way for , and to safely secure , a more fundamental commitment to race. 1. To accept one’s past — one’s history — is not the same thing as drowning in it ; it is learning how to use it . An invented past can never be used ; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought . 1. cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense , once hate is gone , that they will be forced to deal with pain . ” 1. America , and its racist assumptions , had indelibly shaped who Baldwin was . But , he insisted , we are not the mere product of social forces . Each of us has a say in who we take ourselves to be . No matter what America said about him as a black person , Baldwin argued , he had the last word about who he was as a human being and as a black man . 1. This conclusion was the result of what Socrates called the examined life , and it served as the foundation for Baldwin’s broader witness . Just as we must examine our individual experiences and the terrors that shape how we come to see ourselves , together as a country we must do the same . 1. These , then , are the twined purposes at the heart of Baldwin’s poetic vision . He is not only motivated to transform the stuff of experience into the beauty of art ; as a poet he also bears witness to what he sees and what we have forgotten , calling our attention to the enduring legacies of slavery in our lives ; to the impact of systemic discrimination throughout the country that has denied generations of black people access to the so - called American dream ; to the willful blindness of so many white Americans to the violence that sustains it all . 1. His misremembering sought to orient us to the after times of the civil rights movement and to call attention to the trauma and terror that threatened everything . “ What one does not remember , ” he reminds the reader , “ is the serpent in the garden of one’s dreams . ” 1. what shook Baldwin at his core was a “ realization of the nature of the heathen . ” The white southerner had to lie continuously to himself in order to justify his world . Lie that the black people around him were inferior . Lie about what he was doing under the cover of night . Lie that he was Christian . 1. Exceptionalizing Trump deforms our attention ( it becomes difficult to see what is happening right in front of us ) and secures our self - understanding from anything he might actually represent . If anything , Trump represents a reassertion of the belief that America is , and will always be , a white nation . 1. I’m not trying to accuse you , you know . That’s not the point . But you have a lot to face … . All that can save you now is your confrontation with your own history … which is not your past , but your present . Nobody cares what happened in the past . One can’t afford to care what happened in the past . But your history has led you to this moment , and you can only begin to change yourself and save yourself by looking at what you are doing in the name of your history . 1. They showed that the statues were not erected as contemporaneous historical memorials of the Civil War . Most were built many years later , either between the 1890s and the first decades of the twentieth century ( when most of the Confederate veterans began to die ) or in the 1950s , with the demand for racial equality intensifying . They were monuments to an ideology — physical representations of the superiority of white people and a way of life that reflected that fact . 1. In that same issue of Black Panther , Eldridge Cleaver , the party’s minister of information , penned a damning screed against the NAACP entitled “ Old Toms Never Die Unless They are Blown Away . ” 1. since white Americans did not seem to view the issue of race in moral terms . In fact , white people seemed to give less than a damn about the sinfulness of racism . Power was at the heart of the matter 1. Despite their claims of commitment to racial justice , Baldwin saw them , in their actions , as co - conspirators in maintaining the belief that white people mattered more than others . White liberals weren’t loud racists . They were simply racial philanthropists who , after a good deed , return to their suburban homes with their white picket fences or to their apartments in segregated cities with their consciences content . Baldwin was not shy about calling this out . 1. I don’t want anybody working with me because they are doing something for me 1. The fact of growing up , of coming of age , in a place that holds all sorts of negative stereotypes about who you are and what you are capable of , along with the country’s racist history of torture , rape , and murder and its supposed ideals of democracy — all of it inevitably distorts your sense of self . 1. We have invented the nigger . I didn’t invent him ; white people invented him . I’ve always known , I had to know by the time I was 17 years old , that what you were describing was not me and what you were afraid of was not me . It had to be something else , you had invented it so it had to be something you were afraid of and you invested me with … . I’ve always known that I am not a nigger . But , if I am not the nigger , and if it’s true that your invention reveals you , then who is the nigger ? I am not the victim here … . So I give you your problem back . You’re the nigger , baby , it isn’t me . 1. This is Baldwin’s revolutionary act : to shift or invert the “ white man’s burden . ” The problem is not us . Instead Americans must understand as best we can , because our lives depend on it , the consequences of this deadly projection . Through this lens , the “ black man’s burden ” is the brutal behavior of white people in thrall to a lie . 1. These are the voters left behind by a Democratic Party catering to so - called identity politics — as if talking about a living wage and healthcare as a right , or affordable education , or equal pay for women , or equal rights for the LGBTQ community , or a fair criminal justice system , somehow excludes working - class white people 1. In our after times , our task , then , is not to save Trump voters — it isn’t to convince them to give up their views that white people ought to matter more than others . Our task is to build a world where such a view has no place or quarter to breathe . 1. Elsewhere is that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe , to refuse adjustment and accommodation to the demands of society , and to live apart , if just for a time , from the deadly assumptions that threaten to smother . Living elsewhere can offer you a moment of rest , to catch your breath and ready yourself to enter the fray once again , not so much whole and healed , but battle - scarred and prepared for yet another round 1. I’m not French , though I lived in France a long time , and loved it . I learned things about France while I was there , but what I mainly learned was about my own country , my own past , and about my own language . 1. The moral stamina to fight this fight requires that we cultivate our own elsewhere , because the one “ who finds no way to rest cannot long survive the battle , ” and this battle of ours isn’t going to end soon . Baldwin’s time in Istanbul taught me that . 1. it entails moving “ away from the centralizing authorities toward the margins , where you see things that are usually lost 1. many white Americans who suffered , whether they lived in cities or in the suburbs , blamed the troubles of the nation on the tumult of the sixties revolution and the black people who were at the center of it all . 1. “ the spirit of the South has not changed … . The spirit of the South is the spirit of America . ” On one level , America and the South are one and the same , both are haunted and vexed by the macabre reality of the dead , the suffering beneath the country’s and region’s feet , and by the lie of their innocent role in it all . That innocence allowed the bodies to continue to amass . 1. The seventies involved a confrontation with a frightening truth : that despite the sacrifices and costs of the black freedom struggle , the country remained profoundly racist and , no matter its proclamations to the contrary , white America was perfectly comfortable with that fact . 1. Reagan had argued that Americans could escape poor living conditions if they so chose . All they needed to do was to “ vote with their feet . ” They could just move along . Those who remained , he seemed to suggest , did so because they wanted to or were too lazy to aspire to something more . This was the lie . 1. voting , as much as it is a democratic duty , for black people , can also be a means to buy some time when the choice is as stark as it was between Carter and Reagan . 1. As with Reagan in 1980 , with Trump white America reached for an image — a Hollywood - generated fantasy — on which to project their hatreds and fears . In this sense , Trump is best seen as a child of Reagan . 1. Americans are always sincere , it is their most striking and appalling attribute … . Nixon was perfectly sincere when lying about Watergate , the military were perfectly sincere when lying about Vietnam and Cambodia , Helms is perfectly sincere when he says that he is not a racist , and the late J . Edgar Hoover was sincere when he called the late Martin Luther King , Jr . the biggest liar in America . This sincerity covers , and pardons all , [ and ] is the very substance of the American panic . 1. Ask any Mexican , any Puerto Rican , any black man , any poor person — ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice , and then you will know , not whether or not the country is just , but whether or not it has any love for justice , or any concept of it . It is certain , in any case , that ignorance , allied with power , is the most ferocious enemy justice can have . 1. Baldwin’s view of American history . The past is not past ; “ history is literally present in all we do , ” 1. National Memorial for Peace and Justice represents a traumatic history , and it isn’t easily forgotten , if at all . Our bodies carry the traumas forward . The history of racial trauma lives on and moves us about in ways we often don’t realize . It grounds our fears and , whether we know it or not , it affects our dreams . In places all over the South and the country , the legacy of this terror and trauma continues to haunt . The memorial confronts the trauma directly and offers us , in its own way , a chance to begin again . 1. I do believe in truth and reconciliation . I just think that truth and reconciliation are sequential : That you can’t have reconciliation without the truth . 1. we reexamine the fundamental values and commitments that shape our self - understanding , and that we look back to those beginnings not to reaffirm our greatness or to double down on myths that secure our innocence , but to see where we went wrong and how we might reimagine or re - create ourselves in light of who we initially set out to be . This 1. Baldwin ended his talk with a powerful admonition , a preface as it were to a last will and testament : We are living in a world in which everybody and everything is interdependent . It is not white , this world . It is not black either . The future of this world depends on everyone in this room . And that future depends on to what extent and by what means we liberate ourselves from a vocabulary which now cannot bear the weight of reality . Liberation from the languages and categories that box us in requires that we tap the source of it all , free ourselves of the lie , and start this whole damn thing over . 1. “ An old world is dying , and a new one , kicking in the belly of its mother , time , announces that it is ready to be born . This birth will not be easy , and many of us are doomed to discover that we are exceedingly clumsy midwives . No matter , so long as we accept that our responsibility is to the newborn : the acceptance of responsibility contains the key . ” That was 1972 . The labor has been long and hard , and the new world has yet to be born . We are now in our after times , but responsibility has not been lost . Whatever happens next will be up to us . 1. But , in the end , he wanted us to see that whiteness as an identity was a moral choice , an attitude toward the world based on ugly things .