Lying to Each Other in America
In ‘Begin Again,’ Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. re-introduces us to James Baldwin, and to ourselves
James Baldwin’s effortless writing style drew me in long before I fully understood his message. His voice rang out in the universal language of truth amidst pain, and though his circumstances were far more acute than mine, he gave voice to my own journey in the valley.
“You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain…” — James Baldwin (pg. 219)
For me, growing up as a book-smart white boy in the 21st century, Baldwin was always on the other side of the coin from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: The resonant reverend and the queer novelist. Baldwin’s prose surgically cut to the heart of the matter, exposing the racism of mid-20th century America for exactly what it was, whereas King’s sermons came across as a gentle invitation to love. Dr. King constantly appealed to the better nature of Americans, urging his listeners upwards, towards this country’s lofty ideals. For James Baldwin, such appeals were naive.
“It is the responsibility of the Negro writer to excavate the real history of this country… to tell us what really happened to get us where we are now. We must tell the truth till we can no longer bear it.” — James Baldwin (pg. 4)
The truth Baldwin refers to is that America, for all her lofty ideals, was founded upon a deafeningly silent lie. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the words, “all men are created equal,” it was fully understood by his readers in 1776 who was included under “all men,” and who was left out. Active kidnapping, shipping, and slave labor of predominantly native African men and women would continue for another 86 years after Jefferson’s pretty words. When the slaves were finally freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, it took very little time indeed for new structures to take slavery’s place. History texts group much of the atrocity, lynching, and entrapment of the next 100 years under the Jim Crow label; it was slavery by a different name. Daily was the reminder, if you were black, “colored,” or anything other than white, this country was not for you.
For James Baldwin and Dr. King, both born in the 1920’s, this was the lie they were born into: the dangling carrot of the American Dream, and separate doors to that dream based on the color of your skin.
Both men knew that their words would fall under the white gaze, that was inevitable. While the gulf in baseline literacy rates was closing, education did not guarantee access, and to step onto the national stage in 1950’s America was to speak to a white, Christian audience. But where King might appeal to his audience through Christian truisms, “hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” Baldwin wasn’t afraid to swing at American idols: “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”
Although never explicitly stated, King was safe to let into the family library because he always had Jesus on his lips. Following in the footsteps of Jesus, he chose to integrate his beliefs into life and action, and that decision ultimately cost him his life. Despite the decades-long sugarcoating of King, if you read him, you’ll find the fearless truth-telling that got him targeted ruthlessly by the FBI, and finally murdered. When asked to condemn rioting in 1968, he rightly pointed out that, “our nation’s summer of riots are caused by our nation’s winter’s of delay.”
King knew full well, as any honest American knew in the 60s, that outrage over property damage only served to distract from underlying injustice. After all, was it not Jesus who ransacked the temple when he witnessed systemic entrapment in ancient Israel? Wasn’t the tinder of the American Revolution sparked in Boston with a crowd hurling rocks and ice at British soldiers, another crowd dumping shiploads of tea into the harbor?
No, white America squirms at the sight of a burning Wendy’s, then as now, because we are finally forced to acknowledge what is, for our black brothers and sisters, still a lived, daily reality.
James Baldwin inhabited this reality in The Fire Next Time, written in 1963, in the throes of the Civil Rights movement. Here we find Baldwin giving language to the truth that this country is free if you fit in, but its promise and its hope is not reserved for the young, black boy to whom he writes. It’s still too easy for us to glance over the story of Emmett Till, a 14 year-old black boy lynched in 1955 for offending a white woman, or Dorothy Counts, a 15 year-old black girl who walked to Harry Harding High School in 1957, jeered and spit upon by a mob of white children, and grown men and women.
For 21st century Americans, the Civil Rights movement is recounted in our books as a joyous victory. For Baldwin it was a costly war, daily revealing the vile heartbeat of American racism, and The Fire Next Time, he warns of more pain to come until America confronted its sickness. History would prove him right.
Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington in 1963, and the results of the movement are seen in the Civil Rights Act of ’64, Voting Rights Act of ‘65, and the Civil Rights Act of ’68. But legislation cannot heal the diseases that rot the human heart, and the cost of exposing America to her sins was high: Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963, Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, and Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Fred Hampton was assassinated in 1969, Assata Shakur would be hunted and jailed, as well as Angela Davis, and Kwame Ture.
“The seventies involved a confrontation with a frightening truth: that despite the sacrifices and costs of the black freedom struggle, the country remained profoundly racist and, no matter its proclamations to the contrary, white America was perfectly comfortable with that fact.” — Glaude (pg. 150)
America chose the lie again, sprucing up the martyred King’s words while choosing Nixon’s “law & order” dogwhistle, and a return to times of old in the form of a retaliatory War on Drugs.
“By 1979, the decade-long congressional push for a national holiday to celebrate Dr. King had gained enough steam to reach a vote in the house, though it did not yet succeed. But Baldwin worried that tributes to King served to obscure a deeper truth… Baldwin lamented, the memorials and the named streets perfumed the carnage. They hid in plain sight what actually happened to many of the movement’s survivors and their children. All one had to do was look down the street signs for Dr. Martlin Luther King Jr. Avenue and see the poor neighbohoods along it to get the point.” — Glaude (pg. 158)
This pattern continued and was ultimately cemented by Reagan’s acceleration of tough on crime policies throughout the 80s, and King’s dream was snuffed. Through the slow burn of betrayal wandered a broken James Baldwin, having watched so many of his friends and allies sacrificed on the altar of America’s lie.
“We must recognize the relationship between devaluing black people, seeing them as inherently criminal, and our willingness to cast black people aside and to lock them up in alarming numbers. Since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, we have witnessed a 500 percent increase in the number of people in America’s prisons and jails. More than two million Americans are incarcerated, and 67% of that population are people of color. Our history corrupts the soul in such a way that we have stood by in relative silence as this happened.” — Glaude (pg. 177)
When confronted, even by the Reverend King, we took the words on love and integrated them into the gaslighting vocabulary of American thought, side-stepping engagement with inherent contradictions within American policy, institutions, and most devastatingly, American hearts. Racism was the tape worm, killing us from the inside, and we shot the doctors who dared prescribe surgery.
This is the sickness that can drive men mad, and it certainly drove Baldwin to despair: he attempted suicide several times. But it is more than a helpless sickness, that analogy spares us any agency in the equation. There is in America a strain of stubborn refusal to grow up, and even at times, a celebration of ignorance.
“There is a cult of ignorance in America… nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” — Isaac Asimov
It is within this context that Glaude, tilts the lens to our modern mess. Americans so badly want this current moment to be about the cartoon villain in the executive office. We cannot make the mistake of ignoring our collective disease. Trump is merely a symptom of the deeper internal sickness, an extreme manifestation of the lie within all of us. Collectively, America is being asked to confront the lie, and confront the ways in which that lie still chokes us out from true community, true love for our neighbor, and forgiveness for our generational sin.
“We are told every day not to believe what we see happening all around us or what we feel in the marrow of our bones. We are told, for example, that Trumpism is exceptional, a unique threat to our democracy. This view that Trump, and Trump alone, stresses the fabric of our country lets us off the hook. It feeds into the lie that Baldwin spent the majority of his life trying to convince us to confront. It attempts to explain away as isolated events what today’s cellphone footage exposes as part of our everyday experience.” — Glaude (pg. 54)
Glaude asks us whether we’re willing to sit in the pain, in the shared trauma, in the interwoven nightmare. It is vital that we not miss this moment for what it is: George Floyd’s brutal murder is not an isolated incident, and the complete lack of justice or compassion is the inevitable outcome in a country that still has not rooted out the rot that spreads through our vital organs. The Civil Rights movement is happening right now, today. Where we stand now, who we defend, and who we vilify, is our barometer for whether we have any concept of justice or truth left in America.
Are you willing to stop romantisizing the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's? Are you willing to confront the generational lie, that some of us are more equal, more American than others?
Here are 3 simple ways to start a new inner dialogue:
- Get curious about your roots — How did your family talk about race? Was it left unmentioned? Are there moments in your own life that reinforced destructive ways of thinking, that reinforce the lie?
- Educate yourself — Dedicate time to broadening your own understanding, or engaging with an author or idea you feel apprehensive toward. For example: How is America’s prison industrial complex any different than 20th century Jim Crow laws?
- Speak up, and listen — Internalized racism is woven within the fabric of American life, there isn’t a family in this country who isn’t wrestling with it. Are you willing to engage with the hard work of untangling yourself, your family, and your friends from the lie that chokes us all?
“Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” — James Baldwin
