‘Men like me and my brothers filmed what we
Planted for proof we existed
Too late, sped the video to see blossoms
Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems
Where the world ends, everything cut down.
John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.’
-Jericho Brown, on the Black Lives Matter movement (Brown, 2016, p. 9).

Introduction

Revolutionary ideas and social movements are seldom born out of thin air; their roots lie deep within decades of evolving thought and education. After the murder of Freddie Gray in 2015, protestors in Baltimore, Maryland, took to the streets, and one activist stood outside a police station with a sign: ‘Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy of justice’ (Glaude, 2020, p. 19). Writer and activist James Baldwin once prayed that within the wreckage of America, his work would manage to be found, and his words were now being displayed as a protest against police brutality three decades after his death (Glaude, 2020, Introduction).

This essay seeks to argue a case for reading and understanding Baldwin in 2020 by underlining the importance of his life and work to the Black Lives Matter movement. It presents four threads to pursue while exploring his thought, the first being his unapologetic honesty about the false illusion of America’s progress, revealing inequalities which cannot be reversed without the radical restructuring of society. These themes have been picked up on by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and others who struggle for liberation today. The initial half of this essay will focus on this first thread and show its relevance to today’s movement. The second is his study of the racist criminal justice system in America and how it disadvantages Black people, which illustrates how systematic racism keeps them suppressed – a theme which currently drives Black Lives Matter. Thirdly, Baldwin’s life and work present a rare model of a Civil Rights leader who embraced ‘intersectionality’, rejecting traditional notions of masculinity and sexuality, much as the movement now aims to do. Lastly and crucially, his work gives us an opportunity to explore the importance of representation in context of current debates regarding history, in monuments and the education system. Baldwin argued that love – interpreted as truth and reflection – would lead America to reflect honestly upon its history and work towards consciousness. A deeper study of his writing is thus merited, to explore potential avenues for growth and reflection within the movement.

To answer these questions, I begin by looking at the ways in which ecclesiastical discourse constructed sexual crimes as a violation of a (public) moral superstructure rather than a violation of the rights of individual women. I then look at the language of contamination in both ecclesiastical and political discourses, drawing out the ways in which sexual purity is repeatedly associated with “Irishness” in opposition to the perceived sexual degeneracy of English society. Ultimately, I argue that notions of sexual purity and womanhood were just as important as notions of “Irishness” and national identity in such discourses.

Background

The idea that Black lives matter is not an innovation, but a message that has resonated throughout the history of Black intellectual thought in America. In 2013, three Black women – Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi – created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media as a call to action, after the murderer of Black teenager Trayvon Martin was not brought to justice. This failure of the American justice system led them to send out a simple yet powerful message: Black lives possess inherent value (Lebron, 2017, p. xi). The movement re-emerged in full force after the police murdered Michael Brown in 2014, and the spark flamed into a fire in May 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, when a policeman killed George Floyd by pressing a knee onto his neck and was caught on video doing so (Ransby, 2018, pp. 42-5). It is now regarded as the largest social movement in American history (Osse, 2020). As this powerful movement evolves and transforms, it warrants exploration of writings which would lend clarity to the ideas which encompass Black Lives Matter today and guide future directions.

James Baldwin is one such figure who advanced the intellectual tradition of black liberation. Baldwin had a deep awareness of history, earned from his grandmother who was born into slavery, his preacher father and his general childhood environment (Baldwin, 1963). Appalled by the hypocrisy of his neighbourhood churches, and the continued racial segregation in workplaces, he turned to writing and produced powerful essays and books about his experiences in the American South among other works (Kenan, 2009, p. 31). He began to see himself as a Black American and identified with what later became known as the Civil Rights Movement; as a writer, speaker, and fundraiser, he supported Civil Rights’ groups. By the time he took the country by storm with his explosive essay ‘Letter from a Region of my Mind’ – later published as The Fire Next Time – Baldwin had become a voice for Black America (Kenan, 2009, pp. 44-7). His death in 1987 at the age of sixty-three left the country with an amalgam of fiction and non-fiction to learn from, study and debate.

I: ‘Progress’ and Baldwin’s Challenge to White Liberals

The first element of his thought that this essay highlights is Baldwin’s refusal to buy into the myth of American racial and social ‘progress’. Despite the legal gains of the Civil Rights Movement, racial economic disparity was widening and Black youth faced increasing unemployment (Scott, 2009, p. 147). The emergence of Black political rule, Baldwin argued, was dangerously concealing reality and creating illusions of racial progress, possibly comparable to how the election of a black man to the White House created such an illusion for many in the 2000s (I Am Not Your Negro). He stated that one need only read the news of the murders of young Black children to notice how hollow this supposed ‘equality’ was – the way Black Lives Matter dispels delusions of a post-racial America by repeating the names of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others who were victims of racist police brutality (Scott, 2009, p. 146).

Within this context, Baldwin believed that the narrative of white liberalism was an ‘affliction’ (Aanerud, 1999, p. 61). He opposed the liberal assumption that Black people needed to be saved or integrated, repeated in paternalistic overtones. Various programs – all the way from the abolition of slavery to the 1960s – carried this attitude (Aanerud, 1999, p. 61). For Baldwin, this made white liberals unsuitable supporters of racial equality. In ‘White Man’s Guilt’, he showed how these liberals, overwhelmed by their guilt, refuse to fully accept their history of slavery, cruelty and oppression of Black people. Only when white Americans stop defending themselves and take responsibility can they truly embrace change (Baldwin, 1965, p. 47).

Their counterproductive support is evident in the practice of publishing ‘protest novels’, which he disparaged. In ‘Everybody’s Protest Novel’, he argued that though the writers of such books may be well-intentioned, they delude white liberals into believing that all is going well and society is progressing (Baldwin, 1985, p. 31). They become disconnected from real social relations (Baldwin, 1985, p. 32). The very idea of Black people as property, as subservient, comes not from a radical undemocratic faction as liberals would believe, but from the very architects of the American state (Baldwin, 1985, p. xix). Despite legal promises of racial equality, democratic societies remain vulnerable to the prejudices of their citizens (Balfour, 1999, p. 94). To face this history can be painful, but this is what Baldwin demands of us. Sensing the shifting winds, in 1963, Dissent magazine wrote that ‘the honeymoon between white liberals and Negroes is over’ (Polsgrove, 2001, p. 170). After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Baldwin asserted that something had changed within him; he would no longer believe false promises (Baldwin, 1985, p. 453). There was no more bargaining ground – neither with white liberals nor white supremacists (Baldwin, 1985, p. 262).

Notably, Baldwin condemned the narrative of Black ‘violence’ which encompassed white American imagination whenever Black people fought for their rights – he argued this emerges only because white people are afraid of their own property and lives being damaged (Baldwin, 1964, pp. 74-5). Violence was acceptable for President Jimmy Carter or white men – like American military interventions in Iran in the name of freedom – but not for Black people (Baldwin, 1985, p. 684). This theme is reiterated in the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, which quotes Baldwin as stating that white people celebrate any kind of revolutionary violence unless it involves Black people fighting for their freedom (I Am Not Your Negro).

Baldwin’s Vision

Baldwin was thus disillusioned with an America that chose to go back in time at critical moments of progress, and he wrote about a path forward. The answer to this regressive pattern lay in consciousness and repentance (Polsgrove, 2001, p. 157). This would involve radical changes in the entire structure of American society (Baldwin, 1964, p. 74). In The Fire Next Time, he argued that colour is a political reality, and problems created by race cannot be wished away through colour-blind thinking (Balfour, 1999, pp. 93-4). Each person must first take a hard look at themselves, confront their own prejudices and embrace their true histories (Baldwin, 1985, pp. 192-3). It was up to those who had gained a certain level of consciousness, both white and Black, to create broader conscious change, or to risk unleashing the anger of the oppressed: ‘no more water, the fire next time!’ (Baldwin, 1964, p. 89). This theme may be related to today’s context.

White support for Black Lives Matter was high in the summer of 2020. Yet throughout the Northern states, considered liberal, terms like ‘property values’ and ‘neighbourhood schools’ continue to be used widely by white populations arguing against living in mixed-race neighbourhoods (Blake, 2020). In Howard County, Maryland, a plan to integrate public schools across socio-economic statuses in 2019 met with extreme backlash from parents (Blake, 2020). ‘White liberals’ often exhibit reluctance to create personal sacrifice in the name of black lives, despite their shows of support.

A narrative painting the Black Lives Matter movement as unjustifiably violent has entered political discourse, as Baldwin predicted. Though ninety-three percent of all protests in the movement were peaceful, as shown by an Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project report, forty-three percent of respondents reported that they believe the movement intends to incite violence and is dangerous (Mansoor, 2020). Media representation and personal biases are partly responsible for this – a Washington Post report shows how Fox News disproportionately showed footage of protestors destroying property to viewers repeatedly (Mansoor, 2020). This exhibits Baldwin’s claim about how progress is hindered by both performative support, and negative notions of violent Black= protesters in popular imagination. Alicia Garza, one of the Black Lives Matter founders, believes that in 2020, the country has reached its ‘boiling point’ where black people will no longer compromise – its fire this time? (Wortham, 2020).

Baldwin’s beliefs are being addressed today to an extent: Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing Between the World and Me as a letter to his teenage son the way The Fire Next Time was addressed to Baldwin’s nephew, has ‘fed a nation’ that requires these same unapologetic truths (Dyson, 2020). Coates echoes the rage he feels upon reading, for instance, about the death of a friend at the hands of policemen (Coates, 2015, pp. 76-7). He quotes Baldwin and challenges the same notions the latter proposed: those who ‘think they are white’ need unlearning (Coates, 2015, pp. 137-8). In this age, as white people increasingly purchase books on antiracism and brave tear gas at Black Lives Matter protests, perhaps America is beginning to turn towards radical consciousness. Baldwin’s ideas and their reiteration by writers like Coates would aid this process.

II: Baldwin, Black Lives Matter and the Criminal Justice System

The second thread of this essay highlights that at the epicentre of both Baldwin’s observations of racism, and the movement today, lie police brutality and the prison system as expressions of a systematically racist structure. He penned what we now see as one of the first examples of carceral studies, revealing the systemic racial discrimination in the criminal justice system of America (Glaude, 2020, p. 178). Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, and the state of Mississippi failed to bring his murderers to justice, setting off the Civil Rights Movement. In response, Baldwin wrote Blues for Mister Charlie when the movement for racial equality was at a critical junction (Scott, 2009, p. 163). The play features a conscious, adult male – Richard Henry – who chooses to taunt a white racist and questions the effectiveness of nonviolent protest. Richard is killed by the racist, and a white liberal, ‘Mister Charlie,’ attempts to compromise by saying the murderer was simply a victimized, poor white man (Baldwin, 1964, Act 1). He is found ‘not guilty’. Despite the exhibited failure of the criminal justice system, ‘Mister Charlie’ ultimately breaks with the white murderer and joins a Black protest march, representing the potential of consciousness for each individual (Baldwin, 1964, Act 3).

After the murder of George Floyd, one of the most prominent demands that thrummed throughout the movement was for police reform. This involves reducing police funding, allocating money to social services instead, and tackling the ‘prison-industrial complex’ head on: measures that are now the subject of extensive scholarship and debate (Coleman, 2020). Baldwin once condemned five policemen who pressed down on a Black woman’s neck as ‘moral monsters’ (Baldwin, 1963). In works such as Blues for Mister Charlie we may trace the very system that has led to the murders of George Floyd and countless others, and through The Fire Next Time, we witness the commitment to radical restructuring he demands for all state institutions, including the prison system.

III: Baldwin, Queerness, and Intersectionality in 2020

The third theme of this paper holds that Baldwin’s work serves as a precursor, much ahead of its time, for the complex and whole nature of liberation, and the way oppressions intersect to create discrimination: what we today refer to as ‘intersectionality’. As a Black man, a gay man, an American and an expatriate, Baldwin spent a large part of his life exploring his identity (Field, 2009, p. 8) He rejected Malcolm X’s link between masculinity and violence (Scott, 2009, p. 153). For him, dichotomies – Black or white, masculine or feminine, held little appeal or utility (Joyce and McBride, 2009, p. 112). As the first prominent gay Black writer, Baldwin was the first to consciously profess and use his sexuality in his writing, challenging prevailing norms in African-American literature (Joyce and McBride, 2009, pp. 121-2). He contested the notion of the heterosexual, Black male who served as protector of his race. To deny this identity, Baldwin argued, is to justifiably threaten the American ideal of the good, white, Protestant family (Joyce and McBride, 2009, p. 125). He grouped various atrocities together while simultaneously condemning them: to kill a ‘n*gger, kike, dyke or faggot’ was an act of cowardice (Baldwin, 1985, p. xix). Reading Giovanni’s Room reveals his thinking on the subject: it focuses less on sexuality and more on the problem of societies which perceive homosexuality as negative (Joyce and McBride, 2009, p. 126). Baldwin represented the intersection of a racial and sexual identity that the world rejected in different ways (Spurlin, 1999, p. 118).

Moreover, his behaviour called widely accepted ideas of masculinity into question, as homophobic descriptions of Baldwin by different sources show. Time magazine in 1963 described him as ‘nervous, slight, fragile,’ and ‘effeminate manner’ (Spurlin, 1999, p. 105; Glaude, 2020, p. 98). FBI Director Hoover referred to him as a ‘known pervert’ in 1964 (Scott, 2009, p. 162). Other Civil Rights’ leaders regarded him with suspicion at worst, and with cautious distance at best (Spurlin, 1999, pp. 116-7).

An intersectional politics argues not only that marginalized and different identities be included, but that their aspirations and welfare belong at the core of any social movement (Ransby, 2018, p. 70). Black Lives Matter, since its creation by three black women, has held onto this as a foundational principle. Its website proclaims a commitment to inclusivity and the united struggle of transgender, queer, undocumented, disabled and marginalized communities (Black Lives Matter, 2020). There is no liberation for black lives without liberation for queer, female and transgender individuals. The faces of the movement are no longer black male patriarchs like Martin Luther King, but women, queer folks and their allies. In Baldwin, the movement can locate a figure to study and learn from: a Black, queer man who did not shirk from any of his identities in his personal life or his work.

IV: Baldwin and Studying the Past through the Present

Lastly, Baldwin’s thought features in today’s debates on history: he insisted that we are controlled sub-consciously by our personal and learned histories and we carry them within us (Baldwin, 1985, p. 47). Our identities are imbued within this despite any legal shows of progress. In The Price of the Ticket, he articulated this with stunning clarity: ‘white power remains white, and what it appears to surrender with one hand it obsessively clutches in the other’ (Baldwin, 1985, p. xvii). This is evident in his description of history textbooks: they taught children all over America that Black people have no history, and everyone seemed to agree. This was the only institutional learning available to most people (Baldwin, 1985, p. 406). According to him, the education system of America is designed to defeat Black children. It erases their history, isolates them and defines them through white gazes (Baldwin, 1985, p. 663). The institutions of the state are thus designed, and serve, to keep Black people suppressed even if they gain legal equality (Glaude, 2020, p. 40). Similarly, Baldwin found himself unable to recite the Pledge of Allegiance when he was a child. He wrote that he knew it had never protected him or his people, and its words, accordingly, seemed meaningless (Baldwin, 1985, p. 663).

History is a crucial contest for the future. Today’s debate about tearing down Confederate monuments, which represent legacies of slavery and America’s racist past, bears testimony to this (Glaude, 2020, p. 40). As a child, Baldwin believed, you learn from what you see around you. He himself was surrounded by veneration of George Washington, which he thus imbibed (I Am Not Your Negro). During the protests in 2020, protestors have toppled, crushed and vandalized the remnants of the country’s racist past (Burch et al, 2020). Similar demands have rippled through the education system: schools across the country have begun to initiate conversations on race. The National School Boards Association reported that demands for a more diverse history curriculum have doubled this year; these involve demands for new material and new perspectives (Scheyder, 2020). Before real atonement, Baldwin wrote, comes a necessary moment of heartbreak and self-confrontation where one learns to let go of histories which glorify cruelty (Baldwin, 1985, p. xviii). Reading his work gives the world this deeper opportunity to understand where these demands and actions come from, and whether there is a need for them.

Baldwin’s Plea

Through studying these four themes, the Black Lives Matter movement could find a prospective path in Baldwin’s anger, but also his love. In his life and work, Baldwin bore witness, defining himself through what he was not: he was neither a Black Panther, nor a Black Muslim – he didn’t believe all white people were devils – nor a Christian, because he believed they did not act upon their own
principles (I Am Not Your Negro). He said his work lay instead in witnessing the realities of race and relaying his message – to rid ourselves of hatred of the self and the other, and replace it with love (Lebron, 2017, p. 109). Baldwin defined love as a ‘state of being’: a tough, daring quest (Baldwin, 1964, p. 82). Love exposes the truth and strives to be better (Baldwin, 1964, pp. 81-2). He demands of us to not hate the man whose foot – or in George Floyd’s case, knee – is on a Black person’s neck but to find a way to commit people to consciousness (Baldwin, 1964, Notes). This may take different forms. For example, in 2020, social media is our soap box; most people learnt of Floyd’s murder through videos on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It is where we bear witness, mobilise and express solidarity (Ransby, 2018, pp. 100-1). Baldwin’s call for change can be interpreted within this modern context, where we can seek to raise consciousness and reorder society through the internet, protest marches, and the political system.

Conclusion

Like Baldwin, Black Lives Matter has disturbed the peace. This essay concludes that America in 2020 would benefit from a closer understanding of Baldwin’s ideas, many of which are echoed within the foundational principles and struggles of the movement. ‘History is literally present in all we do’, he wrote, and a deeper historical analysis of his writings and words reveals a thinker who paved a path for liberation today in multiple ways – as someone who rejected compromise with white liberals, spoke honestly about racial inequality, spearheaded carceral studies, questioned traditional ideas of masculinity, and analysed the importance of historical representation (Glaude, 2020, p. 189). He not only produced the blunt truth about race relations in America but offered a way out – deeper personal analysis at individual levels, using love to raise consciousness and accept responsibility, and committing to change and sacrifice. According to Alicia Garza, one of the Black Lives Matter movement’s founders, there are two ways forward for America now: the traditional legal route, which has failed Black people, and then the one which pushes Black lives to matter no matter the sacrifice (Wortham, 2020). Baldwin’s work today thus makes a plea for us to confront difficult histories for the sake of progress, and to educate ourselves and others. When Black America gasps, ‘I can’t breathe,’ he appeals to the country to find his work, commit to change and gain consciousness – or else, there will be fire.

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