James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. His works include Notes of a Native Son, If Beale Street Could Talk, Go Tell it On the Mountain, and The Fire Next Time. The last book is a political essay, published in 1962 and widely read in 1963. Baldwin was to African American literature in the early Sixties what Malcolm X was to politics. In his book he condemns white America for cruelty and racism. Baldwin was an émigré to France. His writing reflects deep alienation from America, and paints a very unflattering picture of white Americans.

On p. 4, he says "I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it…

But it is not permissible that the authors of such devastation should also be innocent. It is this innocence which constitutes the crime." [innocence here is use din a sarcastic way, and really means ignorance or unawareness]

Now, my dear namesake, these innocent and well-meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not very far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago (p. 6)

Speaking of his nephew's grandmother (Baldwin's mother), he writes sarcastically that the "innocent" should check with her. And he says "Your countrymen don't know that she exists either, though she has been working for them all their lives.

In a searing passage on p. 7, Baldwin writes "This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish….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. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where to go and what you could do (and how you could do it) and where you could live and whom you could marry. I know your countrymen do not agree with me about this, and I hear them saying 'you exaggerate.' But they do not know Harlem, and I do. So do you.

Further down on p. 8, Baldwin continues:

The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. Please try to be clear…about the reality which lies behind the words acceptance and integration. There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. …You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. The are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.

On p. 9 Baldwin says that these innocent Americans believed that his nephew's imprisonment made them safe, but they are losing their grasp of reality. And he calls white Americans the brothers, the lost younger brothers of African Americans. And he adds on p. 10, that black people cannot be free until they (white people) are free [free of fears, insecurities, anxieties].

Much further along, on p. 83, Baldwin speaks against retaliation and violence and "pay back." He says "I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. Whoever debases others is debasing himself. [or, to paraphrase, when you debase someone else you also debase yourself].

On p. 88 Baldwin says that people are not really eager to be equal, but they love the idea of being superior.

On p. 92-93 Baldwin suggests that there is not a black problem in America. Instead, there is white problem. The real problem he says, is because "white Americans have never, in all their long history, been able to look on him [the black man] as a man like themselves." And he refers to the stratagems that white Americans have used, and [still] use, to deny him his humanity. It is as if white people can only recognize someone as human being if that person is white. If one is not white, one is seen and treated as an animal. It is as if white=human, and anything not white is not human. This is a profound inadequacy or deficiency in any group of people.

He says that white Americans have considered it their shame that they must suffer thew presence of black people in their country, and have envied European nations, that the European nations were untroubled by the presence of black men on their shores. Baldwin comes close to saying, at the bottom of p. 93, that white America is trapped in a time warp. White Americans persist in thinking of the U.S. as a white nation, when America had 1 million black people in 1800, 4 million in 1860, ten million in 1900, and 22 million in 1960, [and 35 million in 2000]. A nation with millions of black people is no longer a white country. It is or has become a multiracial country. But white Americans see themselves as the true possessors of the country, with black people as guests who are permitted the privilege of staying here, but are not equal co-owners of the country, with the country as jointly shared property.

Baldwin sees American society as flawed and corrupt, and asks on p. 94 do we really want to be integrated into a burning house? Baldwin says that white people find it difficult to divest themselves of the notion that they possess some superior value that black people need, or want. He criticizes the assumption that the solution to the so-called race problem depends upon the speed with which black assimilate to become like whites.

On p. 95 he says flatly that there is very little in the white man's public or private life that anyone would desire to imitate.

At the bottom of p. 96 Baldwin says that the only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power--and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live.

He says on p. 98 that people who cannot suffer, and never grow up, can never discover who they are.

On p. 100, speaking of the black people who entered the back doors to work in white people's homes and said "yes, sir" and "No, Ma'am" in order to get the money for a new roof for the schoolhouse or beds for a dormitory, Baldwin says "It is very hard to believe that they were in any way inferior to the white men and women who opened those back doors. It is very hard to believe that those [black] men and women, raising their children, eating their greens, crying their curses, weeping their tears, singing their songs, making their love, as the sun rose, as the sun set, were in any way inferior to the white men and women who [secretly] crept over to share these splendors after the sun went down.

Baldwin was one of the most controversial writers of the 1960s. Baldwin says, on p. 101, "The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors…Negroes know far more about white Americans than that: it can be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents--or anyways, mothers--know about their children, and that they often regard white Americans that way.

(p. 102) The tendency has been to dismiss white people as slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.

He says "And one felt that if one had that white man's worldly advantages, one would never have become as bewildered or as joyless and as thoughtlessly cruel as he. The Negro came to the white man's door for a roof or for five dollars or for a letter to the judge; the white man came to the black man's door for love. But he was not often able to give what he came seeking. The price was too high; he had too much to lose. And the Negro knew this, too. When one knows certain things about a man, it is impossible for one to hate him, but unless one becomes a man--becomes equal--it is also impossible for one to love him. Ultimately, one tends to avoid him, for the universal characteristic of children is to assume that they have a monopoly on trouble, and therefore, a monopoly on you. In part, Baldwin is speaking of a quality of selfishness or self-centeredness that is all about "me," and what I want and what I need, without any regard for the other: thus, it is a one-way street, all take and no give.

On p. 104 he concludes by saying that the value placed on the color of a person's skin is a delusion.

And, finally, only if we can see and accept one another as we are, with our flaws and inadequacies and vulnerabilities, and forgive, is there hope for change in this country.