Skip to main content

New top story from Time: How Liberal White America Turned Its Back on James Baldwin in the 1960s

https://ift.tt/2QBsNzv

In discussions about race relations today, the works of James Baldwin continue to speak to the present, even decades after they were written. So it is worth remembering that, at the very height of his influence, Baldwin experienced the same frustration that some Black activists, particularly on campus, feel about white liberals today: their refusal to acknowledge their complicity in the regime of white supremacy. In Baldwin’s case, the liberal backlash was widespread, and effectively marginalized him for a time.

The very first piece on the front page of the very first issue of The New York Review of Books, Feb. 1, 1963, was a review of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time by F. W. Dupee of the Columbia English department. Dupee (a former Communist Party organizer) took exception to Baldwin’s apocalyptic tone. “Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?” Baldwin had written. The answer, Dupee wrote, is that “[s]ince you have no other, yes; and the better-disposed firemen will welcome your assistance.”

Baldwin had abandoned criticism for prophecy and prescription for provocation, Dupee said. He was goading white racists, who were in a better position to cause trouble than Black people were, “and it is unclear to me how The Fire Next Time, in its madder moments, can do nothing except inflame the former and confuse the latter.” The point was repeated by Kenneth Rexroth in the San Francisco Examiner. The Fire Next Time, he wrote, “is designed to make white liberals feel terribly guilty and to scare white reactionaries into running and barking fits.”

At the end of the year, Baldwin participated in a Commentary symposium, “Liberalism and the Negro.” Baldwin’s fellow symposiasts were Gunnar Myrdal, Nathan Glazer and Sidney Hook, the epitome of liberal integrationist opinion. It became a war almost from the start, and Baldwin’s most persistent antagonist was Glazer. This was not surprising. Unlike the others, Glazer had worked in the American government. He served in the Housing and Home Finance Agency, precursor to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), when Kennedy was president, and he had just published, with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot. Glazer had written most of the book, which was based on research into the conditions of ethnic groups in New York City. He must have felt entitled to believe that he had a better grasp of government programs and of the facts on the ground than Baldwin did.

The argument of Beyond the Melting Pot is that many Americans retain their ethnic identities regardless of the degree of their assimilation in other respects, and from this it followed that Black Americans should do the same—that is, they should become like other ethnic groups. The trouble, Glazer said, is that the Negro “insists that the white world deal with his problems because, since he is so much the product of America, they are not his problems, but everyone’s.” But once he becomes willing to accept that he is a member of a group, he will be able to take responsibility for himself and other members of his community.

Baldwin knew what he was in for, and he set the stakes early on. “[T]o my mind, you see,” he said, “before one can really talk about the Negro problem in this country, one has got to talk about the white people’s problem . . . There is a sense,” he went on, “in which one can say that the history of this country was built on my back.” To the suggestion that he become a member of one of the ethnic groups competing for their share of the pie, his answer was: “What pie are you talking about? From my own point of view, my personal point of view, there is much in that American pie that isn’t worth eating.”

Glazer responded that it’s not prejudice that slows racial progress as much as ignorance, incompetence, and bureaucratic inefficiency. “[T]he problems are a product of the kind of unwieldy institutions we have,” he told Baldwin, “the kind of feudal country we have, the kind of recalcitrant special interests that have developed—among them Negro interests. And so we all fight it out.”

To this kind of argument Baldwin’s response was “if you don’t know what Ray Charles is singing about, then it is entirely possible that you can’t help me.” It is a good bet that none of the white men sitting around the table had ever willingly listened to Ray Charles. But they all wanted to help Black people, and they were being told that this was the reason they probably couldn’t.

White liberals who identified with the Kennedy Administration resented being told they were not “getting it.” But even white liberals who may have considered themselves politically purer of heart expressed impatience. With Baldwin, Susan Sontag wrote in The New York Review of Books, “passion seemed to transmute itself too readily into stately language, into an inexhaustible self-perpetuating oratory.”

The Commentary symposium was published in March, 1964. In August, Esquire ran a profile of Baldwin that had been commissioned by the magazine’s editor, Harold Hayes, who thought that Baldwin’s war on white liberals was absurd. The writer, Marvin Elkoff, dutifully portrayed Baldwin as mercurial and high-strung, and quoted him calling the white liberal “blinder, more innocent and ignorant than the segregationist,” and saying things like: “If you don’t realize that the same people who killed Kennedy also killed Medgar Evers, then you don’t understand what is going on in the world.” In the end, Elkoff concluded, “everybody was playing his [Baldwin’s] game, and of course not nearly as well . . . At bottom he is disaffiliated, a medium of emotion.”

At Christmastime, Baldwin published a deluxe boxed coffee table book of photographs with his high school friend Richard Avedon, now a successful fashion photographer. Baldwin’s essay is a cri de coeur on the banality of American life. It begins with despairing reflections on the artificiality of actors in television commercials and descends into musings like: “When a civilization treats its poets with the disdain with which we treat ours, it cannot be far from disaster; it cannot be far from the slaughter of the innocents.”

There is a way in which this boutique item, which does not present itself as a book about race, brings the precariousness of Baldwin’s position into focus. When he said things like “the history of this country was built on my back” or, in a widely publicized debate with William F. Buckley at the Cambridge Union, “I picked cotton, I carried it to the market, I built the railroads under someone else’s whip,” he was using an established conceit of group autobiography (as Malcolm X did in his autobiography, published in 1965.) The understanding is that if these things did not happen to the author, they happened to somebody like the author. The “I” stands for the group.

White people don’t write group autobiographies, however. It was not that people did not believe that when Baldwin lived in the United States, he had encountered racism and discrimination. It was that professionally, he had suffered no more, and arguably less, from efforts to censor him than, for instance, Norman Mailer or Henry Miller had. From the very beginning, he had been supported and promoted by powerful writers and editors, Black and white. He had written bestsellers: the only book that sold more copies than Another Country in 1963 was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. He wrote for Partisan Review and The New Yorker. He had been on the cover of TIME. He hung around with celebrities; he was rich; he had an entourage. And on top of all that, he had been living in Paris for eight years, and when the Montgomery bus boycott turned out to be a success, he turned up on the scene, in 1957, and started telling everyone what it was like to be Black in America.

The New York Review of Books was ready for Nothing Personal. The headline was “Everybody Knows My Name,” and the reviewer was Robert Brustein, who was soon to become dean of the Yale School of Drama: “Now comes Richard Avedon, high-fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, to join these other outrage exploiters, giving the suburban clubwoman a titillating peek into the obscene and ugly faces of the mad, the dispossessed, and the great and neargreat [sic]—with James Baldwin interrupting from time to time, like a punchy and pugnacious drunk awakening from a boozy doze during a stag movie, to introduce his garrulous, irrelevant, and by now predictable comments on how to live, how to love, and how to build Jerusalem.”

“[L]ending himself to such an enterprise,” Brustein concluded, “Baldwin reveals that he is now part and parcel of the very things he is criticizing.” Baldwin was one of a handful of Black writers who had a white audience in 1963, and he lost it. He had set the bar higher than many white liberals were willing to jump.

This essay is adapted from Menand’s new book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India records 43,082 new Covid-19 cases, 492 deaths in a day; tally breaches 93 lakh-mark https://ift.tt/3mdvWjd

India on Friday reported 43,082 new coronavirus cases and 492 deaths, taking total number of cases in the country to 93 lakh. According to the Union Health Ministry data, there are currently 4 lakh active cases across the country, while over 87 lakh patients have been discharged.

New Muni Service Changes Start Saturday, August 19

New Muni Service Changes Start Saturday, August 19 By Clive Tsuma 28R 19th Avenue will run on weekdays between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. starting Monday, August 21.  Back to School  With SFUSD students returning to school August 16, many families who rely on Muni to get to school will see service increase after school as part of the new schedule. Because Muni vehicles often become crowded during morning peak hours and sometimes pass up stops when there is not enough room for more riders, families are encouraged to plan their trips ahead of time and hop on Muni early to make sure students get to school on time.  With every public school in the San Francisco Unified School District being served by at least one Muni route , students can expect extra Muni service on the first day of the school this fall and continue providing service throughout the school year. While the Muni service changes won’t be implemented until August 19, school tripper service will be offered starting Au...

SFMTA’s Cable Car Signal Tower Gets a Refresh

SFMTA’s Cable Car Signal Tower Gets a Refresh By Jeremy Menzies At the corner of California and Powell Streets stands a diminutive but important building that has been in use for well over 100 years. This octagonal signal tower controls the crossing of the Powell and California Street cable car lines, and recently underwent a full restoration thanks to the skilled craftspeople at the Cable Car Division. A group photo of Muni craftspeople and shop management who worked to restore the signal tower in 2020-2021. The tower’s history dates to 1888 when the original was built by the Ferries and Cliff House Railroad, which operated cable cars on Powell Street at the time. That tower was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fires that ravaged Nob Hill. In March 1907, it was rebuilt by then-owner United Railroads of San Francisco (URR) and went back into operation. Photo showing signal tower in 1908 with the Fairmont Hotel and passengers waiting for a cable car in the background. Photo c...

PM Modi extends birthday wishes to Sonia Gandhi https://ift.tt/3lYD7eu

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday extended birthday greetings to Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi. Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Modi said, "Birthday greetings to Smt. Sonia Gandhi Ji. May God bless her with a long and healthy life."

Muni Moves You!

Muni Moves You! By Jeanne Brophy This week we are launching a campaign to welcome back Muni riders as San Francisco continues to move further into pandemic recovery. The campaign encourages transit trips to destinations throughout the city to reconnect you to the people and places that define our city and shape the communities we belong to. As many of us adopt new travel patterns for work commutes, school trips with visits to neighborhood businesses, and cultural and sporting activities, Muni offers a reliable, safe option to move about the city. The launch of the campaign coincides with steadily increasing ridership during the work week and even more increases for weekend ridership. This is good news for SF. Increased ridership will help the city wet its climate goals and reduce traffic congestion. Sustained lower transit ridership can have negative implications for the environment and traffic congestion. The campaign graphics feature the popular Muni “worm” logo originally desig...

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility By Pamela Johnson Parking at any of our 22 city-owned facilities is now easier and safer than ever. Late last month we completed the Parking Access Revenue and Control Systems (PARCS) project. This four-year effort replaced aging parking equipment with modern technology and significant operational upgrades. Customer using new PARCS kiosk at North Beach parking garage Patrons will notice enhanced lighting, new wayfinding signs, audible alarms, cameras, gate arms, and payment machines with two-way digital intercoms . Behind the scenes is an all-new parking management system and 24/7 command center, connected to every machine. Can’t find your ticket to pay for parking?  No worries! Thanks to license plate recognition technology, cameras located at every facility’s entrance capture patrons’ plate numbers as they arrive . If a customer loses her ticket, the manager is able to re-issue a ticket based on her license plate...

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager By Jeremy Menzies In recognition of Black History Month, we bring you the story of Gene Henderson, the first Black man to become the head of a Muni bus division, Muni’s Kirkland Division. Henderson’s Background Gene Henderson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1916. He married his wife Naomi in 1939 and then served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Gene and his family moved to San Francisco where he began his career at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Early Career On February 1, 1946, Henderson was hired as a streetcar motorman out of Sutro Division, which was located on the corner of 32nd Ave. and Clement St. He was hired just five years after Muni’s first Black transit operator, Audley Cole, had successfully fought to integrate the carmen’s union in 1941. In his early days at Muni, Gene worked one of the three lines running out of Sutro Division from the Ferry Building to the Richmond District o...

New Customer Information System Signs Coming to a Transit Shelter Near You!

New Customer Information System Signs Coming to a Transit Shelter Near You! By Kharima Mohamed As part of the Next Generation Customer Information System project, over 700 new Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) signs will display real-time information at Muni transit shelters. Approximately one-third of these signs will be double-sided to provide additional visibility at the highest-ridership stops and major transfer points. This week we installed a single-sided prototype at Eddy and Larkin streets. Serving the Tenderloin, an Equity Neighborhood , this sign will feature real-time predictions for the 19 Polk and 31 Balboa routes. The primary purpose for installing this prototype is to conduct in-field hardware testing, especially with rain, wind and colder temperatures.    We know there is an urgent need for more effective signage and are excited to roll out the new customer information system later this year.  The new LCD signs will eventually replace all existing Next...

Smarter Traffic Signals Prioritize Transit and People

Smarter Traffic Signals Prioritize Transit and People By Robert Lim Have you ever wondered how traffic signals could better balance the needs of all road users, whether driving, bicycling, walking or taking Muni? The SFMTA is rolling out its Connected Corridor Pilot this month to use transit platform and traffic signal sensor data to inform signal timing adjustments. The pilot also aims to collect information to support transit efficiency and street safety improvements.  Traffic engineers use signal timing adjustments as a tool to prioritize the flow of travel in specific directions or for different travel modes – Muni, people walking or driving – to meet the changing demands of the road network across different timepoints in a day. The Connected Corridors Pilot seeks to push the envelope of innovation by investing in advanced technologies, funded through a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grant. These tools will better position the city to serve the potential future ne...

More Muni Service Coming in August

More Muni Service Coming in August By Julie Kirschbaum The SFMTA is updating and expanding our next big service change targeted for August 14. These adjustments take into account stakeholder feedback and changes in COVID-19 regulations like physical distancing and our ability to switch operators in the field rather than having to return vehicles to their yards first for cleaning. Enhancements to our previously announced plan include expanding evening service and restoring Muni Owl All-nighter service, adding back four more routes and restoring or adjusting segments on several others. Expanded Evening Service As San Francisco reopens, people are traveling later for work, shopping and dining. To help workers and shoppers get around town we plan to expand service hours on 16 key routes. Instead of 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., these routes will operate from 5 a.m. to midnight. Muni’s full late-night Owl network is scheduled to be restored in August, providing service from midnight to 5 a.m....