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“Whoever debases others is debasing himself.��

How does one even comment on the prolific brilliance and wisdom of James Baldwin?

He is a poet and enormous thinker who truly understood American society beyond the mirror of American excellence and into the reality of American apartheid and the bidirectional dehumanization of oppression and white supremacy.

“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��

Race is a social construct, not a biological distinction:

“Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.��

The understanding and compassion of James Baldwin is unearned and encompasses all Americans. Wickedness and inhumane behavior is rarely overt and hides under the guise of the disinterested white American:

“The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.��

White Americans do not understand their own country and continue to enjoy their own white myth exceptionalism and meritocracy:

“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 terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.��

Hatred dehumanizes the oppressed and the privileged:

“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.��

The hypocrisy of white Americans and white christians maintains a system of oppression:

“How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?��

Reality is much more harsh than imagined ideologies:

“It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.��

Assimilation and integration are tools of white supremacy:

“Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?��

My impression of James Baldwin is that while he certainly had a lot of cross over with the philosophies of Malcom X and the Nation of Islam, he refuted the idea of a parallel and segregated black society. Besides his monolithic intellect and insight, Baldwin is compassionate toward all people and seems to argue for progression as united people across races. While he appears disillusioned by his faith and skeptical of NOI, he is not hopeless. I believe he does have faith, and I believe it is faith in human kindness.

This is a must read.