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b5844f8
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Lord, that Hollywood train, forever coming round the bend!
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trains
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James Baldwin |
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4dec89a
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Negroes are Americans and their destiny is the country's destiny. They have no other experience besides their experience on this continent and it is an experience which cannot be rejected, which yet remains to be embraced. If, as I believe, no American Negro exists who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in the skull, then what most significantly fails to be illuminated here is the paradoxical adjustment which is perpetually made..
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James Baldwin |
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c7ae126
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The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War marks, for me, a turning point in the Negro's relation to America. To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded. One began to pity them, or to hate them. You must put yourself in the skin of a man who is wearing the uniform of his country, is a candidate for death in its defense, and who is called a "nigger" by his co..
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James Baldwin |
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fb19c8a
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For, without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure's inventions are soon exhausted. There must be a soul within the body you are holding, a soul which you are striving to meet, a soul which is striving to meet yours.
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passion
sex
soul
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James Baldwin |
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c1fc342
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The root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much hate white men as simply wants them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children's way.
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James Baldwin |
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bbb7014
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Now, for the first time, I began to be aware of my heart, the heart itself: and with this awareness, conscious terror came. I realized that I knew nothing whatever about the way we are put together; and I realized that what I did not know might be in the process of killing me.
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James Baldwin |
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48f6197
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I remembered my mother's insistence that I always wear clean underwear because I might get knocked down by a car on the way to or from school and I and the family would be disgraced even beyond the grave, presumably, if my underwear was dirty. And I began to worry, in fact, as the doctor sniffed and prodded, about the state of the shorts I was wearing. This made me want to laugh. But I could not breathe.
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emergency
underwear
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James Baldwin |
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6d2967f
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This laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom the pain of living is not real. ... this laughter is universal and never can be stilled.
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James Baldwin |
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e915338
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I was also able to see that the principles governing the rites and customs of the churches in which I grew up did not differ from the principles governing the rites and customs of other churches, white. The principles were Blindness, Loneliness, and Terror, the first principle necessarily and actively cultivated in order to deny the two others. I would love to believe that the principles were Faith, Hope, and Charity, but this is clearly no..
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James Baldwin |
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f918178
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People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.
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James Baldwin |
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0894937
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But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.
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James Baldwin |
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1f8b3fa
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The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it. In
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James Baldwin |
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7a9c9e6
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For the horrors of the American Negro's life there has been almost no language.
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James Baldwin |
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ba979de
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I am proud of these people not because of their color but because of their intelligence and their spiritual force and their beauty. The country should be proud of them, too, but, alas, not many people in this country even know of their existence. And the reason for this ignorance is that a knowledge of the role these people played--and play--in American life would reveal more about America to Americans than Americans wish to know.
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James Baldwin |
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21374b5
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The paradox--and a fearful paradox it is--is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. 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. How can the American Negro's past be used? The unpre..
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James Baldwin |
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13d682e
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When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto? Perhaps I might have been able to reconcile myself even to this ..
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James Baldwin |
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d0371ca
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The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes-- I am not speaking now of its racial value, another matter altogether-- is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened. One wishes they would say so more often.
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racism
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James Baldwin |
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89ecd73
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It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less cheerful step of considering just what effect this mutual contempt has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very little to do with one another.)
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americans
contempt
distrust
politicians
politics
trust
united-states
usa
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James Baldwin |
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95cfc06
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It is a fact that every American Negro bears a name that originally belonged to the white man whose chattel he was. I am called Baldwin because I was either sold by my African tribe or kidnapped out of it into the hands of a white Christian named Baldwin, who forced me to kneel at the foot of the cross. I am, then, both visibly and legally the descendant of slaves in a white, Protestant country, and this is what it means to be an American N..
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James Baldwin |
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322a5bb
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Well, hell, if people keep telling you you ain't no good' - she [Leona] tried to laugh - 'you bound to turn out pretty bad.
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James Baldwin |
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167011b
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But that battered word, truth, having made its appearance here, confronts one immediately with a series of riddles and has, moreover, since so many gospels are preached, the unfortunate tendency to make one belligerent.
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James Baldwin |
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b093ae8
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Malcolm--the world's much more like me than it is like you. People recognize me. They see me in their mirror. But they don't hardly ever see you. You're not in the mirror with them.
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James Baldwin |
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f86fd19
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You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.
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James Baldwin |
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2b60b92
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With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots.
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James Baldwin |
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f567aa4
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They knew that no one heard, that bloodless people cannot be made to bleed. So they blew what everyone had heard before, they reassured everyone that nothing terrible was happening.
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James Baldwin |
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1017ef5
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I wanted to say so many things. Yet when I opened my mouth, I made no sound. And yet - I do not know what I felt for Giovanni. I felt nothing for Giovanni, I felt terror and pity and a rising lust.
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James Baldwin |
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65d4f15
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An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world
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artists
emotion
growth
life
revelation
spirituality
writers
writing
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James Baldwin |
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64884f3
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But our humanity is our burden, our life; we need not battle for it; we need only to do what is infinitely more difficult--that is, accept it.
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James Baldwin |
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46ce210
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One is absolutely forced to make perpetual qualifications and one's own reactions are always canceling each other out. It is this, really, which has driven so many people mad, both white and black. One is always in the position of having to decide between amputation and gangrene. Amputation is swift but time may prove that amputation was not necessary--or one may delay the amputation too long. Gangrene is slow, but it is I,possible to be su..
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James Baldwin |
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5359d88
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It is axiomatic that the Negro is religious, which is to say that he stands in fear of the God our ancestors gave us and before whom we all tremble yet. There are probably more churches in Harlem than in any other ghetto in this city and they are going full blast every night and some of them are filled with praying people every day. This, supposedly, exemplifies the Negro's essential simplicity and good-will; but it is actually a fairly des..
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James Baldwin |
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757f234
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Their faith may be described as childlike, but the end it serves is often sinister. It may, indeed, "keep them happy"--a phrase carrying the inescapable inference that the way of life imposed on Negroes makes them quite actively unhappy--but also, and much more significantly, religion operates here as a complete and exquisite fantasy revenge: white people own the earth and commit all manner of abomination and injustice on it; the bad will b..
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James Baldwin |
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b3f8a2b
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It was the Lord who knew of the impossibility every parent in that room faced: how to prepare the child for the day when the child would be despised and how to create in the child - by what means? - a stronger antidote to this poison than one had found for oneself.
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James Baldwin |
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0e0a306
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but the African has not yet endured the utter alienation of himself from his people and his past. His mother did not sing "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," and he has not, all his life long, ached for acceptance in a culture which pronounced straight hair and white skin the only acceptable beauty. They face each other, the Negro and the African, over a gulf of three hundred years - an alienation too vast to be conquered in an even..
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James Baldwin |
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926b4ad
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Any society inevitably produces its criminals, but a society at once rigid and unstable can do nothing whatever to alleviate the poverty of its lowest members, cannot present to the hypothetical young man at the crucial moment that so-well-advertised right path.
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James Baldwin |
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b8f5e94
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I don't think the negro problem can be discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short, the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it. I believe this the more firmly because it is the overwhelming tendency to sp..
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James Baldwin |
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5a6b3f6
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So that any writer, looking back over even so short a span of time as I am here forced to assess, finds that the things which hurt him and the things which helped him cannot be divorced from each other; he could be helped in a certain way only because he was hurt in a certain way; and his help is simply to be enabled to move from one conundrum to the next--one is tempted to say that he moves from one disaster to the next.
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James Baldwin |
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90a752f
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The people who think of themselves as White have the choice of becoming human or irrelevant.
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James Baldwin |
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a975665
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consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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James Baldwin |
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e2f0dc7
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I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
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James Baldwin |
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b2d0d02
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In America, it is true, the appearance is perpetually changing, each generation greeting with short-lived exultation yet more dazzling additions to our renowned facade. But the ghetto, anxiety, bitterness, and guilt continue to breed their indescribable complex of tensions. What time will bring Americans is at last their own identity. It is on this dangerous voyage and in the same boat that the American Negro will make peace with himself an..
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James Baldwin |
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d7bcb24
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social affairs are not generally speaking the writer's prime concern, whether they ought to be or not; it is absolutely necessary that he establish between himself and these affairs a distance which will allow, at least, for clarity, so that before he can look forward in any meaningful sense, he must first be allowed to take a long look back.
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James Baldwin |
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3317004
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Every man in the chapel hoped that when his hour came he, too, would be eulogized, which is to say forgiven, and that all of his lapses, greeds, errors, and strayings from the truth would be invested with coherence and looked upon with charity. This was perhaps the last thing humans could give each other and it was what they demanded, after all, of the Lord.
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death
eulogies
forgiveness
funerals
generosity
remembrance
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James Baldwin |
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0a204c6
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the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
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James Baldwin |
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2ccd22f
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Up to today we are set at a division, so that he may not marry our daughters or our sisters, nor may he--for the most part--eat at our tables or live in our houses. Moreover, those who do, do so at the grave expense of a double alienation: from their own people, whose fabled attributes they must either deny or, worse, cheapen and bring to market; from us, for we require of them, when we accept them, that they at once cease to be Negroes and..
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James Baldwin |