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ef90c95
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but what men imagine they are doing and what they are doing in fact are rarely the same thing.
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James Baldwin |
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e6f5043
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quoted Djuna Barnes: "Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same."
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James Baldwin |
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13c9158
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He was suggesting that all Negroes were held in a state of supreme tension between the difficult, dangerous relationship in which they stood to the white world and the relationship, not a whit less painful or dangerous, in which they stood to each other. He was suggesting that in the acceptance of this duality lay their strength, that in this, precisely, lay their means of defining and controlling the world in which they lived.
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James Baldwin |
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1f35f1b
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up. All of it, the literal and the fanciful.
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James Baldwin |
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f34d278
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One day, Richard would turn to me, with the light of sudden understanding on his face, and say, "Oh, that's what you mean." And then, so ran the dream, a great and invaluable dialogue would have begun. And the great value of this dialogue would have been not only in its power to instruct all of you, and the ages. Its great value would have been in its power to instruct me, its power to instruct Richard: for it would have been nothing less t..
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James Baldwin |
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2e608e4
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One day, Richard would turn to me, with the light of sudden understanding on his face, and say, "Oh, that's what you mean." And then, so ran the dream, a great and invaluable dialogue would have begun. And the great value of this dialogue would have been not only in its power to instruct all of you, and the ages. Its great value would have been in its power to instruct me, its power to instruct Richard: for it would have been nothing less t..
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James Baldwin |
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3b187d7
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Negroes know about each other what can here be called family secrets, and this means that one Negro, if he wishes, can "knock" the other's "hustle"--can give his game away. It is still not possible to overstate the price a Negro pays to climb out of obscurity--for it is a particular price, involved with being a Negro; and the great wounds, gouges, amputations, losses, scars, endured in such a journey cannot be calculated."
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James Baldwin |
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9a883dc
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An identity is questioned only when it is menaced...Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self...
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James Baldwin |
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2c90dde
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The world had prepared no place for you, and if the world had its way, no place would ever exist. Now, this is true for everyone, but, in the case of a Negro, this truth is absolutely naked: if he deludes himself about it, he will die. This is not the way this truth presents itself to white men, who believe the world is theirs and who, albeit unconsciously, expect the world to help them in the achievement of their identity.
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James Baldwin |
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a8e1ecd
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The situation, therefore, in the colonial countries, is tragic," Cesaire continued. "Wherever colonization is a fact the indigenous culture begins to rot. And, among these ruins, something begins to be born which is not a culture but a kind of subculture, a subculture which is condemned to exist on the margin allowed it by European culture. This then becomes the province of a few men, the elite, who find themselves placed in the most artifi..
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James Baldwin |
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ae2e1a7
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In the culture to be born there will no doubt be old and new elements. How these elements will be mixed is not a question to which any individual can respond. The response must be given by the community. But we can say this: that the response will be given, and not verbally, but in tangible facts, and by action.
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James Baldwin |
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e77de61
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An American Negro, however deep his sympathies, or however bright his rage, ceases to be simply a black man when he faces a black man from Africa. When I say simply a black man, I do not mean that being a black man is simple, anywhere. But I am suggesting that one of the prices an American Negro pays--or can pay--for what is called his "acceptance" is a profound, almost ineradicable self-hatred. This corrupts every aspect of his living, he ..
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James Baldwin |
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e307b43
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This lack of what may roughly be called social paranoia causes the American writer in Europe to feel--almost certainly for the first time in his life--that he can reach out to everyone, that he is accessible to everyone and open to everything. This is an extraordinary feeling. He feels, so to speak, his own weight, his own value.
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James Baldwin |
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dd5341e
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All cultures have, furthermore, an economic, social, and political base, and no culture can continue to live if its political destiny is not in its own hands. "Any political and social regime which destroys the self-determination of a people also destroys the creative power of that people." When this has happened the culture of that people has been destroyed. And it is simply not true that the colonizers bring to the colonized a new culture..
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James Baldwin |
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499fdd8
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Thursday's great event was Aime Cesaire's speech in the afternoon, dealing with the relation between colonization and culture.
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James Baldwin |
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628b3cd
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I was, in short, but one generation removed from the South, which was now undergoing a new convulsion over whether black children had the same rights, or capacities, for education as did the children of white people. This is a criminally frivolous dispute, absolutely unworthy of this nation; and it is being carried on, in complete bad faith, by completely uneducated people. (We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, fo..
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James Baldwin |
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1274ff4
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The world tends to trap and immobilize you in the role you play; and it is not always easy--in fact, it is always extremely hard--to maintain a kind of watchful, mocking distance between oneself as one appears to be and oneself as one actually is.
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James Baldwin |
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7fa7c8f
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If you have been watching television lately, I think this is unendurably clear in the faces of those screaming people in the South, who are quite incapable of telling you what it is they are afraid of. They do not really know what it is they are afraid of, but they know they are afraid of something, and they are so frightened that they are nearly out of their minds. And this same fear obtains on one level or another, to varying degrees, thr..
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James Baldwin |
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cd48503
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On the contrary, we have a very deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately).
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James Baldwin |
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507616a
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In the first place, as the homeless wanderers of the twentieth century prove, the question of nationality no longer necessarily involves the question of allegiance. Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.
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James Baldwin |
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030c7c7
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Faulkner--among so many others!--is so plaintive concerning this "middle of the road" from which "extremist" elements of both races are driving him that it does not seem unfair to ask just what he has been doing there until now. Where is the evidence of the struggle he has been carrying on there on behalf of the Negro? Why, if he and his enlightened confreres in the South have been boring from within to destroy segregation, do they react wi..
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James Baldwin |
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d11d218
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I saw the Negro schools in Charlotte, saw, on street corners, several of their alumnae, and read about others who had been sentenced to the chain gang. This solved the mystery of just what made Negro parents send their children out to face mobs. White people do not understand this because they do not know, and do not want to know, that the alternative to this ordeal is nothing less than a lifelong ordeal. Those Negro parents who spend their..
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James Baldwin |
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b427614
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The Negroes in Harlem, who have no money, spend what they have on such gimcracks as they are sold. These include "wider" TV screens, more "faithful" hi-fi sets, more "powerful" cars, all of which, of course, are obsolete long before they are paid for. Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one's feet have simply been pl..
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James Baldwin |
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d02f50d
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The people who have managed to get off this block have only got as far as a more respectable ghetto. This respectable ghetto does not even have the advantages of the disreputable one--friends, neighbors, a familiar church, and friendly tradesmen; and it is not, moreover, in the nature of any ghetto to remain respectable long. Every Sunday, people who have left the block take the lonely ride back, dragging their increasingly discontented chi..
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James Baldwin |
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e09a130
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And then: 'Here comes your baby. Sois sage. Sois chic.' He moved slightly away and began talking to the boy next to him. And here my baby came indeed, through all that sunlight, his face flushed and his hair flying, his eyes, unbelievably, like morning stars.
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James Baldwin |
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2f3a569
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This war between the Southern cities and states is of the utmost importance, not only for the South, but for the nation. The Southern states are still very largely governed by people whose political lives, insofar, at least, as they are able to conceive of life or politics, are dependent on the people in the rural regions. It might, indeed, be more honorable to try to guide these people out of their pain and ignorance instead of locking the..
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James Baldwin |
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0781337
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Richard and I seemed really to be at the end of our rope, for he had done what he could for me, and it had not worked out, and now he was going away. It seemed to me that he was sailing into the most splendid of futures, for he was going, of all places! to France, and he had been invited there by the French government. But Richard did not seem, though he was jaunty, to be overjoyed. There was a striking sobriety in his face that day. He tal..
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James Baldwin |
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4dee34c
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Negroes know about each other what can here be called family secrets, and this means that one Negro, if he wishes, can "knock" the other's "hustle"--can give his game away. It is still not possible to overstate the price a Negro pays to climb out of obscurity--for it is a particular price, involved with being a Negro; and the great wounds, gouges, amputations, losses, scars, endured in such a journey cannot be calculated. But even this is n..
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James Baldwin |
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51adb9b
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This illusion owes everything to the great American illusion that our state is a state to be envied by other people: we are powerful, and we are rich. But our power makes us uncomfortable and we handle it very ineptly. The principal effect of our material well-being has been to set the children's teeth on edge. If we ourselves were not so fond of this illusion, we might understand ourselves and other peoples better than we do, and be enable..
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James Baldwin |
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9cacbf5
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Ah!" she said, "men may be at the mercy of women--I think men like that idea, it strokes the misogynist in them. But if a particular is ever at the mercy of a particular --why, he's somehow stopped being a man." --
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James Baldwin |
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d72950c
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People love different people in different ways.
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people
relationship
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James Baldwin |
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8b11ec1
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And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darkened wholly, Turned to towered Camelot; For ere she reached upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott.
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James Baldwin |
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7a96066
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Little breezes dusk 3 and shiver Through the wave that runs forever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot; Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.
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James Baldwin |
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4813def
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For a woman," she said, "I think a man is always a stranger. And there's something awful about being at the mercy of a stranger."
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James Baldwin |
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3ee8e43
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THE SOLITARY REAPER. Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary highland lass! Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pass! Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the vale profound Is overflowing with the sound. No nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time f..
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James Baldwin |
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c59d057
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ANY REAL CHANGE IMPLIES THE breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew; to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long ..
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James Baldwin |
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1107869
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Negroes know how little most white people are prepared to implement their words with deeds, how little, when the chips are down, they are prepared to risk. And this long history of moral evasion has had an unhealthy effect on the total life of the country, and has eroded whatever respect Negroes may once have felt for white people.
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James Baldwin |
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399363a
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In Africa, he said, there was none whatever. Africans do not, in fact, believe that Christianity is any longer real for Europeans, due to the immense scaffolding with which they have covered it, and the fact that this religion has no effect whatever on their conduct.
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James Baldwin |
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44ce3d2
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I do not know what I would do if you left me." For the first time I felt the suggestion of a threat in his voice--or I put it there. "I have been alone so long--I do not think I would be able to live if I had to be alone again."
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relationship
romantic-relationship
giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
suicidal
threat
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James Baldwin |
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fd09495
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People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else.
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James Baldwin |
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6bda1ef
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And: the only way anything ever gets done is when you make up your mind to do it.
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James Baldwin |
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6aa9b8a
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And the others, who have avoided all of these deaths, get up in the morning and go downtown to meet "the man." They work in the white man's world all day and come home in the evening to this fetid block. They struggle to instill in their children some private sense of honor or dignity which will help the child to survive. This means, of course, that they must struggle, stolidly, incessantly, to keep this sense alive in themselves, in spite ..
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James Baldwin |
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a42abda
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I loved her as much as ever and I still did not know how much that was.
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relationship
love
uncertain
romantic-relationship
giovanni-s-room
james-baldwin
confused
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James Baldwin |
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4fc9c50
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There were pauses in the music for the rushing, calling, halting piano. Everything would stop except the climbing of the soloist; he would reach a height and everything would join him, the violins first and then the horns; and then the deep blue bass and the flute and the bitter trampling drums; beating, beating and mounting together and stopping with a crash like daybreak. When I first heard the Messiah I was alone; my blood bubbled like f..
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James Baldwin |