BIBLIOTECA TECLA SALA November 21, 2019

« You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me. Not everything that is faced can Contents: Introduction 1 be changed; but nothing can Brief Author 2-3 Biography be changed until it is faced. From Remember 4-5 This House to I Am Not Your Negro: An Unfinished Book » Becomes A Successful Movie

James Baldwin and 6- Margaret Mead on 10 Indentity, Race, the Immigrant Experience, and Why the “Melting Pot” Is a Problematic Metaphor

Notes 11

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Brief Author Biography

James Arthur Baldwin was born minister for three years at the In 1944 he met author Richard on August 2, 1924 in New York Fireside Pentecostal Assembly, Wright, who helped him to land City’s Harlem and was raised but gradually lost his desire to the 1945 Eugene F. Saxton under very trying circumstances. preach as he began to question fellowship. Despite the financial As is the case with many writers, Christian tenets. freedom the fellowship provided, Baldwin’s upbringing is reflected in Baldwin was unable to complete his writings, especially in Go Tell It Shortly after he graduated from his novel that year. He found the on the Mountain. high school in 1942, Baldwin was social tenor of the United States compelled to find work in order increasingly stifling even though Baldwin’s stepfather, an to help support his brothers and such prestigious periodicals as evangelical preacher, struggled to sisters; mental instability had the Nation, New support a large family and incapacitated his stepfather. Leader and Commentary began to demanded the most rigorous Baldwin took a job in the defense accept his essays and short religious behavior from his nine industry in Belle Meade, N.J., and stories for publication. In 1948 he children. As a youth Baldwin read there, not for the first time, he moved to Paris, using funds from constantly and even tried writing. was confronted with racism, a Rosenwald Foundation He was an excellent student who discrimination and the debilitating fellowship to pay his passage. sought escape from his regulations of segregation. The Most critics feel that this journey environment through literature, experiences in New Jersey were abroad was fundamental to movies and theater. During the closely followed by his Baldwin’s development as an summer of his 14th birthday he stepfather’s death, after which author. underwent a dramatic religious Baldwin determined to make conversion, partly in response to writing his sole profession. “Once I found myself on the his nascent sexuality and partly as other side of the ocean,” Baldwin a further buffer against the ever- Baldwin moved to Greenwich told the New York Times, “I could present temptations of drugs and Village and began to write a see where I came from very crime. He served as a junior novel, supporting himself by clearly, and I could see that I performing a variety of odd jobs. carried myself, which is my home,

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with me. You can never escape disillusioned as he felt his considerable renown, James that. I am the grandson of a celebrity being exploited as Baldwin bore articulate witness slave, and I am a writer. I must entertainment. Baldwin did not to the unhappy consequences of deal with both.” Through some feel that his speeches and essays American racial strife. Baldwin’s difficult financial and emotional were producing social change. writing career began in the last periods, Baldwin undertook a The assassinations of three of years of legislated segregation; process of self-realization that his associates, , his fame as a social observer included both an acceptance of Martin Luther King, Jr. and grew in tandem with the civil his heritage and an admittance of Malcolm X, shattered his rights movement as he mirrored his bisexuality. remaining hopes for racial African American aspirations, reconciliation across the U.S. disappointments and coping Baldwin’s move led to a burst of strategies in a hostile society. creativity that included Go Tell It At the time of his death from on the Mountain, Giovanni’s cancer late in 1987, Baldwin was Baldwin died on December 1, Room and other works. He also still working on two projects—a 1987 in France. wrote a series of essays probing play, The Welcome Table, and a the psychic history of the United biography of Martin Luther King, [https://www.chipublib.org/james States along with his inner self. Jr. Although he lived primarily in -baldwin-biography/] Many critics view Baldwin’s France, he never relinquished essays as his most significant his United States citizenship and contribution to American preferred to think of himself as literature. They include “Notes a “commuter” rather than as an of a Native Son,” “Nobody expatriate. Knows My Name,” “The Fire The publication of his collected Next Time,” “No Name in the essays, : Street” and “The Evidence of Collected Nonfiction 1948–1985, Things Not Seen.” and his subsequent death In addition to his books and sparked reassessments of his essays, Baldwin wrote plays that career and legacy. “Mr. Baldwin were produced on Broadway. has become a kind of prophet, a Both , a man who has been able to give a treatment of storefront public issue all its deeper moral, pentecostal religion, and Blues for historical and personal Mister Charlie, a drama based on significance,” remarked Robert the racially motivated murder of F. Sayre in Contemporary Emmett Till in 1955, had American Novelists. “Certainly successful Broadway runs and one mark of his achievement… numerous revivals. is that whatever deeper comprehension of the race issue Baldwin’s oratorical prowess— Americans now possess has honed in the pulpit as a youth— been in some way shaped by brought him into great demand him. And this is to have shaped as a speaker during the civil their comprehension of rights era. Baldwin embraced his themselves as well.” role as racial spokesman reluctantly and grew increasingly A novelist and essayist of

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From to I Am Not Your Negro:

the dominant story was not the INTRODUCTION real story. In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a I started reading James Baldwin The successful Haitian letter to his literary agent when I was a 15-year-old boy Revolution was ignored by describing his next project, searching for rational history (as Baldwin would put it: Remember This House. The book explanations to the because of the bad niggers we was to be a revolutionary, contradictions I was confronting were) because it was imposing a personal account of the lives and in my already nomadic life, which totally different narrative, which successive assassinations of three took me from Haiti to Congo to would have rendered the of his close friends—Medgar France to Germany and to the dominant slave narrative of the Evers, Malcolm X and Martin United States of America. day untenable. The colonial Luther King, Jr. Together with Aimée Césaire, conquests of the late nineteenth Jacques Stéphane Alexis, Richard At the time of Baldwin’s death in century would have been Wright, Gabriel García Márquez 1987, he left behind only thirty ideologically impossible if and Alejo Carpentier, James completed pages of his deprived of their civilizational Baldwin was one of the few manuscript. justification. And this justification authors that I could call “my would have no longer been In his incendiary documentary, own.” Authors who were needed if the whole world knew master filmmaker Raoul Peck speaking of a world I knew, in that these “savage” Africans had envisions the book James Baldwin which I was not just a footnote. already annihilated their never finished. The result is a They were telling stories powerful armies (especially radical, up-to-the-minute describing history and defining French and British) less than a examination of race in America, structure and human century ago. using Baldwin’s original words relationships which matched and flood of rich archival what I was seeing around me. I So what the four superpowers of material. I Am Not Your Negro is a could relate to them. You always the time did in an unusually journey into black history that need a Baldwin book by your peaceful consensus, was to shut connects the past of the Civil side. down Haiti, the very first black Rights movement to the present Republic, put it under strict I came from a country which had of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film economical embargo and a strong idea of itself, which had that questions black strangle it to its knees into fought and won against the most representation in Hollywood and oblivion and poverty. powerful army of the world beyond. And, ultimately, by (Napoleon's) and which had, in a And then they rewrote the confronting the deeper unique historical manner, whole story. connections between the lives stopped slavery in its tracks, and assassination of these three Flash forward. I remember my creating the first successful slave leaders, Baldwin and Peck have years in New York as a child. A revolution in the history of the produced a work that challenges more civilized time, I thought. It world, in 1804. the very definition of what was the sixties. In the kitchen of America stands for. I am talking about Haiti, the first this huge middle-class apartment free country of the Americas. in the former Jewish

Haitians always knew the real neighborhoods of Brooklyn, story. And they also knew that where we lived with several

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An Unfinished Book Becomes A Successful Movie other families, there was a kind of Medgar Evers died on June 12, This is exactly the point where I large oriental rug with effigies of 1963. really needed James Baldwin. Baldwin knew how to John Kennedy and Martin Luther Malcolm X died on February 21, deconstruct stories. He helped King hanging on the wall, the two 1965. martyrs, both legends of the time. me in connecting the story of a And Martin Luther King Jr. died liberated slave in its own nation, Except the tapestry was not telling on April 4, 1968. Haiti, and the story of modern the whole truth. It naively ignored United States of America and its the hierarchy between the two In the course of five years, these own painful and bloody legacy of figures, the imbalance of power three men were assassinated. slavery. I could connect the dots. that existed between them. And These three men were black, I looked to the films of Haile thereby it nullified any ability to but it is not the color of their Gerima. Of Charles Burnett. understand these two parallel skin that connected them. They These were my elders when I stories that had crossed path for a fought on quite different was a youth. short time, and left in their wake battlefields. And quite the foggy miasma of differently. But in the end, all Baldwin gave me a voice, gave me misunderstanding. three were deemed dangerous. the words, gave me the rhetoric. I grew up in a myth in which I was They were unveiling the haze of All I knew through instinct or both enforcer and actor. The racial confusion. through experience, Baldwin gave it a name and a shape. I had all myth of a single and unique James Baldwin also saw through the intellectual weapons I America. The script was well the system. And he loved these needed. written, the soundtrack allowed men. These assassinations broke no ambiguity, the actors of this him down. For sure, we will have strong utopia, black or white, were winds against us. The present He was determined to expose convincing. The production means time of discord and confusion is the complex links and similarities of this Blockbuster-Hollywood an unavoidable element. I am not among these three individuals. picture were phenomenal. With naive to think that the road He was going to write about rare episodic setbacks, the myth ahead will be easy or that the them. He was going to write his was strong, better; the myth was attacks will not be at time vicious. ultimate book, Remember This life, was reality. I remember the My commitment to make sure House, about them. Kennedys, Bobby and John, Elvis, that this film will not be buried or Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Dr. I came upon these three men sideline is uncompromising. Richard Kimble, and Mary Tyler and their assassination much We are in it for the long run. Moore very well. On the other later. These three facts, these Whatever time and effort it hand, Otis Redding, Paul Robeson, elements of history, from the takes. and Willie Mays are only vague starting point, the "evidence" reminiscences. Faint stories you might say, form a deep and [From the press release of the I "tolerated" in my memorial hard intimate personal reflection on Am Not Your Negro documentary, disk. Of course there was "Soul my own political and cultural at http://www.magpictures.com/ Train" on television, but it was mythology, my own experiences iamnotyournegro/press-kit] much later, and on Saturday of racism and intellectual morning, where it wouldn't offend violence. any advertisers.

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James Baldwin and Margaret Mead on Indentity, Race, the Immigrant Experience, and Why the “Melting Pot” Is a Problematic Metaphor - by Maria Popova.

“You’ve got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.”

The civil rights movement has the most world-famous poet second installment focuses on been accused of excluding alive, and an enormously identity, how we assemble it as women from its campaign for influential voice in the civil rights individuals, and how we “a brotherhood of man” and the dialogue; Mead, who was about construct it as a culture. feminist movement has been to turn seventy, had become the Mead and Baldwin first consider accused of excluding women of world’s first celebrity academic how identity’s contour is often color. It is both fair and — a visionary anthropologist shaped by the negative space reasonable to suppose that in any with groundbreaking field around it: movement of goodwill aimed at experience under her belt, who equality, such exclusions are not lectured at some of the most BALDWIN: It takes a lot to wrest deliberate but circumstantial — esteemed cultural institutions identity out of nothing… the product of cultural biases so and had a popular advice column MEAD: But nobody was talking deep-seated that they require in Redbook magazine. As a black about needing identity fifty years multiple directions of effort and man and a white woman who ago. We’ve started to worry about commitment to overcome. had come of age in the first half identity since people began losing it. of the twentieth century, before In the summer of 1970, a most And that gives us a new concept. the civil rights and women’s emboldening integration of these And now you go back and work on liberation movements, and as efforts took place on a stage in it and figure out what your identity queer people half a century New York City. On the evening is. Fifty years ago you might have before marriage equality, their of August 25, Margaret moved to Paris cause it was the formative experiences were at Mead and James Baldwin sat thing to do. After all, lots of white once worlds apart and strewn down for a remarkable public writers went to Europe too, in order with significant similarity. conversation, the transcript of to understand America. But you which was eventually published Since the depth and dimension of wouldn’t have said the same thing as . For seven and a the conversation between these about your identity fifty years ago. half hours over the course of two uncontainable minds cannot be […] days, they discussed everything reduced to a single thread of from power and privilege to race synthesis — this is, after all, the The whole spirit of the North has and gender to capitalism and book I have annotated most been to keep other people out. It’s democracy. What emerged was a heavily in a lifetime of reading — not only been about keeping out dialogue of total commitment, I have decided to examine its black people, it’s been about deep mutual respect, and various facets in a multi-part keeping out everybody… The profound prescience. series, the first installment in North has always tried to establish which covered forgiveness and its identity by cutting other people By that point, Baldwin, forty-six the crucial difference between out and off. and living in Paris, was arguably guilt and responsibility. This

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[…] I represented the richest nation in emerged a sense of superiority or the world and there was no way inferiority, depending on the The Northern identity is dependent whatever for them to suspect that I particular calculation. If those upon whom you can keep out. considered myself to be far worse black graduate students were Mead later revisits this notion of off than they… The reason I was smoking Marlboros or wearing identity as a function of using what in Paris was that I considered my denim — the ultimate, most we are not to define what we are: sports shirts, for example, and my highly prized, usually contraband cigarettes, had been a little too MEAD: The white world … [has] marker of Western privilege — expensive and cost me a little more built its dignity and built its sense of the mental math automatically than I could afford. They did not identity on the fact it wasn’t black, registered them as “better off” know that. the way males in this country built than us, people of greater their sense of superiority over the I had a parallel experience privilege, and thus worthy of that fact that they are not female. learning about race and identity peculiar blend of reverence and as a child. begrudging envy. (Never mind But there exists a certain that they were poor grad hierarchy of desirable identities When I was growing up in students, likely of the same based on the social hierarchy of communist Bulgaria, the Iron means as all grad students, privilege. She offers a pause-giving Curtain prevented practically all anywhere in the world, ever.) If empirical perspective on that influx of foreigners and people they wore no denim and smoked totem pole of desirability of different ethnicities. The only no American cigarettes, then they regarding race and gender: major exception was the were dismissed as irrelevant — International Institute of Sofia MEAD: [Psychologists] asked the no better off or worse off than University, located near my little white boys which they would we were, just members of the grandparents’ small apartment, rather be, little white girls or little same ill-fated human lot. Race where my parents and I shared a Negro boys. What do you think they was merely a marker of pull-out sofa. Passing by the said? … They said they would rather foreignness and a quicker cue for campus on the way to school, I be little Negro boys. the mental math to be would occasionally see one of performed. Once again, it was a And yet identity, rather than a several young black men — case of identity contoured by static fixture, is an assemblage of graduate students from a handful negative space. responsive parts that reorganize of communist and socialist relative to cultural context. countries in North and East Baldwin offers another example Baldwin offers an illustrative Africa. But what registered that illustrates how other such example: immediately wasn’t skin color, sociocultural variables can eclipse race in this calculus of privilege BALDWIN: When I first hit Paris, for for the markers of privilege are even within an ethnic group: example, I had dealt with cynical different in a country whose East and North Africans. They did entire identity was deeply BALDWIN: I remember once a few not see me, and it may be argued rooted in a sense of poverty. years ago, in the British Museum a that I did not see them either. But In encountering strangers, both black Jamaican was washing the they did see that I smoked Lucky native and foreign, Bulgarians floors or something and asked me Strikes and Pall Malls and that I had always engaged in a mental math where I was from, and I said I was American sports shirts. They did not estimating who is “better off” on born in New York. He said, “Yes, see that I did not have a penny; that the poverty axis — a self- but where are you from?” I did not did not make any difference. I came, comparison from which know what he meant. “Where did

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you come from before that?” he just got out of the various white Irishman,” “not a Pole”: over twenty explained. I said, “My mother was colleges and got a dashiki and let different things. born in Maryland.” “Where was their hair grow, I am terribly tired of Once again, the conversation your father born?” he asked. “My these middle-class darkies telling circles back to this notion of father was born in New Orleans.” me what it means to be black. But constructing identity by the He said, “Yes, but where are you I understand why they have to do deliberate exclusion of what we from?” Then I began to get it; very it! are not in order to carve out dimly, because now I was lost. And This assertion of identity what we are — a process that he said, “Where are you from in transcends race and spills over calls to mind Rodin’s famous Africa?” I said, “Well, I don’t know,” into other demographic proclamation that the art of and he was furious with me. He categories. As a first-generation sculpting is about removing the said, and walked away, “You mean immigrant in America three stone not part of the sculpture. you did not care enough to find decades after this historic Baldwin captures this paradox out?” dialogue, I found Mead’s remarks succinctly: Now, how in the world am I going to on national identity particularly BALDWIN: It is a curious way to explain to him that there is virtually pause-giving: find your identity, labeling yourself no way for me to have found out MEAD: It always takes two by labeling all the things that you’re where I came from in Africa? So it is generations to really lose not. a kind of tug of war. The black something, but in two generations American is looked down on by They consider another aspect of you can lose it. other dark people as being an object identity — identity as an abjectly used. They envy him on the […] assemblage of ancestry: one hand, but on the other hand The culture in this country that is BALDWIN: You are always the they also would like to look down on … most limited, is that of the receptacle of what has gone before him as having struck a despicable second and third generations away you, whether or not you know it bargain. from Europe. They have lost what and whether or not you can reach But identity, Baldwin argues, isn’t they had and aren’t ready to take it. on anything else. They are scared something we are born with — […] rather, it is something we claim to death and so busy being for ourselves, then must assert American. MEAD: “We’re sort of monglers,” I was taught to say as a child. willfully to the world: […] Monglers is a Pennsylvania dialect BALDWIN: You’ve got to tell the What we have in this country at word for a dog of mixed world how to treat you. If the world present is a very large number of background. tells you how you are going to be second- and third-generation But ancestry isn’t only a function treated, you are in trouble. Europeans who aren’t really sure of genealogy — while we can’t they’re here. Remarking on the emerging crop choose our genetic ancestors, of elite-educated African Fifteen years ago, if I gave a test to we can choose and construct American boys they had people to fill in: “I am an American, our own intellectual, creative, discussed earlier in the not a _____,” most people would and ideological lineage. I conversation, he adds: say “foreigner,” and a few said started Brain Pickings with the I’m tired of being told by people who “Communist.” Now, they say “not a intention of assembling my own Russian,” “not an Italian,” “not an cultural lineage based on ideas

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from minds belonging to brains I the reasons for that election. It generations to answer. wasn’t genetically related to, a reveals that depth of whatever In one of his many brilliant kind of spiritual and intellectual dreams you have, and everyone asides, Baldwin makes a curious reparenting. Baldwin wasn’t lives by his dreams, really. remark about how the genetically related to Shakespeare Mead notes that there are very eradication of neighborliness — at least directly; all humans few black people in America makes the “high-rise slums” of are, of course, genetically related who don’t have some white housing projects so ghastly and further down the line — but the ancestors, with which Baldwin such a threat to the mutual Bard was very much his cultural agrees, and they go on to honoring of identity: ancestor. All of us do that, in one explore why the “melting pot” form or another — we are BALDWIN: The anonymity of it is a metaphor is deeply problematic cultural stardust. tremendous insult. People won’t in honoring the actual bear it. People will become Mead articulates this elegantly: architecture of identity: monstrous before they can bear it. MEAD: You see, I think we have to MEAD: It isn’t a melting pot, is it? In a way, the internet is a high- get rid of people being proud of BALDWIN: No, it isn’t. Nobody ever rise slum — the very substance their ancestors, because after all got melted. People aren’t meant to of neighborly friendliness, which they didn’t do a thing about it. What be melted. is predicated on knowing one right have I to be proud of my another’s identity and thus grandfather? I can be proud of my MEAD: That old image from World honoring one another’s child if I didn’t ruin her, but nobody War I is a bad image: to melt personhood, vanishes behind the has any right to be proud of his everyone down. veneer of anonymity, shielded by ancestors. BALDWIN: Because people don’t which people perpetrate […] want to be melted down. they resist monstrous acts. it with all their strength. The one thing you really ought to be To illustrate the complex allowed to do is to choose your MEAD: Of course! Who wants to variables of identity beyond race, ancestors. be melted down? Mead shares a poignant autobiographical anecdote of her […] BALDWIN: Melted down into what? It’s a very unfortunate image. own formative experience with We have a term for this in the duality of privilege and anthropology: mythical ancestors… […] hardship, underpinned by the They are spiritual and mental But where this takes us, I do not conscious choice not to partake ancestors, they’re not biological know. I really do not know. I can’t in the era’s limiting and bigoted ancestors, but they are terribly any longer find the point of treatment of difference: important. departure. Part of it is, of course, MEAD: I was born in a family BALDWIN: We are talking about the great dispersal of the Africans. where I was the child … that both the models that the human race But then everyone has been my parents wanted. I had the traits chooses to work from, in effect. It is dispersed all over the world for one that they liked, that each one of difficult to imagine anyone choosing reason or another. And how out of them liked in the other. I was told Hitler as an ancestor, for this one arrives at any kind of sense from the time I was born that I was example… It runs very close to the of human unity, for lack of a better totally satisfactory. I had a chance terms in which one elects to live and phrase, is a very grave question and to be what I wanted to be and I obviously would take many, many

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have always been able to be what I had had your father as a father but wanted to be… Because I was born he had been white… He could where I was, I was fortunate. And it have been, you know. There have wasn’t only because I was white, been white preachers that were just because there are an extraordinary as rigid as your father. number of white people in this […] country who are born very unfortunately. I might have been It wasn’t because I was sitting, vis-à very fortunate had I been the third -vis black people, being privileged, child of my parents instead of the as has happened in many parts of first, with a baby who died in the world. I didn’t belong to a between somewhere so my father separate class. I lived in a small decided that he was never going to Pennsylvania community and I was love the younger children too much. brought up with tremendous concern for every person who was But I have got to talk to you, you poor or different in that community. see, and I think that this is a In a sense my happiness was a problem. It isn’t only race. It is function of the fact that my mother weighted by race, oh, it’s weighted did insist that I call the black by race. So you give yourself the woman who worked for us Mrs. My same father and the same mother felicity was a function of a denial, if but you grow up in a small Iowa you like, or a refusal of a caste town. Fifty percent, seventy-five position. percent, God knows how much of suffering you would not have had, see? I mean, you just think of the [https:// things that you suffered by, and www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/26 most of them were created by /margaret-mead-james-baldwin-a- Harlem. Now, your father. If you rap-on-race-2/]

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