Happy 100th Birthday, James Baldwin
Reflecting on the legacy of the supremely powerful writer and his problem with "moral apathy" in America
James Baldwin, the brilliant novelist and essayist, would’ve been 100 years old on this August 2nd. Though he died in 1987, his writing today is more relevant than ever.
His novels captured emotion unlike anything I’ve ever read. Giovanni’s Room ranks among my favorite novels of all time and should be prominently featured in the top lists of fiction across the board. It explores sexuality, relationships, and Americanism with clarity that is somehow both refreshing and timeless.
But it is his essays that pack a real punch. He wrote on racism and America and its people. His words were both beautiful and cutting at the same time.
Though he left his native New York and divided his time in France (and has faced some criticism for doing so) he never gave up on pushing America to what it can be. He once said: “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
On reflecting on his birthday, I wondered why Baldwin wasn’t taught more in schools. Surely, his piercing words on racism in America, especially when trying to hold a mirror to America and seeking accountability, were radical.
In The Fire Next Time, Baldwin contemplates race in America:
"If we--and I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious black, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of others--do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world."
This book came out in 1963, a year before the passing of the Civil Rights Act. As Baldwin points out, Black Americans are raising "children of kindergarten age who can through mobs to get to school."
His writing, produced in a segregated, Jim Crow era, could be divisive then. But have we grown beyond it? Could his writing be added to high school curricula today?
Have we Americans found resolve in education and learning about other people?
Critical Race Theory, an academic discipline that contemplates how race has shaped our country, has become a centerpiece of today’s culture wars. As have our libraries. Book bans have reached all-time highs. School districts are expanding the lists of books that children can not check out and read. In 2023, more than 4,000 titles were challenged.
James Baldwin spoke about the importance of education: “The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not.”
But he also warned of society trying to hold people down: “What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.”
In 1963, he spoke these words that can, unfortunately, still find resonance in America today: “I'm terrified at the moral apathy - the death of the heart which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don't think I'm human. And this means that they have become, in themselves, moral monsters.”
If this is the prism through which we look at today’s society, are we about to perish? Lack of education and book bans, moral apathy and culture wars abound… these elements do not look promising. Not in 1963 and not in 2024. But there are periods of bright spots. And, according to Baldwin, it is up to us to seek change and implement it.
“One of the paradoxes of education was that precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society,” Baldwin said.
“It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person.”
Happy Birthday, James Baldwin. May we change society for the better.
This 17 minute clip from a May 1969 episode of The Dick Cavett Show shows the essence of Baldwin. It’s worth a watch.